The Good Road

Funding for The Good Road has been provided by the Buccaneer Beach and Golf Resort, Saint Croix, US Virgin Islands.

Philanthropy Journal, stories about bold people changing the world.

Bank of America, what would you like the power to do?

Music is the great unifier with power to change the world.

Musicians create that positive change music each and every day.

In Your Ear Studios, diverse musicians creating diverse music that unifies.

Here in Asheville, we're a mixture of genres, a hybrid of styles, settling for nothing, hungry for everything, all drawn together to stand out.

You are welcome.

Always, Asheville.

There's a whole lot of good out there wherever you look, in our towns, in our communities, in the world.

And Toyota engineers vehicles to help you discover more of it with off-road machines designed to explore off the beaten path, like Sequoia, 4Runner, and Tundra i-Force Max, all of which feature traction technology that goes the distance.

So the next time you head out looking for more good, Toyota can take you there.

Proud sponsor of The Good Road, Toyota.

Let's go places.

What can you say about a city like New York?

Very little that hasn't been said before, probably by someone famous.

And even then, anything you say about it falls short of the experience of being there.

And as soon as you think you understand it, it shows you something new.

We saw a whole new side of the city that never sleeps when we decided to look at one of the oldest and most critical forms of philanthropy out there, feeding people.

How do you get food to people in need in one of the biggest, most logistically complicated cities on the planet?

Food Bank NYC knows how.

So we decided to follow the money, or food.

[music playing] Food Bank For NYC is one of the largest food banks in the world and has served over 1.2 billion meals, and counting, through the five boroughs.

Its mission is to end hunger through food distribution, nutritional education, and community development and support.

It can be a pain just getting yourself around the five boroughs, let alone millions of pounds of fresh food because that's exactly what these meals are, fresh.

So how does that work?

We're about to find out.

We start our morning bright and early with Bob Silvia, Chief Operations and Procurement Officer at Food Bank For NYC's warehouse and distribution center in The Bronx.

From there, we take a short drive to Hunts Point Produce Market, the largest produce market on the Eastern Seaboard.

We get just an absolute ton of donations out of this market.

You are here pretty much every day?

Yeah, we send trucks into the market just about every day, making sure that we get-- try to capture as many cases of produce as we can that are-- if we didn't pick it up, it'd probably be heading to a landfill.

But we'd rather feed people with it than send it to a landfill.

Yeah, so this morning, we're going to meet with Charlie.

Charlie is with Fresco.

He's the owner, and he makes sure that anything that he can donate, he does donate.

He's a really good guy.

Charlie give us a quick tour of Fresco while we waited for the Food Bank NYC truck to arrive.

So tell me a little bit about where does this stuff come from and how do you get it.

Well, we got to be on truck, rail, boat.

It's coming from all over the world, whether it's California, Mexico, Pennsylvania, Idaho, right there on the potatoes.

Cantaloupes, again, are from California.

Limes, again, are from Mexico.

Stack it high, and you fill it up, man.

How fast does this turn?

I would say at least two to three turns in one week.

You often think of the food pantries, packing the cans, everybody.

But what people really need is what Charlie provides, which is fresh produce.

We have a huge focus on getting those pantries and soup kitchens the equipment and the expertise they need to manage fresh produce.

There's still a lot of vitamins and nutrients in the canned food, but you can't beat fresh.

You can't.

And Bob, what's your relationship with Charlie, as you guys come-- Charlie and I go back.

We started when I first came into the market.

The food bank wasn't really doing a lot in here.

We started off taking about 40,000 pounds out of this market in a year.

We're up to a little over 4 million pounds that we take out of the market now.

And when you talk about community, I mean, what I love about it is you grew up.

I mean, this is-- you're still in your own hometown.

Yeah, I'm born and raised in New York City and family lives here.

New Yorkers aren't horrible people.

Well, that's-- [laughs] My father had a retail store in Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan, right next to the Port Authority.

So in the '90s, when I came into the industry, that area was hit very hard and one of the hardest hit in New York City with poverty.

The first steps in the industry was seeing food insecurity right there at hand.

But being in a retail store and a small retailer, I couldn't really do much about it then.

Now, being in this position, I could do something.

And especially with food bank right next door to us, there's great infrastructure.

Because a lot of people take that for granted.

You have the product, that's half the step.

You got to get it out there to the people.

Bob, I've noticed you've been checking the fruit.

[inaudible] Charlie's going to do a great job making sure we get quality stuff.

What I'm trying to do is figure out where is it suitable to go to.

Is this a pantry item?

Is it hard enough to last a couple of days in the pantry?

Or do I need to send it to a soup kitchen because it needs to be eaten today?

I'm going to try the first one just so I don't make a liar out of myself.

[inaudible] Perfect.

So this will end up on somebody's table by tonight.

Charlie, you want a piece of your own pineapple?

Oh, yeah.

Awesome.

After Bob's initial check of the produce, the truck arrived with Samuel Lyn-Shue at the helm.

Sam is the transportation manager for Food Bank NYC.

What I'm going to do right now is I'm going to go over and check the palette.

So I'm looking at the pineapples, I'm trying to make sure that every pineapple that we're going to be donating is going to be a good pineapple, that the agency gets top quality.

So Fresco is donating them.

You're basically picking it.

You're wrapping it.

You're packing it.

Exactly.

And then you're moving it down the road.

Right.

So the next thing is grab some shrink wrap, and then I just start wrapping as tight as I can.

And also, I got to be careful of all the guys on the docks.

Yeah, all these guys coming through.

This happens each and every day?

Every day.

It's hard work for you.

Yes.

Yes, it is.

But it's good work.

A lot of the guys, they will all tell you they feel good, they feel like they've done something.

They've helped their community.

Sam then takes the truck back to the warehouse, where we originally met Bob, so that the food could be cleaned and distributed.

Warehouse manager Jeff Daughtry showed us how it's done.

So Jeff, what's your job?

I'm in a clean room here.

So everything that comes in this building, I go through them.

I check them.

Make sure everything's good to distribute to people, to distribute to families.

But it has to be processed first.

And I'm the processor.

Now, this should be a lettuce.

I had to break the pallet down.

All right.

Some of this produce may go to one location, and some of it may go to a different location.

We may even break it half of it down and send it to different locations so that we get a good mix of product going to each location.

Jeff.

You grew up in The Bronx, man.

Yes, sir.

You're helping the community.

Yes, sir, born and raised.

Being from where I'm from The Bronx and knowing the community, people see me coming from work with my hat, my jacket.

They're like, Jeff, how are you?

They didn't have grapes today.

You have grapes-- can you bring me grapes tomorrow?

So sometimes, I'll leave work, and I'll bring grapes home, and I'll hand them out.

It's-- but it's a blessing.

It's a great thing.

I love that, man.

And I love doing it.

You rely on people like Sam who are picking it.

Then people are relying on you.

There's a trust that goes all-- The trust system, there's a trust factor all the way through, through and through.

I trust Sam.

Sam trust me.

We trust our team to get it there safely.

And then the city trusts us.

People trust us to feed people, so that's what we do here.

So once they're in the room, I'll have my team come over, we open everything up.

Yep.

We put some tables here.

We're processing a couple of things.

This pallet here, we pack it up.

And we'll send it down to the kitchen to the chef.

Yeah.

I would let her know what we're having coming in.

Get it pre-approved, let her know what's coming down so she can start meal-prepping.

Most people think that it's a food bank, right?

So it's just whatever's thrown away, that's what people eat.

But it's not.

No, we don't do that here.

You all work with the chef who's sitting there, who's going to be face to face with people.

She cooks every day fresh foods.

Everything that comes in is fresh.

So Chef Sheri is actually the interface between the public and all the stuff that you guys do.

Is she hard to get along with?

No, she's amazing.

She's amazing.

There's no one like her.

Guys, let's grab some tables, cut these pallets open.

Everybody got their gloves, right?

That's great.

Like this?

Yeah, right there, beautiful.

You're always thinking about-- I don't know, the customer, the end recipient.

I always try to think of it as, God forbid, it's one of my own family that's on that line.

I don't want them to get something that I picked up and it was bad.

Is everything really happening right here?

This is the operations where everything happens right here.

And then we have another building, which is 39th Street, where all the minds are there.

And they make-- they put all this into process.

Yeah.

But these guys are the backbone right here.

And then every borough has their own communities.

And every community has their own food preferences.

We have two guys that go through the produce market on a daily basis.

I was asking, why are you taking so long to get this stuff out of the building?

He's like, well, Sam, this particular product, they don't use this in the community.

And after he said that, I was like, go about what you're doing.

I mean, there's a lot more, I think, going on in this whole process than people realize.

From this point, food goes out to all five boroughs and to more than 1,800 partner organizations that the Food Bank For NYC supports.

We follow our box as Sam makes the drive to the Food Bank NYC community kitchen in Harlem.

Waiting for us is culinary manager Sheri Jefferson, a.k.a.

Chef.

She runs the kitchen and plans the meals that serve more than 100,000 monthly through their soup kitchen, food pantry, and senior programs.

We are now in the kitchen.

And this is your kitchen.

[laughs] My goodness.

Not to be too possessive.

You know.

But at times, I become very possessive.

It is mine.

It is mine because of what comes out of here and who we're serving.

This is an extension of my family.

I mean, I'm here more than I'm at home.

People think about chefs in restaurants-- Yes.

--but in reality, you serve as many people and even probably more.

We recently have been preparing between 800 and 1,000 meals a day, Monday through Friday.

It's not what people think a soup kitchen is.

We've got people who come here after work.

There's some MTA drivers that get off their bus to come.

I appreciate you.

I didn't have any lunch money.

Yes, because you have a job does not mean that you're financially stable.

There are people that I can relate to as a single mother.

But there were days that my daughters ate, but I didn't eat.

To be back here and to be able to do this, and to do it with my whole heart and soul, and to know that I am doing for people what I wish someone would have done for me.

Nothing goes from behind here that I would not serve to you or my family.

And here I am today.

But for the grace of God, I'm on this side but not that side.

I want them to know that someone understands and cares.

There are people who want to solve the big issues.

And then there are people like yourself who are just like, I'm going to take my skills, and I'm just going to go do it.

I'm just going to make an impact.

I always wonder why.

Why?

Why?

I'm classically trained in French Italian and Asian cuisine.

That's not where I want to be.

I want to be here I wouldn't trade places right now for anything.

The other thing that's interesting is the people that you're feeding are, I don't know if you know, they're right behind you.

And you have a ton of energy.

When you come in here, you are a bright smiling person.

You're on a cooking show here at some level.

What's that like?

They're my reasons for doing it.

When I leave here at night, I'm exhausted.

It's not the type of exhaustion whereas, oh, god, I got to get up for work.

It's a blessing to have a job that you come to that you actually love going to.

I can't fail them.

Yeah, you know, what I noticed from this morning from following the process, it feels like everybody is kind of on the same page with it all.

And y'all are like one big family.

Yeah, that's powerful.

We learned as we were about to help prep the meal for a group of seniors coming in that the community kitchen has been without gas for weeks due to a renovation that is adding a much needed freight elevator to the property.

That being said, nothing replaces a hot meal.

And it can be hard to reinvent a salad over and over again.

So tell me what you're thinking about for this afternoon.

Oh, a salad.

Yeah.

I'm sorry, I should say that with more-- a little more enthusiasm.

[laughs] No, but it is what it is.

It's all about what you do.

So we're going to take that regular, the lettuce and tomatoes, the cucumbers, and add a few more things to it.

Just elevate it just a little bit.

I need a half moon, gentlemen.

A half moon?

A half moon.

Oh, you're going to teach us here.

Yep.

That's the part where I cut my finger off.

Don't do that.

I will tell you what, Craig is actually a great chef.

But I'm a horrible prep cook.

[laughs] You know what I'm going to have you make first?

The fruit salad.

All right.

OK?

All of it.

All of it, here it goes.

Is that pineapple we were tasting earlier?

Something like that.

Pineapple that we were taking.

Here come the berries.

All right, how much honey do you like?

Oh, I'm a sweet girl.

Are you?

You tell me when.

There you go.

Are you just mixing it over?

Mix it over.

So it's more going on here than I thought.

I mean, but you're still getting the best of the best, right?

I mean, you're getting good-- this is the pineapples that we saw coming in, were great, the berries we saw coming in.

How do you know you're done?

When I feel like it.

[laughs] We were lucky to sit down with the special group of seniors that came in for the meal and to talk to us about their experience here in the kitchen.

Meet Henrietta, Gregory, Gracie, Martha, and Cecil.

You're going to try what I just gave you.

OK.

It was made with you in mind, OK?

Yeah?

Yeah, because I know how picky you are.

[laughs] Oh, I heard that.

Cecil was saying that they actually care about what people want in your food.

So-- When I first came into this building, I may have weighed 120 pounds.

I hadn't eaten in days.

I used to stand out on Second Avenue behind the famous restaurants when they delivered bread.

I would steal the bread.

A good man named Clarence, who was no longer with us, brought me in here, and I joined this community.

And I started volunteering here.

And I started being a spokesman as a person who has come through what he gave me.

So I'm trying to give back.

Henrietta, what's your experience with the food bank?

Coming here helped my health a lot because they would have nutritionist seminars here so I would learn what my body would need.

And then the exercise, to be able to exercise for an hour here, where at home, it'd be like 15 or 20 minutes.

I give a lot of credit to the chefs, as far as trying to find out what we like and making the effort to not really-- Our voices are heard, is what he's saying.

Yeah.

We get heard.

What would this community would be like if there wasn't a Food Bank NYC?

Hmm, wow.

Wow.

I wouldn't be here.

Before I walked through this, the doors here, I was on my way out.

I am where I am today because of the food bank, because of the people here, the people who laugh at me and with me.

It's nice to have people like you all in a community like this and an organization like the food bank.

And I think it all works together because everyone cares for each other.

You come in here one time, that's all it takes, one time.

But this to me is the real New York.

I mean, I kind of love this.

What I love is if you could ever be like a fly on the wall in here.

Yeah?

This is better than Hadestown up in here.

[laughs] Oh, yes.

It's its own play.

It was amazing to see the Food Bank NYC in action and to discover how much love and trust goes into every meal.

But you can't serve over a billion meals operating exclusively on love.

It takes real money and real donations.

What's the role of money in making a better world?

Well, where better to ask than the capital of capital, Wall Street and the New York Stock Exchange?

We met with nonprofit JUST Capital CEO Martin Whittaker to hear about the work they're doing to change the conversation and the culture of corporate America and the business world globally one ranking at a time.

JUST capital is a nonprofit started by Paul Tudor Jones, who's our chair, with other founding board members who felt very strongly that business had a very important role to play in solving major societal challenges.

If we could incentivize more just business behavior, good things would happen.

Right.

And so that's what we do, we rank America's biggest publicly-traded corporations on how just they are.

And the twist is that we don't define what just means.

The American people define it.

How do you keep a tab on what does Main Street America care about?

Great question.

So we do an awful lot of public opinion research.

We do focus groups, polling.

So the number one set of issues are how a company treats its workforce.

It's like things like fair pay, and training, and second-chance hiring, and veterans hiring, things like that, good benefits.

Part of what we do is to try and say being just company is good for business.

It's good for investors.

It's good for all of a company's stakeholders.

And we have the data, and the analysis, and the research to back that up.

So being here is where it all comes together, the voice of the public, measurement of company performance, and really trying to move capital in a more just direction.

Is that kind of where the structure as a nonprofit comes in?

That is a great point, exactly.

It's all about the mission.

At the end of the day, we are here to try and produce impact.

We start to shift the way companies behave and the way capital gets allocated.

Now, you have $16 trillion of the private sector pulling in a just direction.

Everything's happening so fast.

How do you keep up with the changing landscape?

There are certain elements of capitalism, the marketplace, which haven't changed for thousands of years, the ancient Sumerians, the Phoenicians.

But the way capitalism is practiced does change to reflect the values of the society that it serves.

So that's what's happening today.

We have a pulse on what Main Street thinks matters.

Profit and purpose are collided.

For as long as you've been in the business and being around Wall Street, how do you think about capital markets?

Look, I'm an optimist.

Business and capitalism, capital markets can do incredible things.

I mean, lift people out of poverty, help cure diseases, help connect us as people.

If we can get more people believing that the system is working for them, more people in this country, more people around the world, then good things will come of that.

What do you feel like JUST capital is doing to kind of drive investment or corporate initiatives in a direction that makes a difference?

Well, to me, it's about behavior change.

And to do that, you have to win the hearts and the minds and the wallets of business leaders, of investors, policymakers, civil society.

If you have a $10 or $100 donation, you think, how much change can that really produce?

But if it's matched by others and then in our case used to change the way billions of dollars flow, that's a huge leverage effect.

So philanthropy, to me, can be catalytic.

It can go towards very specific causes, building schools or hospitals, but it can also change systems.

And that's really what JUST is about.

Earl and I always want to know what drives the people who do the work.

What is your passion?

I mean, what's driven my whole career, quite honestly, is this idea of business solving real problems.

I started out focused on the environment.

And I really began to see if you could shift how business was done, you could really get to the root causes of a lot of social and environmental problems.

For JUST Capital itself to create an organization that I think I and my teammates and everybody connected to JUST can feel proud of the work that we do.

Money may be the root of all evil, but it has the ability to make a real difference in the world.

It takes a lot more than money alone.

As we saw today, it also takes ingenuity, sympathy, trust, and love.

And it is ultimately people helping people that makes the real difference.

It may be hard to find something new to say about a city like New York.

But one thing you can't say is that they don't care.

There's so much more to explore, and we want you to join us on The Good Road.

For more in-depth content, meet us on the internet at thegoodradio.tv.

Hear more great stories, connect to organizations, and make sure you download our podcast Philanthropology.

Funding for The Good Road has been provided by-- What makes a good road?

Blazing a trail, making a difference, being unafraid to take the path of most resistance.

Toyota has a beyond zero vision for a carbon-neutral future that lets you find your own good road with Toyota's electrified lineup, including battery electric, hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and fuel cell electric vehicles designed to get you where you want to go, from work to school, or wherever your adventures take you.

Toyota is all about paving good roads.

Proud sponsor of The Good Road, Toyota.

Let's go places.

Here in Asheville, we're a mixture of genres, a hybrid of styles, settling for nothing, hungry for everything, all drawn together to stand out.

You are welcome.

Always, Asheville.

Music is the great unifier with power to change the world.

Musicians create that positive change music each and every day.

In Your Ear Studios, diverse musicians creating diverse music that unifies.

Bank of America, what would you like the power to do?

Philanthropy Journal, stories about bold people changing the world.

The Buccaneer Beach and Golf Resort, Saint Croix, US Virgin Islands.

[music playing]