170 posts categorized "Foreign Aid"

Last night, David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World, appeared on PBS NewsHour to discuss the drought in the United States and its impact on food prices around the world. 

Here's a highlight from the interview:

Ray Suarez: David Beckmann, is there any give in the world food system than there used to be? Some food experts are referring to a post-surplus world, where the number of mouths more closely matches the amount of food we're making.

Does this kind of event, this unusual drought, worst in 56 years, put more people in risk than we even realize?

David Beckmann: The system has changed in that world's population is growing wonderfully. A lot of people are getting out of poverty around the world. And so they are eating more food.

And there's going to be a growing demand for food, already is, all over the world. So that change has taken place. I think one thing that we're doing right as a world is investing in agriculture in poor countries around the world, helping poor farmer produce more, take advantage of higher prices to make a living and also meet local needs.

The Jamay Jalisco Club in Los Angeles raises money for community projects in the town of Jamay, Mexico. Screen shot from video by Jon Vidar for Bread for the World.

Across the United States, people like Pedro Ochoa are raising funds for community projects in poor Mexican towns they left behind when they migrated (watch video below). Ochoa, vice president of the Jamay Jalisco Club in Los Angeles, is part of a vast network of U.S.-based Hometown Associations that send money — remittances — to Mexico and Central America. Ochoa's latest project is getting a school bus to Jamay, Mexico, his hometown, so children there don’t have to walk far to school.

“Our plan is to do what they do here in the States: pick up the kids from wherever they are,” said Ochoa. “I don’t have much family in Jamay but I have my heart to help people in it.”

But while remittances can improve community infrastructure, they rarely result in jobs or investments that give people alternatives to migrating from their countries for work. There’s a growing recognition in the diaspora that there need to be more projects resulting in sustainable income in hometowns. Agencies like the Inter-American Foundation are already working with diaspora investors to support small businesses and agricultural enterprises in high-migration countries like El Salvador. Larger agencies like the Millennium Challenge Corporation and USAID can expand these programs to places like Jamay in Mexico and throughout Central America.

To learn more about the links between remittances, immigration, and development, read my colleague Andrew Wainer's latest paper on the topic and visit Bread's immigration web page.

Laura Elizabeth Pohl is multimedia manager at Bread for the World. Follow her on Twitter @lauraepohl.

According to USAID, this year more than 7 million children will die before reaching their fifth birthday. This shocking fact is the basis for a new campaign aimed at ending child deaths from preventable causes such as disease, hunger, and extreme poverty.

Watch the video below to learn more.

Photo by Flickr user  TMAB2003

Next week, we again celebrate our nation’s independence. We have a lot to be proud of in our country’s long struggle for freedom and liberty. But nowadays too many people in our country have taken this admirable national quality and transformed it into a personal privilege to turn our collective backs on those who are different from us; those who annoy or frustrate us; those who aren’t quite making it;  those who are vulnerable and need help in these troubled times. When our personal  “independence” alone takes center stage, what’s lost is the countervailing reality of “interdependence” — how our modern world makes us radically connected to others, whether we actually like it or not.

Interdependence means something like this:

When Congress slashes funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly food stamps) or school meals programs, it means that kids don’t get enough to eat, don’t learn well, and won’t thrive economically in the future. This will, in turn, make our country’s fabric weaker in the long run.

Cutting international food aid or development assistance means families abroad don’t prosper, developing nations lag socially and economically, trading partners become weaker, and our own nation’s economic and national security bases erode. These are the ties that bind all of us closer each day.

Sure, we can try to hide our heads in the sand and say that independence matters most, enabling us to ignore our brothers and sisters, and their children and grandparents, who need some help to make ends meet. Sure, we can try to simply go our own way, paring back programs in the name of deficit reduction no matter what the consequences. But if we really love what our country has stood for through 236 long, thrilling, and arduous years, I say we celebrate this July 4 in a different way.  

This year let’s call it National Interdependence Day. Let’s carry that same generous spirit of justice and connectedness through the crucial weeks that follow when Congress considers and votes on key hunger legislation.

For that joyous July 4 Interdependence Day party, I’ll offer to  buy some really cool fireworks and cheer lustily, indeed. Join me!

ACT NOW:  Take a moment now and let your members of Congress know that you practice interdependence, and ask for a circle of protection around programs that help those who are poor and hungry both at home and abroad.  

  Larry Hollar is senior regional organizer at Bread for the World.

Screenshot of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon taken from UNICNetwork video.

The UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, recently issued the Zero Hunger Challenge, a tool to initiate high-level advocacy to create significant advances in food security. Ban Ki-moon is careful to note in his video address (below) that he is not issuing a new challenge, but is extending an invitation for others to join in the fight to end hunger through five objectives: worldwide access to adequate food; and end to stunted children under 2 years old; sustainable food systems; 100 percent growth in smallholder productivity and income; and zero waste of food.

The most compelling point in the UN Secretary General's address is when he shares a memory from his childhood:

"When I was a child in war-time Korea, many families faced starvation and shortages. Many countries, including my own, took bold steps to end hunger. But almost 1 billion people still do not have enough to eat. I want to see an end to hunger everywhere, within my lifetime."

Watch Ban Ki-moon's brief video address below, and stay tuned to the Institute Notes blog for further analysis of the Zero Hunger Challenge.

Jeannie Choi is associate editor at Bread for the World. Follow her on Twitter @jeanniechoi.

Bread for the World activists from Texas listen to a staffer in Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison's office talk during Bread's Lobby Day in Washington, DC, on Tuesday, June 12, 2012. Photo by Laura Elizabeth Pohl for Bread for the World.

As you’ve hopefully heard, the Senate finished their work on the Farm Bill yesterday afternoon. The bill passed by a vote of 64-35. While the final bill included $4.5 billion in cuts to SNAP over the next ten years, our work and voices did make a difference.

Harmful amendments to further cut, and even dismantle, SNAP were defeated on a strong bi-partisan basis. This will certainly help us in sending a strong message to the House of Representatives that deeper cuts to SNAP are unacceptable.

Additionally, the final bill included some common sense reforms to international food aid and to crop insurance. An amendment by Sens. Coburn and Durbin to limit crop insurance premium subsidies to wealthy farmers also passed on a strong bi-partisan basis.

The process now turns to the House where the Agriculture Committee will be marking up their own bill on July 11. Stay tuned for details and possible actions around the markup. We expect much deeper cuts to SNAP likely in the range of $14 billion over ten years.

We want to thank all of our activists for your work advocating for SNAP and international food aid as the bill made its way through the Senate. There is still much to be done, but we are glad to see the Farm Bill process moving forward.

Christine Meléndez Ashley is policy analyst at Bread for the World.

In October 2011, Bread for the World hosted a delegation of religious leaders during a visit to three African countries -- Zambia, Malawi, and Tanzania -- that are known as SUN countries for their commitment to "scaling up nutrition." The group was able to witness, first-hand, small but mighty successes on the ground. Rev. Derrick Boykin, Bread's associate for African American leadership outreach, was among the group. In this video reflection on his journey, he asks African-Americans to join him in speaking up for Africa.

The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed the Donald M. Payne International Food Assistance Improvement Act of 2012. This bipartisan-supported legislation is one of the first bills to highlight the importance of nutrition during the critical 1,000 days between pregnancy and a child's second birthday.

If passed into law, this bill will significantly benefit women and children in developing countries, especially those in Africa. That this legislation was even introduced demonstrates the growing understanding among congressional leaders that good nutrition is critical to improving the lives of poor people around the world.

African countries are also taking nutrition and development into their own hands. An exciting example of this is the growing number of African leaders who recognize the devastating impact of malnutrition during the 1,000-day window. Twenty African countries have committed to turning the tide on malnutrition by joining the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) movement — a committed effort to reducing malnutrition in the developing world.

Racine Tucker-Hamilton is media relations manager at Bread for the World.

[This article originally appeared in The Hill. Click here to read the full article. Below is an excerpt.]

If you had $75 billion to spend on solving some of the world’s greatest challenges, where would you start? An expert panel of Nobel laureate economists known as the Copenhagen Consensus recently answered that question. After extensive research and consultation, they determined that the single best investment the world could make to advance health and prosperity would be to fight malnutrition in young children.

We have always known that tackling child malnutrition is the right thing to do. Perhaps now that it’s seen by experts as the smartest thing to do, we will be able to mobilize the investment needed to finally tackle a condition that plagues close to 200 million children, robbing them of their health and future potential.

Thankfully, we already know how to prevent the needless suffering and the nearly 3 million child deaths that result each year from malnutrition. Simple interventions such as breastfeeding and inexpensive treatments for diarrhea management in young children could save more than 1 million lives a year.

We also know that proper nutrition early in a child’s life—particularly during the 1,000 days between a woman’s pregnancy and her child’s second birthday—can help break the cycle of poverty by ensuring healthy brain development, stronger immune systems, better performance in school, and higher earning potential. 

David Beckmann is president of Bread for the World. Lucy Sullivan is executive director of 1,000 Days.

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Photo caption: Constantia and her son Gustavo live in Cobue, Monzambique. Gustavo became severely malnourished after contracting malaria. Constantia took him to a clinic where she learned how to feed him a fortified milk formula with a syringe every few hours around the clock. Soon he was eating Plumpy'nut, a high-protein therapeutic food. A year later Gustavo is healthy and eating normal foods. Photo by Rebecca Vander Meulen.

Sharmila Chaudhari feeds her daughter Sanjana, 19 months, at the Nutrition Rehabilitation Home (NRH) in Dhangadhi, Nepal, on Sunday, April 29, 2012. This Nutrition Rehabilitation Home in the western part of the country is run by an NGO in Nepal called the Rural Women's Development and Unity Centre (RUWDUC). Children eat meals and snacks at 7 a.m., 10 a.m., 1 p.m., 4 p.m., and 7 p.m., and they drink milk at 10 p.m., 1 a.m., and 4 a.m.

Forty-one percent of Nepali children under age 5 are short for their age (stunted), according to the preliminary 2011 Nepal Demographic and Health Survey. Stunting is an indicator of malnutrition, so ensuring children are properly nourished in the 1,000 days between pregnancy and age 2 is vital to a child’s development.

Photo by Laura Elizabeth Pohl/Bread for the World