Before attending Sewa USA’s Policy Cafe on Ending Hunger Together, I came with a fundamental question: How does hunger persist in a first-world country like the USA How does hunger persist in a first-world country like the USA

Like many, I assumed the conversation would centre on poverty. I understood hunger largely as an outcome of low income, a downstream problem that followed from economic hardship. When hunger appeared despite the presence of federal nutrition programs and charitable efforts, I attributed it to gaps in outreach or implementation. In my mind, hunger reflected either the absence of policy or its failure to reach the right people.

It was with these assumptions that I entered the Policy Cafe organised on 16th December, 2025, expecting a discussion focused on policy alignment and efficiency.

Instead, what emerged was a reframing of hunger not simply as evidence of policy absence, but as a signal of policy misalignment . Enrollment numbers, distribution targets, and compliance metrics may indicate that a program is functioning as designed, yet they often fail to capture whether those systems actually provide stability. Hunger, in this sense, reflects the gap between how policy is structured and how people experience it in their daily lives.

One of the most powerful shifts in the conversation came through the lens of dignity. Before this discussion, I had not considered dignity and choice as central components of hunger policy. The panelists challenged that omission directly.

The focus moved from whether food is distributed to how it is distributed. Are people rushed or respected? Are they offered choice or assigned aid? Do systems preserve autonomy, or do they quietly erode it?

Food bank leaders shared how they are redesigning distribution models to prioritise agency, creating spaces that resemble grocery stores rather than relief lines, allowing families to choose what they take, and accounting for cultural preferences and dietary needs. These models recognise people not as passive recipients of aid, but as participants in their own wellbeing.

What became clear is that efficiency alone is an incomplete policy goal. Programs that treat people as passive beneficiaries may meet short-term needs, but they often fall short of building long-term resilience. In contrast, dignity-centred approaches, those that pair immediate relief with nutrition education, workforce pathways, or community support, show stronger, more sustainable outcomes.

This emphasis challenged an assumption I hadn’t realised I was carrying: that speed and scale should outweigh experience. The discussion underscored that how help is delivered matters as much as whether it is delivered. Choice is not a luxury add-on; it is a policy design feature that shapes outcomes.

I left the Policy Cafe with a more layered understanding of hunger. It is not simply about food or income, but about how systems show up in everyday life: through timing, access, respect, and choice. Hunger reveals what happens when policies fail to align with lived realities, even when they are well-intentioned and well-funded.

By convening this conversation, Sewa International USA created space to examine hunger not as an isolated social issue, but as a reflection of how policy functions in practice. Ending hunger, as the discussion made clear, requires more than expanding programs. It requires designing systems that recognise people as active agents in their own stability and measuring success not only by coverage, but by dignity.