In 1983 a group of people in the San Diego area created SHARE as a self-help approach to meeting the food needs in their community. Like many good ideas, it was the combined efforts of the group that brought all the elements together and made the idea a reality. Carl Shelton, a Catholic Deacon was called to serve the hungry in the United States. Lee Stuart, Peter Meisen, Carrol and Kelly Strain, Rosemary Bolton and I were members of a local Hunger Project Committee, studying a program in Los Angeles that was very similar to the SHARE program of today. At a community gathering, Deacon Shelton met Lee Stuart and within months the Self Help and Resource Exchange was in operation.
The members of the founding group brought diverse perspectives and skills to the task of creating SHARE. Shelton combined a strong business background with a deep spiritual call to service. Stuart brought discipline and a systems approach to development in keeping with her scientific training. Meisen had prior experience with event planning. Strain offered a “no-matter-what-this-will-happen” attitude. I was the people connector, bringing a network of volunteers and the ability to organize them. The common thread weaving our group into a team was our commitment to create something to deal with hunger beyond the existing traditional emergency programs. We knew more was needed. We were bold enough to innovate, make promises and mistakes.
Another key figure in the start-up of SHARE was Bishop Leo T. Maher. His vision and support provided the thrust necessary to get SHARE off the drawing board and into action. The San Diego Catholic Diocese, through Fr. Joe Carroll of the St. Vincent de Paul Center, provided the funding and corporate umbrella for SHARE- San Diego, the first SHARE affiliate.
From the very beginning, nurturing volunteerism was central to SHARE’s approach. The program is driven by the efforts of volunteers and all participants are asked to give two hours of their time each month to some form of community service. This volunteer time is an essential part of the resource exchange that makes SHARE different from a social service type of organization.
The first distribution was over 7,000 food packages! We distributed the food off the backs of semi-trailers in the parking lot of San Diego’s Jack Murphy Stadium. We had almost no paid staff. We had no permanent facilities or equipment. Everything we had and did was dependent upon community members becoming involved in the project.
So we rallied the Teamsters Union, churches of all denominations, businesses, and local elected officials. We captured the attention of the media and the imagination of hundreds of volunteers who worked miracles to make that first distribution a success. It took us all day to distribute the food. After the last truck was loaded the core team gathered to talk about the day, to try to share what we’d learned.
That meeting was like going to church. As we went around the circle and shared our impressions, I began to understand that SHARE had much greater potential than the distribution of food. I gained tremendous insight into what it means to be human, to work in solidarity for the benefit of the community, to be a part of a family with members I will never meet. It was a celebration of the spirit.
That spirit lives on in SHARE. We sense it, try to talk about it and find it imbedded in the work itself. It is not so much a product, like the food, but an attitude. Knowing this spirit, understanding it and creating an environment for its expression is the ongoing work of SHARE
When I think back to those first days I’m struck by the thought, “If we’d had any idea how big SHARE would become, we may never have had the courage to go forward.” At the time our focus was on San Diego and nearby Imperial County, with a small outreach effort to a few Catholic parishes in Tijuana. Our vision was to serve our local community, our neighbors. As the word spread about SHARE, we began to hear from people in other states who wanted SHARE in their community too. The beginning of the SHARE Network began by word of mouth. Now SHARE is available in many areas of the United States. World SHARE expanded to operate in Guatemala and works with self-help programs in Mexico too.
In 1984 SHARE came to Wisconsin, again with seed money and leadership from the St. Vincent de Paul Society. Deacon Don Borkowski was the founding Executive Director, serving the organization until his retirement in 1995. The program had modest beginnings, working from borrowed facilities with a skeleton staff. Borkowski and his dedicated team built the program into a model for the country, serving thousands of families each month in Wisconsin, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and part of northern Illinois.
In a way, every time a new host organization comes into the program it is like the founding of SHARE all over again—people coming together to see what’s possible to make a difference for themselves and their neighbors. That vision is what SHARE’s been about from the very beginning, and continues to empower the organization today.