The Civil Wars: Raising Hunger Awareness with Song

Grammy Award winners The Civil Wars are receiving acclaim for their song with Taylor Swift, “Safe and Secure,” for the upcoming Hunger Games film, but many don't know that singing duo scored another film about hunger, the documentary Finding North, about hunger in America. [Stay tuned for my interview with the directors of Finding North, coming out Monday!]

In this interview below, Joy Williams and John Paul White, the artists behind The Civil Wars, talk about how they became involved in this groundbreaking documentary through the guidance of T Bone Burnett, one of the best producers in the music industry. “We could not have been more stoked about it,” John Paul White said.

It’s clear that hunger is an important issue for The Civil Wars. Joy Williams explains the importance of seeing a film like Finding North in order to understand the larger, systemic problems of hunger in America:

Forty-four million people go to bed hungry in America and don’t know where their next meal is coming from, and so [Finding North] highlights food insecurity in the United States, which basically means food deserts where people literally don’t have access to fresh fruits and vegetables. [The film] definitely puts a face to what I would consider an epidemic in the United States.

It’s refreshing to hear Williams talk about hunger so knowledgeably and it’s my hope that their involvement in the documentary will get more people to watch the film, learn about hunger, and begin advocating for poor and hungry people in their communities.

Watch the interview with The Civil Wars below:

Jeannie Choi is associate editor at Bread for the World. Follow her on Twitter at @jeanniechoi.

+Learn how to advocate for poor and hungry people. 

Photo caption: Screenshot from Magnifier video.