When Nate Springer, the retired Army colonel who is now head of the Care and Share Food Bank in Colorado Springs, attended the opening ceremony for a new American-led water project in Afghanistan in 2007, he was approached by an elder named Mohammed Ayoub.

Ayoub let Springer have it. He said the new water pipe bypassed his village, Shali Kot, and now threatened his village’s own water supply. He informed a surprised Springer this was insulting and unfair, according to an account of the incident in the book “The Outpost” by Jake Tapper.

Springer’s interpreter could barely keep up with the tirade, which Ayoub concluded by calling Springer an infidel, one of the worst insults possible in that part of the world. The head of the district, a behemoth of a man named Shamsur Rahman, then stepped in and slapped Ayoub several times for the disrespect he had shown Springer, ending the ceremony.

Springer, who had just taken over for an earlier team that built the project, didn’t take it personally. He responded by making sure additional funds were budgeted to include Shali Kot in the pipe scheme.

Springer has taken that same pragmatic, put-politics-aside-and-just-get-things-done approach to addressing what he says is the worst hunger problem he has seen in Colorado since he started his new deployment with Care and Share.

Care and Share is part of Feeding America, which is both the largest nonprofit and the largest hunger relief organization in America. “If our partner agencies were doing this interview, they would tell you they are seeing more people, more neighbors in their lines than they’ve ever seen in their history, and that started before the government shutdown,” Springer told me.

“When you think of people who are blessed and have 401(k)s and have really done great in the stock market in the last five or 10 years, they don’t feel it as much. And for those that don’t, when you think of the things that have really shot up in price, it’s the day-to-day living expenses over the last five years. It’s been the groceries, the rent, utilities, gas in your car, all those things have really gone up. And so it’s become harder for people that were living paycheck to paycheck to start.”

And then at the beginning of 2025, all the federal nutrition programs that food banks like Care and Share rely on for the best bang for the buck cut their inventory. For Feeding America, it’s meant 12%-15% less food.

Care and Share itself projects to be 3 million pounds short this year, because less food is available from the federal Emergency Food Assistance Program that it relies on.

“And then we get to the government shutdown, so this becomes death by a thousand cuts,” Springer notes.

“The people we see, these are people with full-time jobs and they’re still not making it.”

Before his move to the private sector five years ago, Springer was garrison commander of Fort Carson, where he specialized in strategic and operational planning and led a team of more than 1,500 civilian employees. He has three master’s degrees in security studies, military history and strategic studies.

He brings that same management and logistics acumen to distributing food to a network of 278 partner food pantries, soup kitchens and emergency shelters over 47,000 square miles in 29 counties across southern Colorado.

Approximately 284,562 people receive food from Care and Share and its partners and programs each month.

When the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program was frozen between Nov. 1 and Nov. 13, Care and Share suddenly went from the safety net to the primary program. “Not paying SNAP benefits, ending the nation’s No. 1 nutrition program, that was a first,” bemoans Springer.

For every meal that Feeding America can send out through its feeding centers across the United States, the SNAP program does nine, Springer told me. So there’s no way for food banks to bridge that entire gap.

Southern Colorado, which includes five military bases and the prison system down in Penrose, also accounted for 19,000 of Colorado’s 44,000 civilian federal employees who lost their paychecks during the shutdown. Care and Share began to feed many of those workers, as well.

Care and Share has also added two mobile markets, which are mobile grocery stores that Springer is sending out to rural areas in southern Colorado, which are among the hardest hit.

“I’ve really been trying to expand to places like Baca County that only has two or three food pantries that they support. For me, it’s a lot more impactful to use those mobile markets as our scalpel for food deserts.”

Springer, ever the pragmatic, is also seeing a silver lining this fall.

“So now let’s get to the really fun part,” he says midway through our interview. “There’s always something good that comes with something challenging.”

The silver lining has been an unbelievable outpouring of support from the community.

“Lately, I’ve seen the same outpouring of love and support that we normally do between Thanksgiving and Christmas when everyone’s in the giving spirit. That’s happened all through the government shutdown to present day. From individual donors to businesses to foundations all over the state.”

“The phones have been ringing off the hook from businesses saying, ‘Hey, we know you need help. We can do more. What do you need?’ And then individual donors. How many men and women have called and said, ‘Hey, I donate $100 or $50 a month to Care and Share, we want to double our donation.”

The last three months have just been a flood of volunteers, he said. “I’m standing out in our parking lot right now and people are looking for parking spaces. We’re having a hard time finding volunteer opportunities because so many people want to come make a difference.”

El Pomar Foundation activated its Colorado Assistance Fund in November to give $1.5 million to food banks, including Care and Share. Gov. Jared Polis stepped up and released $10 million in state funds to help food banks, including Care and Share.

“I’ve lived all over the world, being a formal military person for a few decades,” Springer said, “and I don’t think this is synonymous with most places.”  

This is America’s superpower, if you ask me. We don’t expect the government to take care of everything. When we need to we come together as a community, we don’t dally over our different ideologies, we organize ourselves for the greater good. Springer puts it this way: Once you put yourself in service to other people, you can’t turn off service.

“People say, ‘How can you go from being in the Army to running a nonprofit?’” Springer said. “Believe it or not, the similarities are there, with serving others and having a purpose that’s bigger than self. All those things are kind of fundamentally the same.”

Care and Share has 60 employees and about 4,400 unduplicated volunteers. “These are people who are here because they want to help others. It’s just a really strong team of people who really care about people.”

Springer said his deployments are really what pushed him into the food bank business. “Whether it was a combat deployment or a peacekeeping deployment, every place I was deployed, there was always just this horrible poverty. Food insecurity at a rate that is probably not imaginable to most people in our country. It’s always been an undercurrent of my previous career.

“And then what I love about the military is it’s so much service over self, and I think that’s really hard to find, and we have that in spades here.”

The logistics experience doesn’t hurt, either.

“When you would deploy a unit in combat, you were responsible for everything it does. Trying to make sure your organization is sustained for a year, wherever you are, in Iraq or Afghanistan, that’s the most important part of it. Yeah, so the logistic thing is helpful.”

And so far, there have been no dressing-downs or slaps in the face in Southern Colorado in this season of need. More like a coming together of entire communities to give a hand up to those who need a hold-me-over.

“This is a pretty special community,” the colonel concludes.

“I think that once people see that they need to step up because people to their left and right, their neighbors, are hurting … boy, we live in a neat place.”

To donate: You can give to Care and Share by donating to The Gazette’s Empty Stocking Fund, which partners with the food bank. Go to: ///https://emptystockingfundco.org/Donations/donate/