Common Threads

Common Threads has made an incredible impact on the health and cultural awareness of children, families and educators. After the events of the past year, our nation finds itself at a crossroads when it comes to critical issues of health, nutrition security and social justice. 

Despite heightened national interest in addressing concerns of racial equity and nutrition security, communities are seeing a sharp increase in hate crimes and discrimination against minority groups, and the hunger crisis is persisting despite our nation’s overwhelming wealth. We have strong relationships at the local level and can offer community-based solutions.

Common Threads is an especially compelling solution to today's challenges. Our mission emerged following 9/11 to address the discrimination and trauma Arab Americans, Muslims and others faced by having conversations with children and families at the dinner table.

An investment of this scale would allow Common Threads to develop new programs that better address cultural awareness, racial equity and nutrition insecurity within communities of highest need. 

Common Threads provides culturally relevant programming in under-resourced minority communities, and this investment will allow us to deepen our impact. Through collaborative partnerships, we hope to build healthier communities and support populations that have typically left behind.

I co-founded Common Threads at the age of 27 with Chef Art Smith and his husband Jesus Salgueiro after starting my career in public service under U.S. Senator Dick Durbin and working in community development on the south side of Chicago. 

It was while working at the bank that I met Chef Art and Jesus and was captivated by their idea to “heal the world” and educate children and families about cultural diversity through food. They were both on a mission to make a difference after 9/11 and their solution was to bring families impacted by this horrible event together over food and cross-cultural conversations. 

Nearly 20 years later, our goals remain the same: to help strengthen under-resourced communities by offering culturally relevant cooking and nutrition education programming. All of our programming is done through partnerships with schools and nonprofit organizations by design, which allows us to offer tailored solutions that are responsive to the specific needs of that community. 

Discrimination, nutrition insecurity and health inequities remain pervasive concerns within communities of color across the country. Our immediate goals include investing in new programming to target today’s challenges in communities of greatest need.

Common Threads’ cooking and nutrition education programs address two major challenges that have only increased during COVID: improving nutrition insecurity within under-resourced communities and promoting cultural awareness to prevent discrimination. 

Feeding America projected that 45 million people, including 15 million children, may have experienced food insecurity in 2020, and this challenge is only expected to persist. 

COVID has also put a spotlight on conversations around health equity: due to poverty and inadequate access to health care, Black Americans have died from COVID at twice the rate of white Americans. This past year has also seen protests against the killings of several Black men, women and children and a call to end the exponential increase in discrimination and hate crimes leveled at Asian Americans & Pacific Islanders. From the start of the pandemic, more than 3,000 reported incidents of violence and harassment against AAPI people were reported, with many occurring in cities where Common Threads offers programming. For instance, nearly 9 percent (260 people) of AAPI hate crime incidents were in New York City alone (and experts indicate that hate crimes and reports of discrimination are widely underreported for a number of reasons). 

Common Threads can help address today's challenges.

Many peer organizations have emerged in the nutrition education space in the past several years, but Common Threads is unique in that it incorporates diversity & inclusion into our nutrition security curriculum and programming. Food is a terrific vehicle to teach children about nutrition, support core academic learning in English Language Arts and STEM, and encourage cultural appreciation. As our Common Threads’ creed explains, “People all over the world - and even in this room - are different! But we all have things in common: we can work together, learn together, cook together, and then… together we can eat!” 

Given the current climate within the country, Common Threads has a new opportunity to strengthen the cultural diversity component of our lessons with more intentional conversations and lessons and deliver these to some of the largest urban communities across the country.

Common Threads has developed a suite of programs that allows us to offer a customized approach to reaching communities of need. Although we are national in scale, we have maintained our grassroots approach of When we approach community partners or speak with elected officials within a community, we listen to their unique needs and recommend programming that would best help them meet their goals, while also seeking funding that allows us to offer a variety of continuous programming throughout the year to different constituents, including students at all grade levels, parents and educators. Engaging all members of an educational community over a prolonged period of time helps our program have an impact at a deeper level.

Additionally, we have had a strong history of collaborating with organizations on pilot programs to address areas of specific need. We have seen time and time again that food is a terrific entry point for a number of important topics, including cultural diversity, reinforcing core academic skills and health and wellness. We are inspired to help communities in need during this critical time.