There is something about sharing food that makes bonds between people more real. Words express concern, but the act of giving food, particularly when relieving hunger, makes empathy tangible. With that in mind, we point to two very different initiatives that say a lot about how people respond to others in need.

First, the good: The Friends Feeding Friends program at Mascoma Valley Regional High School benefits those who give and those who receive. This school year its food pantries — including one at the high school — have distributed 10,000 pounds of food to Mascoma area students and families. The effort has become a passion of teacher Christine Jespersen, who told staff writer Nora Doyle-Burr last week: “I don’t feel any kid should go without food. They need the calories for their brains to work.” Here is an instance where sentiment and science work hand in hand — studies show that hunger hinders students’ attention and learning.

Friends Feeding Friends is run by the Friends of Mascoma, which formed to boost educational programs but took on this additional work when school staff told organizers that some students are going hungry. Among the praiseworthy aspects is that food is freely given to all; students do not have to risk the embarrassment of being identified as needy. Also, students themselves join in the labor. It’s a meaningful way to do community service — in the community. While some young people jet to faraway places these days to do service work, there is much to be said for recognizing needs in their own hometowns. With literally less distance between the giver and receiver, perhaps the lessons that are learned will be more lasting.

Such lessons would serve New Hampshire legislators well, as they consider a bill from state Sen. Kevin Avard, R-Nashua, to eliminate food stamp benefits for families whose income is above the standard federal limit, but who have sufficient expenses for items such as child care to qualify for assistance. The purported aim is to eliminate abuses, although state officials say there’s little of that going on. And why target working families, of all things?

The New Hampshire measure is being cheered on by Maine officials, one of whom traveled to the Granite State to testify in favor of the bill. Maine, under the leadership of Republican Gov. Paul LePage, a pioneer in the Donald Trump method of erratic talk and harsh actions, has aggressively pursued such policies, claiming they are driving people off welfare rolls and into jobs. We’d like to see the actual evidence for new employment, but in the meantime the number of Maine children who benefit from food stamps has dropped from 22,425 in 2012 to 8,461 last year. There are said to be about 19,000 children still living in extreme poverty in Maine.

Is Maine nostalgic for the 19th century, so well chronicled by Charles Dickens, when workhouses were thought to discourage the “undeserving poor’’ from seeking public assistance? The workhouses are long gone, but the notion that the poor are to blame for poverty never seems to leave us. New Hampshire shouldn’t join Maine in such bleak, punitive thinking.