Many African Americans are living less than one paycheck away from hunger. When people hit sudden hard times, including illness, loss of job or disruption in health insurance, they are forced to turn to the America's Second Harvest network for help.

Many African Americans are living less than one paycheck away from hunger.

The face of hunger doesn't have a particular color, and it doesn't come from a particular neighborhood. They are your neighbors, they are working Americans, they are senior citizens who have worked their entire lives, and they are children.

The majority of small-holder farmers in Africa are women and, in urban areas, you're primarily looking at women-led households. So we can't solve hunger if we don't have gender-sensitive programming that addresses access to opportunities for women, whether it's through education or tools for cooking, like solar-powered stoves.

One of my strengths is my ability to talk and communicate with people.

The people in the United States are some of the most generous people in the world. We saw it in Haiti. We saw it with Katrina. When devastation strikes, American people want to step up.