CCC Board Chair Jessica Nichols shares her story

For Jessica Nichols, the mission of Columbia Community Care isn’t just about feeding families—it’s about giving back to her younger self. Growing up in rural Texas with a single mother, Nichols remembers the feeling of going to bed hungry.

“My mom did everything she was supposed to do, and we still struggled,” she said. Her mother earned her bachelor’s degree while raising two daughters and worked full-time as a nurse, yet the family was never able to achieve financial security.

“We had way more week left than we had money,” Nichols recalls. “Paydays were great because we had food, but somewhere around five or six days before the next pay period, we didn’t have any.” She referred to that time as being “peanut butter poor”—taking spoonfuls of peanut butter before school and before bed when other food ran out.

Living behind a grocery store made the situation feel even more unfair to Nichols. “We had no food, but there were all of these places that had it in abundance,” she said. Nichols said she would befriend delivery people and convince them to give her cases of snacks. She would then sell those to friends so her family could buy groceries.

When her colleague and friend, Erika Chavarria, asked for help collecting and delivering meals for students during the pandemic, Nichols immediately volunteered. “I knew from my background what that meant—going through summers hungry, trying to play at people’s houses around dinner time so I would get invited to stay for a meal. I knew I didn’t want a single student or family to go through that as long as I had breath in my body.”

Later, when Chavarria founded Columbia Community Care, Nichols was more than ready to serve as Board Chair. She points to sobering statistics: approximately 29% of Maryland households are ALICE (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed)—families who earn too much to qualify for assistance but struggle to meet basic needs.

“In this great country, in one of the richest counties, no one should ever have to live the way I lived,” Nichols stressed. “There were no heroes that could see that I was hungry or my sister was hungry, and there was no place for us to go for help. My mom was employed—she got paid too much money for assistance programs—but we needed help.”

Through Columbia Community Care, Nichols works to be the help she wishes her family had. Beyond providing food assistance, the organization actively bridges gaps in the community and creates opportunities for families. For Nichols, every contribution to CCC represents a chance to ensure fewer children go to bed hungry, as she once did.