Tag: WHES

Remembering Pat Kutzner, Founder of Hunger Notes

July 5, 2026   This publication, Hunger Notes, is produced by World Hunger Education Service (an independent, volunteer, non-profit) and both were created a half century ago by the force of will of Patricia (Pat) Kutzner (1930-2015) to fill a gap in public education about international and domestic hunger issues.  Today, 50 years later, the organization remains defined by her original vision, writing, editing, leadership, dedication, perseverance, and inspiration of others.

Origins:  In 1975, soon after moving to Washington, DC, Pat wrote a “Hunger Workshop Notes” report, on her  Smith·-Corona portable typewriter while sitting on the floor of the non-air-conditioned room at Trinity College near Catholic University.  At that time, Pat was asked to be the Episcopal Hunger Network’s liaison on the Interreligious Taskforce on U.S. Food Policy.  Soon thereafter she founded the World Hunger Education Service in April 1976.  She saw the need for an information clearinghouse and networking center.  Barbara Howell, Bread for the World’s domestic hunger specialist, and Bob Cory, director of William Penn House, the Quaker Center on Capitol Hill, were Pat’s co-founders of World Hunger Education Service.  In July 1976 WHES began routine publication and circulation of Hunger Notes in hard copy form to the wider public by subscription, while continuing to provide it under contract with the Episcopal Church Center in New York City for special distribution to the Episcopal Hunger Network.

“Hunger is not caused by a lack of food, but by a lack of power, justice, and knowledge. ” – Pat Kutzner

She was a member of the U.S. Delegation to the 1979 FAO World Conference on Agrarian Reform, where she pushed the delegation to keep the focus on poor and hungry people rather than bureaucratic process. Colleagues recalled her insistence on “the real human dimensions” of development.

PAT’s JOURNEY

Patricia Lou Kutzner was born January 27, 1930 in Billings, Montana, to Clyde Mondelle Kutzner and Nelle Pearson. Her upbringing in rural Montana instilled a lifelong affinity for rural communities, self-reliance, and service.

Pat’s life incorporated deep commitments to scholarship, service and the life of the Spirit.  She earned a BA from the University of California Berkeley in 1952 and a secondary education credential (1953). After spending a year in Bad Godesberg, Germany (1957-58), she earned an MA at Stanford University in German Studies in 1962 and a Ph.D. in German Studies in 1972.   During the 1960s she served as acting director of the Bridge Mountain Foundation, an “educational community” exploring mindfulness, human connection, and meaningful living.  She also served as manager of the Santa Clara Symphony Orchestra where she was involved an amateur violinist.

She moved to New York City to work on development education with the  National Program of the Episcopal and United Methodist Churches.  She realized that she was needed in Washington, DC, the center of policy, where she focused education to:

♥   humanize policy debates
♥   empower citizens with knowledge
♥   connect domestic and global hunger issues
♥   challenge structural injustice

When founding WHES, Pat was inspired by Art Simon and Bread for the World.

Former Board Chair Dan Shaughnessy remembers how “Patricia Kutzner was intensely devoted to the elimination of hunger. Her efforts were a prime example of the importance of advocacy for an essential cause.”  Dan further remembers:  “In those early years of WHES (1976 – 78) I was Associate Coordinator for Food for Peace at AID, and we would see each other at meetings, gatherings, etc. Then, in 1979, I was appointed by President Carter as the Executive Director of the Presidential Commission on World Hunger, and Pat asked me if the Commission could fund the second edition of Who’s Who in Hunger. I agreed and the Commission funded that edition in late 1979.”

In 1985 Pat traveled to Nairobi as part of a Quaker delegation observing the UN conference ending the Decade for Women.  Antonio Gayoso of the WHES board recalled how she constantly reminded government officials that “the objective of development assistance was to improve the lot of common people, who were usually powerless and often hungry.”  Antonio also remembered:  “We saw her eating plain bread when others had sandwiches. We knew she frequently did not have train fare to return home… Where others frequently jaded as time passed, Pat always kept the vigor and idealism of someone eternally young at heart”.

A chronology of Pat Kutzner’s role with WHES is catalogued by former editor, Lane Vanderslice, in this article.

AFTER WHES

After 20 years, Pat retired from WHES in 1996.  Since Pat’s retirement, the organization was led by Lane Vanderslice (editor) and board chairs Tom Zopf, Dan Shaughnessy, Margie Ferris Morris, and Peter Morris.

After traveling to New Mexico to participate in the FWCC Triennial Conference at Ghost Ranch in Abiquiú, she took some time to walk about and found her way to the Navajo Nation.  After retiring in 1996, Kutzner relocated to New Mexico, where she worked as a planner and trainer for the Torreon/Star Lake Navajo Chapter. She helped establish a local thrift store, the Eastern Navajo Arts and Crafts Festival, and erosion control and water conservation projects led by Navajo youth.

She settled in Cuba, New Mexico, where she would spend the rest of her life with her sheep, dogs and cats.  Pat spent 20 years building up the local Torreon/Star Lake  Chapter and the Navajo people of Eastern Navajo Agency. Pat served as the first Executive Director of the Torreon Community Alliance.  She taught adult education classes through the Crownpoint Institute of Technology (now Navajo Technical University). She assisted in the establishment of a community organization which evolved into an NM-chartered non-profit corporation to house community development efforts initiated by Torreon community members.

Patricia Kutzner passed away on December 8, 2015, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, at the age of 85.  Her memorial minute noted that “in living and in dying, Pat Kutzner’s life exemplified the path of enlightenment through selfless service.”

Further reading:

https://www.worldhunger.org/pat_kutzner_in_memoriam/ 

In Memoriam: Pat Kutzner, World Hunger Education Service Founder

Roundtable: The Future of America’s Aid for Basic Education of Children

May 14, 2026     The Future of American Foreign Assistance for Basic Education was a roundtable held on June 12, 2025 among some forty-eight international education experts convened together over Zoom by the Global Coalition for Education-US, the Basic Education Coalition, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, George Washington University, and the World Hunger Education Service (WHES) – the publisher of Hunger Notes.

It sought to chart a path forward for America’s assistance to child education in lower and middle income countries.

It was held in the context of a major disruption to America’s ongoing support to basic education around the world.  The US had been the world’s largest bilateral donor for basic education, annually reaching over 34 million learners, training 2.9 million teachers, and distributing 174 million textbooks. Programs covered early grade reading, education in emergencies, disability inclusion, and teacher capacity building across more than 50 countries.  The abrupt termination in early 2025 of 163 of 165 USAID education programs decimated implementing organizations, cost nearly 20,000 American jobs, and prompted parallel cuts by other donors including the UK.

US comparative advantages in supporting basic education:  Participants identified early grade reading expertise, global field presence, strong higher education networks, convening power, catalytic leverage of donor funds, and leadership in evidence generation and Universal Design for Learning (UDL) as areas where the US stands apart.

Key recommendations for future aid looking ahead 5-10 years:

  • Embed basic education within the restructured U.S. State Department programming for aid
  • Shift further toward locally-led, government-owned programs rather than parallel systems
  • Break down sectoral funding silos to enable whole-of-child approaches linking education, nutrition, and health
  • Expand the timelines of individual programs to ten years to allow systemic change
  • Invest in AI and technology while ensuring equity and accessibility
  • Preserve and publicly catalog institutional knowledge at risk of being lost.
  • Restore funding for education to FY2024 levels and comply with the Congressional READ Act

Participants agreed a follow-on roundtable should include voices from recipient-country governments and local organizations to complete the picture.  In the meantime, the sponsors have been conducting additional research, field interviews with local educational organizations, and planning additional publications.

Download the summary report here.

 

WHES Loses a Key Board Member

LINDA CRANDALL WORTHINGTON

1932-2019

 

Linda Crandall Worthington, 87, of Chevy Chase, MD, passed away on Sunday, October 20, 2019.

Over her lifetime, Linda was involved with a number of organization that serve the poor and hungry, including the World Hunger Education Service. Information about Linda has been drawn from her own Bio on our website.

Linda’s relationship with the World Hunger Education Service started at the beginning of WHES. In the 1970s, she worked with the founder of WHES, Pat Kutzner, on hunger seminars and publications, including editing several of the earliest print issues of Hunger Notes. She became a member of the Board of Directors in the mid-1990s and served as a Board member until 2017, and Emeritus thereafter. She was Board Secretary for most of that time. She edited and contributed articles for Hunger Notes. Her experience in a variety of situations where hunger was important, her experience in editing and publishing, her warmth and collegiality, and her ability to see a way forward for a small organization, played a major role in WHES’ existence and development over the years.

Most of the positions Linda held over the years have dealt with hunger and poverty in one form or fashion. These included:

In the 1990’s:

  • As senior editor for the now defunct DIVERSITY magazine, a publication on biodiversity that dealt a lot with agricultural research.
  • Co-director of the International Voluntary Services, an overseas development organization that placed volunteers in other countries.
  • Administrator for a small advocacy group called the Campaign to Oppose the Return of the Khmer Rouge (CORKR).

During the 1970s, Linda worked for the Center for Science in the Public Interest. One of her most notable efforts was organizing and holding a seminar on Capitol Hill to look at food and hunger issues, based on the book, Food First, by Frances Moore Lappe. The conference included several congressmen as well as other prominent speakers on various aspects of the issue.

For 14 years, Linda lived overseas as a foreign service wife, in Vietnam from 1962-1965, then in Thailand for eight years. She later found out Dan Shaughnessy, a former WHES Board Chair, was also in Vietnam at that same time. She was also Dakar, Senegal, with her husband and remained there until his death in 1981.

For the past twenty years, Linda had been a writer/editor for the United Methodist Church’s Baltimore-Washington regional office and wrote stories and articles for the bimonthly newspaper, the UMConnection, for the Web site, and was editor and writer of the weekly e-connection.

Linda was employed occasionally as an editor and did several projects one place or another.

  • In Senegal she worked as the administrative assistant and coordinator for a large multi-country nutrition project that brought together officials from several francophone countries to talk about “nutrition planning.”
  • She researched and wrote on the effects of the sale of Nestle products on poor people. Her work took her into the worst slums of Bangkok to interview women.

Linda had received her B.S. in Social Work and English from Kalamazoo College, and her M.A. in Theology from Wesley Theological Seminary. Linda started more graduate work at Michigan State in Anthropology and Sociology but went overseas before writing the dissertation.

She is the mother of four grown children. Linda was an active member of a United Methodist Church, held membership in the United Methodist Association of Communicators and the Religious Communicators Association and was vice president of the International Voluntary Services Alumni Association. In  2019 she was awarded the Harry Denman Award for Evangelism.

Linda traveled to more than 35 countries in five continents, many of which were work missions. Some of Linda’s leisure time was spent as a member of a league of duckpin bowlers.

Linda’s contributions to World Hunger Education Service were innumerable and will she will be dearly missed by those who worked with her at World Hunger Education Service, as well as many other who are working to address hunger and poverty.

A link to Linda’s obituary may be found here.