About the author, John Arnold

Since 1989, John Arnold has been Executive Director of Second Harvest Gleaners Food Bank of West Michigan, which provides 1,150 charity agencies in 40 Michigan counties with about 68,000 pounds of food per day.

In 1994, John initiated and coordinated the Waste Not Want Not Project, a research collaboration between his food bank and Michigan State University to determine how communities can adequately address hunger. Several years later, the food bank launched its widely copied mobile food pantry program. John's handbook, "Charity Food Programs That Can End Hunger In America" and Web site, endhungerinamerica.org, is the food bank's blueprint for ending hunger and is one of the results of the Waste Not Want Not Project Research. The research won the International City/County Management Association "Award for Programs for the Disadvantaged."

Previously, John was the Founding Executive Director of the Central Illinois Foodbank in 1982-83. Later, he was recruited by The Salvation Army to develop hunger analyses and solutions, where John wrote the first nationally circulated how-to-start-and-run-a-food-pantry handbook, "Give Me Your Hungry," which was published by The Salvation Army in 1984.

In 1984-87 John directed the St. Louis Area Food Bank and in 1987-89 he served as the America's Second Harvest National Food Bank Network's first Director of Network Services and was in charge of training and inspecting food banks nationwide.

Before earning a bachelor of science degree from William James College in Allendale, Mich., John enlisted in the Marine Corps at age 17 and served in Vietnam where he found many opportunities to reduce the bloodshed and to comfort those who needed it. As a result of his soldier-as-peacemaker role, his unit, the 5th Marine Regiment, simultaneously awarded him a Regimental Commendation and the Navy Achievement Medal. He was also named a co-recipient of the War Resisters League's Annual Peace Award for his work in Vietnam in 1970.

After the war, John was legislative paralegal for Illinois' Legal Aid Programs in Springfield, Ill.

While in high school, he was a page in the Michigan House of Representatives and rode a bicycle across Europe.

John lives with his family in Grand Rapids, Mich.