One World Cafe

Perseverance and a belief that what she was doing was important helped her stay true to her ideal, Cerreta says.

"I'm not saying single-handedly, but I believe it's my role on this Earth to eliminate world hunger," she says.

Cerreta says One World Cafe allows everyone to eat. And if customers don't have enough money for the meal, they can earn a voucher for each hour of work they put in at the cafe, doing dishes or cleaning up.

"It's a hand up, not a forced handout," she says.

On an even greater scale, Cerreta plans on opening up similar cafes in other cities and hopes her idea catches, inspiring copycats.

Cerreta says she plans to open up One World Cafes in Manhattan, Iowa City, St. Paul and Chicago.

Recently, a couple from Denver drove to Salt Lake City to see how Cerreta's cafe worked. Libby Birky and her husband, Brad Birky, say they want to open up a similar cafe in the Denver area next summer.

"We showed up unannounced," Libby Birky, an elementary school teacher, says. "We couldn't pull it all together until we saw it working for real."

Birky said she and her husband work regularly in homeless shelters and food banks and feel the world's hunger problem is bigger than what most people perceive it to be.

"Living in Denver, which is a pretty moderate climate, the homeless population is very high," she says. "We're kind of clouded to this thing and we start to think that this is the face of hunger. But we're missing the single moms, the low-income families with mothers who don't eat so their kids can.

"These are people who are functioning in society, but are functioning behind a screen of hunger."

Cerreta and the Birkys say they hope these types of cafes will at least make a dent in the problem.

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