And every single one of them, he told me, ran a program with one simple purpose: to make certain that no child who came through its doors for care ever went hungry while there.

I stared at him, this successful man in his beautiful suit, and I could hardly take it in.

“Because I bought you lunch?” I said.

He shook his head, slowly.

“No,” he said.

“Because you made a hungry little boy believe that kindness was a real thing that existed in the world.

Do you understand what that is worth, to a child who has started to doubt it?

You didn’t just feed me, Frances.