[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 108 (Wednesday, June 27, 2018)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E928-E929]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     IN RECOGNITION OF CINDY McCOWN

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. JACKIE SPEIER

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, June 27, 2018

  Ms. SPEIER. Mr. Speaker, I rise to honor Cindy McCown, a champion 
against hunger and for food security in our region. In her 34 years of 
work for the Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Clara and San Mateo 
counties, Cindy has seen first-hand that nutritious food is an 
essential ingredient to a healthy and productive life. In fact, Cindy 
created many of the programs that have made nutritious food accessible 
to tens of thousands of children, families and seniors in Northern 
California.
  Cindy rose through the ranks at the food bank and over the years 
built strong relationships with policy makers to create a more robust 
hunger-safety net. I count myself as one of those lucky policy makers 
who had the honor to work with Cindy on key legislation, such as the 
Farm Bill. It was Cindy who convinced me to take the Food Stamp 
challenge

[[Page E929]]

in 2011. This profound and humbling experience changed my perspective 
on hunger and food dependence forever. I've also sorted food with Cindy 
at the food bank to get a more complete understanding of its role in 
feeding and supporting our residents. For almost 90,000 residents in my 
Congressional District, SNAP and the food bank are literally a life 
line.
  Cindy's passion for food justice started early in her life. 
Originally from Spokane, Washington, Cindy's father, a psychiatrist, 
moved the family to San Luis Obispo to accept a job at Atascadero State 
Hospital when Cindy was in kindergarten. She earned her undergraduate 
and graduate degrees in nutrition from California Polytechnic State 
University. During college, she did a nine-months internship teaching 
nutrition to migrant children in the agricultural town of Oceana. That 
experience made her see up close just how challenging it is to afford 
healthy and nutritious food when you are poor.
  In 1984 the Second Harvest Food Bank had a job opening for a 
community nutritionist and Cindy jumped at the opportunity. Back then, 
the food bank was located in an old bottling plant and had an annual 
budget of less than $1 million. Today, the organization has three 
facilities, including a dedicated produce distribution center, and an 
annual budget of $42 million. Cindy grew and grew with the relatively 
new concept of a food bank. She led efforts to better organize the food 
distribution and to bring it closer to the people who needed it. She 
created partnerships with non-profit organizations and more than 900 
distribution sites in almost every zip code. She also came up with the 
idea for a multilingual hotline to connect callers to the closest food. 
Instead of looking at the organization purely as a food provider, Cindy 
found creative ways to turn it into a local community leader on ending 
hunger.
  After the Lorna Prieta earthquake in 1989, Cindy helped create CADRE, 
the Collaborating Agencies Disaster Relief Effort, to effectively 
respond to natural disasters. Second Harvest Food Bank is still part of 
the CADRE leadership team. In 1997, Cindy was instrumental in forming 
the Safety New Project, a partnership to address welfare reform 
impacts. She continues to co-chair that committee. At the height of the 
Great Recession in 2010, Cindy in collaboration with the Santa Clara 
Social Services Agency, secured millions of dollars through the 
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and the county was the first in 
the country to provide ``stimulus food boxes'' to those in need.
  Cindy has a gift to bring public and private resources together to 
help people in need, educate the public and fight against the stigma of 
poverty. Under her leadership Second Harvest Food Bank has been honored 
with Feeding America's Advocacy Hall of Fame the last four year in a 
row. With each dose of food, Cindy hands out a dose of dignity.
  In 2015, Second Harvest named Cindy Vice President of Community 
Engagement and Policy. In that role she formed the Children's Nutrition 
Coalition, which includes a dozen school districts, libraries, youth 
groups, and social services agencies, to ensure children get nutritious 
food particularly during the summer when families don't have access to 
school meals. She also launched the school breakfast initiative in 
high-need areas. Due to those programs, local children received over 
300,000 additional meals last year.
  Mr. Speaker, I ask the members of the House of Representatives to 
rise with me to celebrate a community leader who has literally nurtured 
tens of thousands of lives throughout her remarkable career. Cindy 
McCown is a visionary trailblazer and tireless advocate for people in 
need. She leaves behind a legacy of empathy, compassion and creative 
thinking that will enrich our community for years to come.

                          ____________________