Even in the land of plenty, people still go hungry. Some are homeless, some are single parents trying to make ends meet, while others have just temporarily fallen on hard times. In 2022, over 49 million people in the United States turned to hunger relief organizations for help as a result. Over 38 percent of the food produced in the country, meanwhile, goes unsold or uneaten, amounting to approximately 91 million tons of surplus food and 149 billion lost meals. Only two percent of that surplus food is donated to hunger relief organizations, while seventy percent ends up in landfills.
The above statistics were recited by Dana Williams, director of marketing and communications at Feeding San Diego during a “Leveraging the Power of Popular Culture to Inspire Change at Scale” panel at the 2023 San Diego Comic-Con. Moderated by Dr. Emily Schindler, director of education at the Comic-Con Museum, the ensuing discussion centered on the use of popular culture as an instrument for social awareness and making a difference, with the Feeding San Diego/Comic-Con Museum joint Hunger Action Heroes program highlighted as an example.
While both organizations are non-profits, the goal of Feeding San Diego is to end hunger through food rescue programs while the Comic-Con Museum celebrates comics and the popular arts. Although their collaboration may thus seem odd, it actually fits in with the mission of both organizations. “Awareness precedes choice which precedes change, so if we want to think about how to create change, we first really need to think about how to make people care,” Dana William explained. “And that’s really what today is about, assessing how we inspire change and create global change by first making people care, and what better way to connect with today’s youth than through popular culture.”
Courtney Grant, director of advancement at the Comic-Con Museum, had a similar viewpoint. “At the Comic-Con Museum we have a fun job, we get to do a lot of fun stuff,” she said. “But we’re a 501(c)(3) and we’re dedicated to educating and inspiring storytellers, creators, artists and to touching with the next generation in a way that can help have an impact. And so it’s a great opportunity to work with organizations like Feeding San Diego, who are doing some really hard work in the community about hunger, where we can shine a bright light on some of these issues and where we can, through the popular arts, help them connect directly with those people who are the youth and the changemakers in our culture and inspire them to take action.”
Dana Williams visited the Comic-Con Museum shortly after it opened in November 2021 and quickly began brainstorming ideas about how Feeding San Diego and the museum could work together. Using a series of “what-ifs,” Williams emailed Courtney Grant with her ideas. “What if we could do a corroboration together?” she began. “And what if we launched something called a Hunger Action Hero art contest and we invited students to submit their version of a Hunger Action Hero who helps end hunger through food rescue? And what if we could bring those costumes to life and celebrate them in a larger way?”
Courtney Grant immediately said yes to Dana Williams’ proposal and those “what-ifs” were soon turned into reality. In March 2022, the Hunger Action Hero Art Contest was launched, challenging students K-12 to create their own Hunger Action Hero. Over 350 submissions from across San Diego County were received, and after a judging process that included input from the public, two illustrations were selected. Allan Lavigne of the Bronze Armory then transformed the artwork into actual costumes, actors were hired, and the winning pair of Demeter and Hunger Halter made their premier at the Comic-Con Museum on July 20, 2022.
Demeter and Hunger Halter have since visited schools, helped sort food donated to Feeding San Diego, and even greeted travelers at San Diego International Airport. The mission of the superheroes is to help raise awareness about both hunger and food rescue, as well as inspire the younger generation to get involved with their communities.
“I think everyone just knows that the world needs more superheroes, and in particular we need more ways to be able to connect with the youth and how to engage the youth to realize that no matter what their age is, they can make a difference, and their actions matter,” Dana Williams told the panel audience at the 2023 San Diego Comic-Con. “And no matter how big or small – whether it’s a two-hour volunteer shift or a ten-dollar donation or just spreading the word, it all counts.”
The Hunger Action Heroes initiative has already had that kind of impact. “I literally was just sitting down with a young boy, he goes to a local high school, and he wants to start a Feeding San Diego club at his school,” Williams explained. “He was coming in, meeting with me to talk about what can I do to get my peers to understand the issues of hunger and food waste. What can our school do to help solve this problem. And that layers in to what we’re doing today, because what we want to do, we want to use this as the inspiration but we really want to take it into the school level so we can actually connect with kids. We want to work with school systems to use this as curriculum to help teach about hunger and food waste and other important global issues.”
She then added, “There are a lot of really big problems in the world today and we can use comics and the popular arts to address some of those really big problems.” Thanks to the Comic-Con Museum, Feeding San Diego, and Hunger Action Heroes Demeter and Hunger Halter, the process is already underway.
Anthony Letizia