Support Funding for Hungry Kids

We need your help this week to convince Congress to allocate $1 billion a year in new investments for nutrition programs for children.

The Senate Agriculture Committee passed its version of the Child Nutrition Bill at $450 million annually. Now we need to convince the House Education and Labor Committee, which is drafting its version of the Child Nutrition Bill, to find the full $1 billion requested by President Obama.

School lunches, school breakfasts, summer feeding programs, the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program – these are the critical programs the Child Nutrition Bill will strengthen.

More funding will also help serve kids who currently aren’t in these programs – but who are eligible for them. Of the 19.4 million low-income children receiving lunch assistance each school day, only 46 percent receive breakfast assistance and just 11 percent have access to summer food programs.

Representatives James P. McGovern (D-3/MA) and Jo Ann Emerson (R-8/MO) are circulating a letter to their colleagues to show Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller (D-7/CA) that a majority of the House supports a strong child nutrition reauthorization. We have 172 signatures but we need 218 – and we only have until noon on Friday, April 30, to get 46 more signatures.

Please call your representative at 1-800-826-3688 by noon, Friday, April 30, and tell him or her to sign onto the Dear Colleague letter being circulated by Reps. McGovern and Emerson in support of an additional $1 billion per year for child nutrition reauthorization.

Check Bread’s website to read the letter, see if your representative has signed it, or look up your representative.