The issue is hunger. Or, as the federal government now says, food insecurity. The term refers to people who may have access to pasta and bread, but not fruits, vegetables and protein.

Murray is executive director of Three Square, a group that aims to tap into the purchasing power of Las Vegas' casinos to create a food system unlike any other in the country.

The organization's vision has attracted about 100 high-profile executives and chefs so far. Board members include Bill Boyd of Boyd Gaming and George Smith of Bank of America of Nevada.

Murray has experience in garnering support. She was national campaign director of the Andre Agassi Charitable Foundation for five years, and 12 years ago she co-founded the I Have A Dream Foundation, which promotes education in low-income communities.

It will be two years before a full-fledged Three Square food preparation facility is opened. But there is plenty to study, learn and build until then.

Julie Murray talks with In Business Las Vegas about those goals.

Is hunger a significant problem in Las Vegas?

So many people, myself included, did not know how great the need was. Two years ago when Mr. (Eric) Hilton (son of hotelier Conrad Hilton) saw that a nonprofit agency was closing down because they lacked funding he had his foundation in Los Angeles, the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, fund a two-year study to determine what the need for hunger was.

Does Eric Hilton live here?

He moved here. He wants to make Three Square his legacy. The Hilton Foundation then commissioned a two-year study to determine if there's a need to feed the hungry, if there's recovered food, if there's waste in the hotels. What happened with that two-year study is they showed of the approximately 150 nonprofit agencies serving 4 million meals per year, that was only meeting 43 percent of the demand.

Mr. Hilton is a very passionate and caring individual, so it just broke his heart to see that need in writing. The Hilton Foundation is very strategic and before they will fund anything with magnitude they study the issue.

Once they saw (the results) they chatted with Mr. Hilton and said: "Yes, we know Las Vegas is your hometown. We support you moving ahead."

He was very saddened to know that 57 percent of the people who are hungry are not getting food. It gave him so much energy and passion to take it to the next step. The next step, since the study was finalized, was he went ahead and worked with Punam Mathur (senior vice president of corporate diversity and communications) from MGM Mirage and a number of people to launch what is now called Three Square.

The goal of Three Square is to eradicate hunger in the valley. We'll do that by having one central campus to collect the food donations and also to distribute to all the nonprofits in the community who are serving foods of any type: frozen, hot meals, packaged meals. It will make our community operate in a much more efficient manner rather than have some nonprofits have food and others not.

Tell me about your background. Why are you involved in this and interested in it?

I've been in Las Vegas all of my life and I've focused all my life on at-risk youth. I never understood there was a hunger challenge here.

I think timing has a lot to do with it. When I first met Mr. Hilton, and I've known Punam Mathur for 20 years, when we all started talking about the topic of hunger it took my breath away and it made me so sad to think about, especially children because they're the special spot in my heart.

I couldn't believe in Las Vegas where we all live - this healthy, vibrant economy - it broke my heart to think of how many people were struggling just to get food. I felt with the dynamics and the passion, I saw how it grew. It was so exciting to think we could pull together to effect change.

What's interesting is when the Three Square trucks pulls in, there's often a student or a researcher. We're delivering people who care.

Our next focus on volunteerism, now that we have the board of directors and the board of trustees and the culinarians, is the youth population.

I recently met someone who came to one of our informational meetings. She's a 22 year old and she said I didn't really care before, I was in my own world. When I saw what was going on she said I want to help lead a youth involvement to help them volunteer or just give a dollar. We want this to be the entry point whether you're young or older.

Who collects food now?

Those nonprofits who are really good at fundraising and soliciting recovered food are getting a majority of the food. A lot of grocery stores will give them their day-old bread or their pasta or food that's about to expire.

Right now it's reactive. There's no ability to be proactive and say: OK, I'm going to have my meal be completely nutritionally based with the meat and a vegetable and a fruit and completely (Recommended Dietary Allowance) balanced. Currently the nonprofits are just utilizing whatever they can get, and they're so grateful for that.

Which organizations are good at fundraising and getting recovered food?

The Las Vegas Rescue Mission, the Salvation Army and Catholic Charities. Since those are the three largest and they have the biggest presence in the community, they tend to be the best at getting food from food vendors like Sysco Foods or U.S. Foodservice or Smith's or Albertsons.

When do you expect things to start running at Three Square?

On March 5 we began our proof of concept. Since we don't have a facility right now, while we're designing and beginning to build the facility we knew we needed to study the issue even further.

We contracted with Nevada Partners Culinary Training Academy to produce food for five nonprofit agencies. (The Las Vegas Rescue Mission, Salvation Army, Center for Independent Living, assisted living facility Silver Sky and addiction recovery agency WestCare.)

On March 5 a truck rolled out the door and it delivered food to the five nonprofit agencies. We're currently serving between 3,000 to 5,000 meals per month now.

This is a pilot project?

Exactly. We intend to study: Is it best to serve hot food, cold food, frozen food, boxed food? What is it that the agencies need? The agencies are our customers.

These agencies you're working with right now - are they places where people can come in and eat a meal?

Exactly. Three Square will never have a facility for people off the street just to walk in and receive a meal. Our complete existence is to provide food for the nonprofit agencies who are serving them because they're doing a great job.

What will happen is the food we serve will be delivered to the nonprofit agency, and that's where people are eating the meals.

It could be anyone like AFAN (Aid for AIDS of Nevada) or the Rescue Mission that's helping alcoholics and drug addicts so they can be more productive. It's delivering the meals to all the agencies that are working so hard on whatever their core mission is, but on top of that they have to serve food.

Tell me about the administration of Three Square. How many people are going to work at that level?

Right now we are very volunteer-intense. There are approximately 100 people involved with Three Square since we started on Sept. 1. There are about five paid individuals. But the majority of the people who are really helping are doing this in a voluntary role.

I asked one of the people on the culinary team why she would give so much time and energy - she's the executive sous chef from Mandalay Bay - she said that in Las Vegas we serve about 30 million meals to the tourists, and to do something that's uplifting and to effect change in a major way moves her.

We have some of the top executive chefs and food-and-beverage vice presidents. They say the same thing: It's a way for them after their full day of work to do something so uplifting and so rewarding.

How long is the pilot program going to last?

We believe it will last through the time when we actually open the doors to the new facility. In the first year we'll focus on food, whether it should be frozen or heated or in a box or a bag or a backpack.

Then the second year we'll focus on other elements to be able to ramp up to the point where we open the doors. The system should be really well organized.

I know you've been in touch with the people in Chicago. Why not just adopt whatever they do?

What's interesting is Las Vegas is such a unique city. That I believe is the biggest reason making this come together.

Las Vegas has that can-do spirit. If something needs to be done there's so much energy and spark in the city. What makes this unique here and what we want to capitalize on is there's no place like Las Vegas, with the hospitality industry and all the chefs and the culinarians and the ability to produce food.

There are all these great minds producing meals for tourists. If we can capitalize on all the food they're purchasing - if they are purchasing all the food in the hotels to feed 40 million tourists - wouldn't that be great to take that buying clout and to work with the vendors and say this is a project to eliminate hunger in the valley.

We've already met with the food suppliers and food vendors who are providing food to the gaming industry. We said to them: Here's how we want to end hunger, and we need your help. There wasn't one person who left that meeting, with about 50 people present, who didn't say: I have tomatoes and chicken and beef and cleaning supplies.

That's what makes us unlike any in the country, in Chicago or Oklahoma City or Washington, D.C. They have a bigger emphasis on the dry food, but since we have all these great chefs we wanted to tap into their brainpower and say: How can you end hunger with your knowledge and the buying clout we have? Let's put together both fresh, wholesome food as well as the dry foods.

Do you know what percentage you're going to aim for as far as salvage food?

Not quite yet. I imagine about six months down the road we'll know. UNLV has given us a research team leader who's just a brilliant professor in the department of allied health sciences, Molly Michelman.

She's leading a research team that has two graduate assistants. What she's going to be doing over the next six to 12 months is studying that issue.

Right now she is estimating the nutrient count (served) at the nonprofit agencies. UNLV is studying is a full pre and post. She's looking at how much time did the agency spend before Three Square started to deliver the meals, and now what are they doing with that time. Are they able to bring in more clientele to train, to give them domestic violence help? Additionally what was the nutrient content of the meals before Three Square - was it pasta and bread? What happens if they get a meat and a vegetable and a fresh fruit?

Is she going to look at individuals and see how their cholesterol is, for example?

I don't think she's going to do that at this proof of concept. I think she's going to make a generalization about the human body: What does it mean to go from A to B.

Then she'll qualify that and say: What does that mean for our health care costs? We want to have a direct application to look at the scores of kids in school, but these are years away before we'll be able to do that. At least she's getting the benchmarks now.

They're going to stay with us and measure before and after. This is going to be a long-term partnership. Our goal with UNLV is to be able to have it be a white paper to say: How can we serve as a model to other communities that are struggling and just piecemealing an answer to hunger? What we want to do is have a methodology and a really strong approach of using resources and volunteers and time and talent and addressing it in a very professional, strategic way.

Tell me about how you approached all the nonprofits and said: We're going to be in charge of food now.

The two-year study that was conducted before I came on board, the one that the Hilton Foundation commissioned with the study. That individual Deborah Campbell and Associates went out and interviewed as many nonprofit agencies as she could find to find what are their current challenges with food.

That's when she found out there wasn't a lot of wasted food that the hotels have. Initially one would think there's a lot of waste. The hotels are so much more efficient now.

The other thing she discovered is the nonprofit agencies are working really, really hard but it's just challenging to keep up with the demand for the food on top of what else they're doing.

People (at nonprofits) have been relieved. As a nonprofit you work a lot of hours, and really your payment is the pride you have from effecting change. These nonprofits have been very happy to have someone focus on food so they can do what their core mission is.

We're going to be holding meetings every other month for the nonprofit agencies. We had our first one in March.

Are there any organizations that focus on food that you'll be taking over?

The top three - Rescue Mission, Salvation Army, Catholic Charities - are the three primary ones that serve the most amount of food, but they do so many other things beside that.

What about Second Harvest?

They're a food bank. They are purely a food bank where they get dry and canned foods, whereas Three Square's focus will be on fresh, wholesome, nutritious meals that will be made every day.

How are you going to work together with them?

I don't know the answer to that yet, but in about another month I'll have more information about how we'll work together with the food bank. Our board of trustees is currently putting together a vision.

Right now we're in the proof of concept, and in two years we'll have the full facility. We're currently strategizing on what it should look like. We know our emphasis will be on the wholesome, fresh, nutritious foods but we're not sure at this stage in the game what our dried goods will look like.

So you'll open in 2009?

We hope it'll be early '09. By midsummer we'll know.

Do you know where it will be?

We're leaning toward, but we're not 100 percent sure, that it will be somewhere near where the majority of nonprofits are - the Lake Mead, Martin Luther King Jr. area. We're leaning toward where that part of town is to be central to where most of the nonprofits are, but we're not limiting ourselves.

We have a couple of Realtors looking for different sites so we can say what are the pros and cons of each of these and make a strategic decision about where to go.

Tell me about money. How much do you have now?

The biggest commitment came through the Hilton Foundation. In January of this year they gave us a $2 million commitment of which we'll be receiving $500,000 every six months for a two-year period. That's a match. The stipulation is that we'll have to follow through with what we said we would do: Do the proof of concept, build up the different things we said we'd build up.

As we near the end of the two-year period they've invited us back for $6 million more. We just have to show that we're making strides toward accomplishing the outcomes we said we would accomplish.

Part of that is Eric Hilton's legacy that he wants, and he's a Las Vegan. I know they want to support him, and he's very, very actively involved. In addition to that, the $500,000 challenge grant makes us very motivated to find the matching $500,000 amounts.

So every six months ¦

We have to match $500,000.

We feel good about matching it. The two times in '07 we'll need to match, then we'll shift gears and make sure we can match it in 2008. It's been coming from a variety of sources. Station Casinos launched an ad recently.

MGM Mirage is giving us $100,000 and the Nevada Community Foundation is giving us $50,000. We're thrilled with any amount but we're focusing on larger gifts in that $50,000 range so we can fulfill the grant. Harrah's just gave us $65,000. Primarily it's in the gaming industry who's joined in to help, but the Landmark Foundation, which is (KLAS) Channel 8, gave us $15,000.

The Epicurean Foundation, which is a group of chefs, approved us for a major gift.

So it's $4 million for the first two years.

Right. As this is being developed, we will know probably in another month what parcel acre of land and the size of the building. The (Donald W.) Reynolds Foundation has expressed a desire to work with us on the capital portion of the facility. As you know foundations can't say yes or no before the grant process has begun. (But) hunger and capital campaigns are what they focus on. We can't say for certain their board will vote yes on this but they've been playing a very active, interested role in Three Square's facility.

Once everything gets started and is at full force, how much is it going to cost every year?

I won't know that. I can say Chicago's facility, which we will either be equal to or larger, has a $13 million per-year budget.

The thing we are modeling after from Chicago is they have 11,000 volunteers and 30,000 individual donors. That's people who give maybe $1 per month or people who give $1,000 per year. That's the thing we're learning from them. In order to tackle a project like food and hunger it takes a large base group of supporters giving any amount.

In addition to addressing the challenge of hunger, we want to make Three Square that place where anyone can join in. When we look at that there's 7,000 to 8,000 people per month coming to Las Vegas, and so often you hear new timers saying: I don't know how to fit into the community. I moved here for a better job. But I'm not involved, and I don't know how to be involved.

Is it going to be a 24-hour operation?

I don't think we'll be 24 hours, but we'll be pretty doggone close. As soon as the design and development team - what they're doing is backtracking and saying - in first year or two of operation we now we need to serve 10 million meals per year. We know that will grow given the growth pattern of our community.

They're really backing into it to find out how much equipment is needed and how many shifts, which will drive us to know how many hours it will be open.

Are there some nonprofits that don't serve now that will serve food in the future?

What Chicago did was so wonderful - and they've been in business since 1978 - they started an endowment fund that is now somewhere between $20 million and $30 million. Through that endowment fund the nonprofit agencies can come to them and say: I have such a huge increase in women and children, but I don't have enough of a dining facility. Can your endowment fund it?

The endowment is our secondary goal.

Tell me about the health goals you have for people. You give them a nice meal, but they're not necessarily coming three times every single day for a number of months.

Exactly. During the proof of concept we'll only focus on lunch because it's a study. We want to study the delivery system, the food preparation system. The goal is to be delivering three meals: breakfast lunch and dinner.

All of this will be really interesting in a short period of time. (Molly Michelman of UNLV) has some preliminary findings and in just a really short period of time she'll have more findings about what it means to a human body to have that.

Tell me about the food production training.

What Punam Mathur and I have talked about is the gaming industry is always looking for people to slice and dice and chop. There's still a big demand especially with Project CityCenter and Echelon and all the new sites coming on board.

The common thread across it all if we have food production and food recovery and food banking is all those people going to be working there getting trained continually. Those are new folks trained to go out to the community. We're partnered with the Culinary Training Academy, which has been doing a phenomenal job.

We're not doing anything to compete with them, we're taking something that's right there - the kitchens and all these wonderful things - and we'll be training people.

Do you think anybody will be allowed in the program?

I think so. We want to make this inclusive not exclusive. We'll have it be the entry point.

One of the things came from the design and development team that they really got excited about is to be able to put in their classroom and their conference rooms. They wanted it to be a place for the community to come in. If they wanted to learn about any types of training topics, we wanted to make it an educational facility as well as the other things.

You say right now 43 percent of the need is being met. What's your goal?

One hundred percent. This is a very ambitious goal. Our goal and mission statement is to eradicate hunger in the valley. With Mr. Hilton's passion and the incredible strength of our volunteer partners we don't see any reason why we can't keep shooting for that goal.

It may be that we meet 98 percent or 95 percent but if we have 100 percent as a goal and come pretty darn close that would mean that so many lives would be impacted - that would be phenomenal.

In how long do you hope to reach this goal?

In two years from now if we launch, and we believe we'll start with 4 million meals and reach 10 million in the first year or two, I think it will take us about three to five years (beyond the first two) before we will really start to see the results of all of this organization.