Book Overview
25 years ago, a young woman named Claudia dragged her fiancé Robert Egger, a cocky, profane nightclub manager, out for an evening of volunteer work feeding homeless men and women on streets of Washington, DC. The effort, while well-intentioned, galled Robert. It was inefficient, ineffective, and more meaningful to the people serving meals than those receiving them. He vowed to come up with something better.
Egger named his gritty, front-line nonprofit DC Central Kitchen. DCCK turned the tired responses to hunger and poverty upside down, relying on leftover food and jobless adults to prepare and deliver meals across the city. Most importantly, it trained DC’s homeless and hungry for culinary careers, empowering them to trade drugs, crime, and dependency for decent jobs. A quarter-century later, Egger’s invention is a national model. The Kitchen trains and finds work for people written off as lost causes, brings healthy food to impoverished communities, and develops thriving social enterprises. But it remains as irreverent, innovative, and imperfect as its founder.
This retrospective goes beyond the simplistic moralizing deployed by most nonprofits and those who write about them, interviewing dozens of DC Central Kitchen leaders, staff, clients, and stakeholders from the past two and a half decades. The Kitchen family is a loving and dysfunctional one, its story jammed with heroes and egos, visionaries and villains, addicts and ex-cons. The Food Fighters captures the personal and organizational struggles of DC Central Kitchen, offering new insights about what doing good really means, and what we expect of those who do it.
About the Author
Alexander Justice Moore is an experienced nonprofit development professional and a recovering academic. This is his first book. His writing has appeared in a variety of publications, where it has sometimes been read by actual people. Moore holds an M.A. from Georgetown University and lives in Washington, DC with his beautiful wife and obese cat. He can be reached at [email protected].
Buy the Book
The Food Fighters can be ordered online here.
25 years ago, a young woman named Claudia dragged her fiancé Robert Egger, a cocky, profane nightclub manager, out for an evening of volunteer work feeding homeless men and women on streets of Washington, DC. The effort, while well-intentioned, galled Robert. It was inefficient, ineffective, and more meaningful to the people serving meals than those receiving them. He vowed to come up with something better.
Egger named his gritty, front-line nonprofit DC Central Kitchen. DCCK turned the tired responses to hunger and poverty upside down, relying on leftover food and jobless adults to prepare and deliver meals across the city. Most importantly, it trained DC’s homeless and hungry for culinary careers, empowering them to trade drugs, crime, and dependency for decent jobs. A quarter-century later, Egger’s invention is a national model. The Kitchen trains and finds work for people written off as lost causes, brings healthy food to impoverished communities, and develops thriving social enterprises. But it remains as irreverent, innovative, and imperfect as its founder.
This retrospective goes beyond the simplistic moralizing deployed by most nonprofits and those who write about them, interviewing dozens of DC Central Kitchen leaders, staff, clients, and stakeholders from the past two and a half decades. The Kitchen family is a loving and dysfunctional one, its story jammed with heroes and egos, visionaries and villains, addicts and ex-cons. The Food Fighters captures the personal and organizational struggles of DC Central Kitchen, offering new insights about what doing good really means, and what we expect of those who do it.
About the Author
Alexander Justice Moore is an experienced nonprofit development professional and a recovering academic. This is his first book. His writing has appeared in a variety of publications, where it has sometimes been read by actual people. Moore holds an M.A. from Georgetown University and lives in Washington, DC with his beautiful wife and obese cat. He can be reached at [email protected].
Buy the Book
The Food Fighters can be ordered online here.