The Why

Hearts, Hands, and Hope began with a family who never expected to need it themselves.

In 2010, Eric Wilson was let go from his job as part of company cutbacks.  He and his wife Michelle were new to the area, and they had just learned their son had been diagnosed with Autism. Despite being highly educated, the Wilsons found themselves food insecure — unsure where to turn, and too embarrassed to ask. For two years, a neighbor quietly kept them fed, until Eric found stable work again.

They never forgot what that felt like. The fear. The silence. The shame of not knowing where your next meal was coming from, even when you’d done everything “right.”

Michelle saw the same struggle up close again years later, this time as a PTA president — watching how many students in her own community were quietly going hungry, and how little support existed to catch them. That experience, paired with what she and Eric had lived through themselves, became the foundation for Hearts, Hands, and Hope.

In 2016, they founded Hearts, Hands, and Hope with a simple but stubborn belief: no family should have to face food insecurity alone, and no child should have to choose between eating and everything else. What started as a summer food bag drive has grown into a Three Phase Program that doesn’t just feed families in the moment — it builds the pathways to healthcare careers and stable employment that keep them fed for good.

Today, Hearts, Hands, and Hope has distributed more than 3.4 million meals and helped 350 families move from food insecurity to lasting stability. But the mission hasn’t changed since the day it started: turn one family’s hardest season into another family’s hope.