Michigan Avenue - Niche Media - Michigan Avenue magazine is a luxury lifestyle magazine centered around Chicago’s finest people, events, fashion, health & beauty, fine dining & more!
Issue link: http://digital.greengale.com/i/94797
PHOTOGRAPH BY NATHAN KIRKMAN SPIRIT OF GENEROSITY Maehr works at a Mobile Pantry distribution center at the McCormick Tribune YMCA. Kate Maehr, executive director and CEO for the Greater Chicago Food Depository. feed the hungry UNDER THE GUIDANCE OF KATE MAEHR, THE GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY PROVIDES SUSTENANCE TO LOCALS STRUGGLING TO MAKE ENDS MEET. BY ELLE EICHINGER T needing us, by teaching them the skills that can translate into a job," he faces of hunger are not just the Third World countenances we see on the television news or read about Chicago, hunger "looks very different than it does in other coun- tries," says Kate Maehr, executive director and CEO of the Greater in magazines. In Maehr explains, "because at the end of the day, that's the best anti-hun- ger strategy there is." Through the program, Vergara scored an internship at Hot Chocolate working with James Beard award winner Chicago Food Depository. "It might be a child in your child's class- Mindy Segal; now, he is the executive chef of The Drinkingbird in Lincoln Park. "This program opened up the doors for me to this great life that I have," Vergara says. "I wanted to turn my life around. I don't know where I'd be if I hadn't gone through the program." He has a frightening guess: "Probably back in prison, to be honest," he says. Others have found equivalent success: this month, the Community Kitchens program graduates its 1,000th alum. room, the kid sitting next to you on the bus, the neighbor down the block—you can't walk down the street and point to the hungry person." Maehr has worked at GCFD for 16 years (the past six as CEO), and in that time, she has seen and experienced hunger from all perspectives. The numbers are sobering: one out of six Cook County residents (and one out of five children) face food insecurity on a daily basis. Hector Vergara was one of those people when he was released from a drug-related stint in prison three years ago. Vergara needed food, yes, but the GCFD gave him something more: The Chicago's Community Kitchens program offers culinary training and lessons in life skills—things like proper workplace behavior and how to balance a checkbook. "We are lifting people out of that individual cycle of 60 MICHIGANAVEMAG.COM During Maehr's tenure at the GCFD, the organization has grown exponentially, providing services to 68 percent more people than it did four years ago, serving every neighborhood within the city limits and every suburban community in Cook County. More than just collecting cans in a lobby barrel, the GCFD works from an enormous warehouse continued on page 62