Addressing the Interlinkages of Persistent Social Problems: Food for Change as Social Entrepreneurship

This chapter explores Food for Change, a social entrepreneurial program created by the Houston Food Bank. Food for Change explicitly considers the interlinkages of social problems within an individual. Food for Change collaborates with educational and training organizations and healthcare providers to use supplemental food resources to address clients' needs antecedent to food insecurity. We propose a model to conceptualize how food insecurity is influenced by multiple levels of social determinants. We then describe the Food for Change program and offer lessons about the holistic nature of clients, the productivity and challenges of interorganizational collaborations to address the roots of social problems, and the forethought and courage of organizational leadership to try to create self-sufficient clients who might become liberated from their services.