Byram Hills’ The Hunger Guys Look to Fight Food Insecurity
News Based on facts, either observed and verified directly by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
By Jonathan Notis
After participating in Byram Hills High School’s Global Scholars program, three high school juniors, Billy Gillespie, Marco Scali and Michael Solow, formed The Hunger Guys, a team dedicated to solving food insecurity in Westchester County.
As second-year students in the program, the trio was charged with creating a project to help solve a problem.
“Our assignment was to choose a United Nations Sustainable Development Group and come up with a way to tackle an associated problem. We loved that we were able to choose the problem we wanted to solve,” Solow said.
Solow believes that the program is successful because students are particularly invested in their projects.
“We are studying topics that intrigue us,” he said.
While none of The Hunger Guys have faced food insecurity themselves, they learned that Westchester County has the largest disparity of any county in New York state when it comes to access to food.
“During our research, we found out that there is enough food being created for everyone to get equal amounts, but it’s not being distributed to those in need,” Scali said. “So we found a project where we will be distributing food.”
Creating a pitch video to explain their project, the problem of food insecurity in Westchester and their goals to ameliorate this problem, The Hunger Guys are trying to get the word out about food insecurity. They are hoping to set up a mobile food bank for communities in need throughout the county.
The three students started a GoFundMe and a food drive at Byram Hills High School to help get their program off the ground. Their hope is to eventually partner with a local food pantry, Gillespie said, which would create a strong starting point for a project they’d like to see become sustainable.
In addition to reducing food insecurity, The Hunger Guys want to raise awareness about the importance of getting involved to make the world a better place.
“I hope that we inspire other people in our generation to try to change the world for the better and to take away that stigma that has been created because I think we are capable of much more than we are doing right now,” Scali said.
“We want to be role models,” added Solow. “Our generation is capable of making change and changing the world.”
For more information about The Hunger Guys and their initiative to reduce food insecurity in Westchester County, visit https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kv_g_ZMu2d22nFI7kqqQwm1q9onyBiu9/view.
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