Founded in 2003, Sindhura Citineni - a student at UNC-Chapel Hill - was sitting in the library studying and stressed. She discovered an online map visualizing the frequency of childhood deaths related to malnutrition (a small dot on a globe would blink every three seconds). In that moment, Sindhura resolved to do something. She founded Hunger Lunch, which operated on a weekly basis to provide a lunch plate of rice, beans, and cornbread to the campus community and donated the proceeds to a nonprofit in Hyderabad, India. The students traveled to the community and worked alongside nonprofit staff on a summer “project” funded by the group’s proceeds.

Three years later - in 2006 - the students involved in Hunger Lunch incorporated as a nonprofit called Nourish International. Soon after, additional chapters joined the network, first in North Carolina, then other states. The mission was to “empower students to engage communities to make a lasting impact on extreme poverty.” In this model, the students creatively raised money in their campus community, granted that money to partner NGOs abroad, and traveled to the partner NGO’s community to participate in the project.

There were three primary aspects to the mission: students, ventures, and partnerships. Student leadership, social entrepreneurship, and community-based development were part of a three-pronged approach to impacting extreme poverty.

Today, Nourish continues to thrive with the focus on student development, entrepreneurship and local community partnerships.