Food insecurity is defined as a lack of consistent access to enough food for an active, healthy life. Parts of Bethesda suffered food insecurity at rates up to 16 percent. Since March 2020, this number has increased by more than 35 percent. In 2021, North Bethesda Rotary joined the Nourishing Bethesda coalition to assist with a food delivery program.  Since then, the program has evolved into an appointment-based food distribution system involving more than 300 families in Montgomery County.

Cathy Higgins began volunteering with Nourishing Bethesda in 2021. She currently serves as Nourishing Bethesda’s Volunteer Coordinator, while also working on community partnerships and communications. She retired in 2021 as a Federal Senior Executive with 36 years of service working on national security issues. Cathy and her husband Jim have lived in North Bethesda for over 30 years and have two adult children.

Charles Burrall was raised in upstate New York and graduated from St. Lawrence University in 1976 with a B.A. in English. He lived eight years in Alaska where he worked as a commercial fishing deckhand and ship’s steward in the U.S. Merchant Marine. He is a retired high school English teacher who taught for twenty-five years at Seneca Valley High School in Montgomery County, Maryland.  While in Alaska, Mr. Burrall worked on a freighter that was seized by the Soviet Union and taken captive to Siberia.  He has written a book about the experience.

Before entering his teaching career, he worked at a variety of jobs, including restaurants, construction crews, canneries, and fishing boats. He traveled widely in the United States, Mexico, Europe, and the Middle East before coming to Maryland, where he currently volunteers in the jail ministry of his church, preaching and conducting church services for inmates at the Frederick County Detention Center.