Home The Robert D. Ray Iowa SHARES Award 2013 Recipient

2013 Recipient

Lucille Morgan Wilson

Lucille Morgan Wilson, a longtime Iowa hunger advocate and organizer of the Des Moines Area Hunger Hike, received the inaugural Iowa SHARES Award in 2013.

“Lucille has taken her passion for hunger issues and translated that into a huge annual event that has had a tremendous impact on our community, both in terms of raising visibility about hunger and raising money to help local organizations that feed hungry people,” said Amb. Kenneth M. Quinn, President of the World Food Prize Foundation. “We are all grateful for her leadership and dedication.”

Lucille has dedicated countless hours to organizing the Des Moines community around hunger issues, and shining a spotlight on hunger in the Des Moines area and beyond. The Des Moines Area Hunger Hike is “a thousand people hiking for hunger, once a year, to increase community consciousness and concern about local and worldwide hunger and its root causes… (working) to raise funds to be used by non-profit agencies and programs to help alleviate the problem of hunger.”

The Des Moines Area Hunger Hike was started in 1969. Over the past 22 years, over $900,000 has been given to local organizations for food purposes, an average of more than $41,000 per year.

Lucille is also a gifted poet and the editor of the Iowa Poetry Association’s Lyrical Iowa, who wrote the poignant poem “In Any Language” that is read every year at the international World Food Prize Laureate Award Ceremony:

“In Any Language”

In any language hunger is an ugly word

There is no music in hunger

The rumble of empty stomachs

The monotonous whine of a child waste with disease

The moan of the mother whose baby lies bloated and still in her arms

Hunger is the listless den of apathy

Bread of weakness

The faded brown and grey of dead leaves after autumn has ebbed

More information about the Des Moines Area Hunger Hike is available at www.desmoineshungerhike.org.