Hugh Minor Turns to Foodbank to Satisfy a Hunger to Help

RIC alumnus Hugh Minor was 15 when the Live Aid concert aired in 1985 – a fundraiser for the Ethiopian famine. His favorite rock star, Bono, was among the many A-list artists set to perform. Yet it wasn't the artists that left the deepest imprint on this teenager. It was the images of hundreds of thousands of Ethiopian children starving to death.

Minor would later write his senior term paper on starvation in Africa. As an adult, he would focus his advocacy work on children and poverty. Today he is communication director for the Rhode Island Community Food Bank, a nonprofit established for the sole purpose of alleviating hunger.

Equipped with a 77,000-square-foot facility and a fleet of trucks, the Food Bank normally moves more than 200,000 pounds of food out of its doors each week to 168 member agencies, which include food pantries, meal sites, shelters, youth programs and senior centers.

Due to the pandemic, the demand for food assistance has increased dramatically. The Food Bank is now distributing 45 percent more pounds of food each week and Minor makes a point of visiting the member agencies to talk to the people being served and to listen to their stories.

"Eighty-eight percent of those who visit the Food Bank live below the poverty line, earning less than $21,330 a year for a family of three" he says. "Many of our more recent participants have lost their jobs either temporarily or permanently due to the pandemic."

"We're a critical resource for many Rhode Islanders," says Minor. "When I visit agencies and talk to people, they are always so thankful. It's good to know that we're making a difference in people's lives."

As an undergraduate at Rhode Island College, Minor didn't know he'd be doing this kind of work. Although he was a secondary education/English major, he says, "I realized early on that teaching in a classroom was not right for me. Yet I always knew I wanted to do something that involved writing and educating people."

Minor also had strong humanitarian leanings. At RIC, he joined a number of student organizations – Amnesty International, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Greenpeace and the campus newspaper.

When he graduated in 1992, he worked in fund development and, later, communications for the nonprofit Plan International USA, which globally advocates for at-risk children. There, he learned the ins and outs of the nonprofit world while using the writing skills he learned in RIC's English Department and the public speaking skills he learned in RIC's teaching program.

Plan USA partnered with Bono, an activist and philanthropist, who cofounded a nonprofit called Debt, AIDS, Trade, Africa to fight extreme poverty and preventable disease in Africa. As a representative of Plan USA, Minor participated in the follow-up concert to Live Aid called Live 8 and met Bono at two speaking engagements.

He also became a U.N. delegate for Plan USA, working closely with UNICEF. But after 10 years of traveling to countries around the world, Minor felt the need to focus on issues here in the United States.

As communications director for the Food Bank, his work involves engaging Rhode Islanders to volunteer or give to the Food Bank. "Some of our funding comes from corporations; however, our primary source of funding and biggest supporters are individual people," he says. "Since the onset of COVID-19, we've had to adapt our fundraising approach to engage donors virtually, but we've received a tremendous response."

Yet with all the good that comes out of working for nonprofits like the Food Bank there are also challenges, such as lack of resources, so salaries may not be as competitive. "But ultimately you're not in it to make money," Minor says, "you're in it to do good work and to feel good about making a difference."

Like most humanitarians, his work never ends at the office. Minor sits on the board of Inspiring Minds as well as The Economic Progress Institute, and when asked if he picks up strays, too, he replies, "I do. I got my dog from the Providence Animal Rescue League."

For Minor, there is no separation between his life, his work and his deep sense of humanity.