316 posts categorized "Global Hunger"

The American Jewish World Service, Bread for the World, CARE, The Modernizing Assistance Network, Oxfam America and Save the Children released the following statement today in advance of the Senate and House committee mark-ups of the 2013 Farm Bill:

“With more than 870 million people suffering from hunger worldwide and Congress looking to ensure wise use of taxpayer funds at home, the 2013 Farm Bill represents a crucial opportunity to make our international food aid programs both more efficient and more cost-effective.

Unfortunately, the current Senate draft Farm Bill, due to be marked up next week, includes the same incremental steps toward reform as last year, but fails to address the fundamental changes that are so badly needed.  We urge Senate leaders to work with the Administration to achieve stronger reforms in food aid programs so that American tax dollars can go farther and American compassion can reach more people in need. On the House side, we remain disappointed that the House Agriculture Committee draft once again fails to incorporate any reforms.  

In his 2014 budget request, President Obama proposed common sense reforms that would feed millions more people and save lives by delivering aid faster with no additional cost to the taxpayer. This proposal sets an important precedent in building a more modern food aid program. Proposed reforms include allowing for greater flexibility in how the U.S. delivers food to hungry people overseas and ending the inefficient method of having aid groups sell food aid overseas to fund development programs, a practice known as “monetization.” This increased flexibility is a part of a package that would allow food aid to go farther, feeding 2-4 million additional people. These reforms have been greeted with interest by members on both sides of the aisle.

While we are supporting the Administration’s request that the FY 14 Appropriations bills be the vehicle for food aid reform, we recognize that there are several potential paths forward for Congress to achieve these much needed improvements to our international food aid program, and we are fully committed to working with leaders in Congress, including members of the House Foreign Affairs and Senate Foreign Relations Committees, to get it done this year."

DeEtte Peck uses her Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) card in Portland, Ore., to purchase food. The card helps people with low incomes purchase food through SNAP. (Brian Duss for Bread for the World)

If you were to lose your job or source of income tomorrow, how would you get by? Would you rely on savings? Friends and family members? Government safety net programs?

Marketplace is asking these questions of its readers in a new feature called "Show Us Your Safety Net." The answers are interesting, and surprisingly similar. When it comes to federal safety net programs, it's not so much a question of whether people who fall on hard times will need them or not, but rather how soon they will need them.

Some of the people who responded to the Marketplace survey said they sought out benefits such as SNAP (formerly food stamps) right away. Others drained retirement funds, savings accounts, or the savings accounts of their loved ones before seeking out government assistance. Most people ended up needing a combination of unemployment benefits, federal food programs, and direct service help. Although the user-submitted stories are anecdotal, it doesn't seem that many Americans—regardless of income bracket—are able to scrape by on savings alone when faced with job loss, illness, or other major life events that affects income.

Here are just a few of the stories:

Used up savings, sold assets, got food stamps, got prescription assistance, applied for (but have not yet) received housing assistance.” —Deborah,Tigard, Oregon

I lost my 10-year job in March 2011. I was old enough to take social security but did not take that option right away. I have a child to support and a wife who was also jobless who had run out of unemployment benefits. What kept us going was my unemployment benefits and food stamps, although these did not come to enough to pay rent and COBRA premiums, let alone our food and utilities. So I tapped my savings.” —Geoff, Belmont, Massachusetts

I was in a terrible car accident last December getting ready to start back at university after a 13-year gap. I lost both my jobs related to the accident, couldn't work due to a broken shoulder (still can't). I applied for every program I could as soon as I could. Was able to get free medical from the county. Qualified for food stamps and short-term disability, but went with no income for two months. Had some help from friends, relatives, and church. Not sure what's next, hopefully the disability extension is approved.” —Valerie, Canoga Park, California

Federal safety net programs work to keep hunger at bay even as unemployment and poverty remain high. More of us need help right now, and federal safety net programs are there to catch us when we fall. 

Right now, Congress is writing the farm bill, and SNAP, one of our country's most important safety net programs, is at risk of cuts, as is international food aid. Your lawmakers need to hear from you. Tell your senators and representative that any farm bill must not increase hunger in the United States or around the world.

Call or email your members of Congress and tell them to ensure a place at the table for all people by protecting and strengthening the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly food stamps) and international food aid in the farm bill.

CWS CROP walk participant signs a Bread for the World petition to President Obama asking him to set a goal and work with Congress on a plan to end hunger in the United States and abroad. (Robin Stephenson).

By Robin Stephenson 

Ending hunger takes a village. Churches, non-profits, and faithful individuals respond to hunger in different ways. Holistic approaches to fighting hunger acknowledge immediate need while also advocating for changes to policies that address the root causes of hunger and poverty.

CROP Hunger Walks, community-wide events sponsored by CWS and organized by local volunteers as a way to raise funds to end hunger, illustrate that action and advocacy can join forces in one event.

Last Sunday, Church World Service, Bread for the World, and the Portland, Ore., community came together around the issue of hunger. Nearly 100 participants, old and young—some participating as congregational teams—walked through sunny downtown Portland on a spring day. The walkers, who carried banners and hand-made signs, raised awareness of hunger and drew questions from others enjoying the warm afternoon.

Volunteer Lisa Wenzlick coordinated the walkers, and Steven Anderson served as treasurer. First Christian Church provided hospitality as well as a starting and ending point. Participants raised funds which will be used support local efforts to address hunger as well as CWS’s global work.

The day was rounded out with an advocacy action on behalf of hungry and poor people as individuals signed Bread for the World’s petition asking the  president to set a goal and work with Congress on a plan to end hunger in the United States and abroad.

Bread for the World has long had a close relationship with CWS and many CROP Walks nationwide are a reflection of this partnership.

If you would like to get involved, find out if there is a CROP Walk near you or learn how you can organize one in your community.

Fried crickets for sale at Chiang Mai Night Bazaar in Thailand, by flickr user avlxyz.

By Nina Keehan

How would you feel about eating a cricket muffin? Cricket bread? A cricket tortilla?  Well a team of students from McGill University are vying for a chance to make cricket-infused food a worldwide sensation.

McGill University is one of five finalists in this year’s prestigious Hult Prize competition, which gives MBA students a chance to solve some of the world’s greatest problems. This year, teams are tackling the global food crisis. The competition works something like this: groups of 4-5 students from universities across the globe develop social enterprises that can successfully and substantially reduce hunger. The students focus on urban slums, where over 200 million people worldwide are food insecure. Whichever team has the best idea will receive $1 million to actually make it happen.

The facts about global hunger are sobering. Nearly 1 billion people are hungry or suffer from malnutrition and every five seconds a child dies from hunger-related causes. That’s partially because extremely poor families spend more than 70 percent of their income on food, trapping them in a cycle of hunger, poverty, and illness.

If you're squeamish about the idea of buttering up a piece of cricket-infused bread, know that you're in the global minority. The UN Food Standards Authority states that about 2.5 billion people around the world already incorporate insects regularly into their diets, with grasshoppers being one of the most popular. They are low-fat, high-protein, high in omega-3, and much easier to mass produce than other sources of protein.

The McGill team’s basic idea is to produce crickets on an industrial scale, starting with urban dwellers who would raise them, eat them, and sell them to the local market. Families would be provided with a light, collapsible metal cylinder that attracts and traps crickets--up to 11 pounds in two months. Whatever was left after local sales and consumption could to be made into cricket flour that would then be subtly added to the local diet staple, whether that be corn, rice, or wheat.

The idea of consuming bugs for protein has grown in popularity over recent years. In fact, in 2011 the EU promised up to €1.5m in funding for research on producing “purified or partially purified insect protein,” and other alternative protein sources to help meet the Millennium Development Goals, eradicate famine, and improve environmental sustainability.

So get ready, because the key to solving hunger might just include tapping this market. One of the McGill students, Zev Thompson, told the Examiner.com, "Having now eaten them [crickets], it [now] seems normal...I wonder if crickets today are what sushi was 20 or 30 years ago--a weird exotic thing that breaks into the mainstream."

Only time will tell.

Nina Keehan, a media relations intern at Bread for the World, is a senior magazine journalism and public health dual major at Syracuse University.

Infographic courtesy of InterAction

By Nina Keehan

Many Americans have heard that the White House recently cancelled its public tours as a result of budget cuts from the sequester, leaving thousands of eager ticket holders disappointed. This is a bummer—especially if you’re a middle schooler on spring break.

But let's put this in perspective.  While these shuttered tours might get a ton of publicity from the media, they are certainly not the worst the sequester has to offer—not even close.

Some of the cuts will cost lives.

A new infographic produced by InterAction reveals the horrifying impact sequestration will have on people helped by foreign assistance programs worldwide. Poverty-focused development assistance will be cut by 5 percent, if the sequester is allowed to stand. Five percent might not seem like much, until you look at this:

Nina Keehan, a media relations intern at Bread for the World, is a senior magazine journalism and public health dual major at Syracuse University.

“The sequester breaks the circle of protection,” says Bread for the World President Rev. David Beckmann in a recent interview on “Viewpoint” (Current TV) with John Fugelsang. 

Last week, nearly 100 pastors and religious leaders from across a wide spectrum of the church addressed our nation’s leaders through a joint letter.  They counseled President Barack Obama, Majority Leader Harry Reid, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Speaker John Boehner and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to be clear about the moral choices they are making, as the Bible tells us that the government has responsibilities concerning poor people.

The consequences, both globally and domestically, of indiscriminate cuts are dire for hungry and poor people. If action isn't taken to fix the sequester, 600,000 women and children will lose their WIC nutrition assistance. Cuts to foreign assistance will cost lives as vulnerable people overseas will no longer have access to medication for AIDS and tuberculosis.  For more on sequestration, and a list of anti-hunger and anti-poverty programs that are affected, download our new fact sheet, "The Consequences of Sequestration ."

In the “Viewpoint” interview, Rev. Beckmann notes that the decisions around the deficit reflect our national values: “This is a tough decision.  You know, it’s not a trivial decision but figuring out how to cut back—how to reduce our deficit without hurting people who are having a hard time feeding their kids—is really important to our national character.”   

It’s not too late to avoid the worst of the effects of the sequester if Congress develops a balanced approach to deficit reduction. Any solution must include both smart spending cuts and new revenue in order to put our nation on a sustainable path while maintaining our commitment to reducing hunger and poverty.  It all depends on the level of outrage and outcry from the American public. Join Bread for the World this week in asking Congress to replace the sequester. Calling your members of Congress at 1-800-826-3688 and urge them to support programs for hungry and poor people.

By Nina Keehan

The image of the garden, a biblical paradise of bounty and temptation, has held a special place in spirituality for thousands of years. Yet, for many in today’s society, the harvest and security of that garden is elusive. Food may be plentiful but it is out of reach for as many as 3.9 million families in America. And though some people still work the soil with their hands, they often live in poverty. The way we have structured our lives has led to a growing disconnect between us and the food we need to survive.

A panel of religious leaders discussed these issues in “Faith, Food and Poverty,” an interfaith discussion held last month, hosted by Washington National Cathedral. Despite the panel being made up of a Muslim, a Jew, and a Catholic, the consensus was unanimous: the interfaith community has not taken hunger and poverty seriously as systemic issues. While individual churches, and even whole religious groups, have donated generously to the fight, there is still a lack of collaboration between faiths, which could make a huge difference.  

"The greatest activists should be people of faith," said Dr. Hisham Moharram, a Muslim environmental leader and director of Good Tree Farm of New Egypt, N.J. "What good is our faith if it doesn’t go beyond us?"

All three leaders stressed the importance of religious organizations and interfaith food communities continuing their work feeding hungry people while America waits for Washington to make improvements in the minimum wage and programs that address hunger and poverty.

Professor David Cloutier, a Catholic moral theologian at Mount St. Mary’s University, stressed the importance of encouraging a sacramental food economy in which those who have enough to eat do so responsibility, while acknowledging the interdependence that exists between humans and their food.

Eating responsibly has historically been stressed by religious doctrine. As Rabbi Kevin Kleinman from Reform Congregation Keneseth Israel in Elkins Park, Pa., pointed out, the Jewish faith has always promoted seasonal eating, smaller portions, and kindness to animals.

They all agreed that fighting hunger and poverty in a sustainable and collaborative way must start with discussions.

“The network is there. If we worked together, we could combat the causes of hunger and poverty. But a lot more collaborative effort must be asserted,” said Moharram. “Take the old adage, ‘Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime,’ and expand on it. Teach the man to market his fish so he can feed others.”

It appears that with a little effort the garden might not always be a mirage.

Nina Keehan, a media relations intern at Bread for the World, is a senior magazine journalism and public health dual major at Syracuse University.

Photo caption:  Martha and her daughter clean beans grown in their garden in the highlands of Nicaragua. (Richard Leonardi)

Jane Sabbi, a farmer in Uganda, learned to plant more nutritious crops like these beans after joining a Ugandan nonprofit farming collective that receives U.S. foreign assistance. (Laura Elizabeth Pohl/Bread for the World)

By Alex Loken

Not to mention the fact that the threat of across-the-board spending cuts, known as sequestration, continues to loom: unless Congress acts, these cuts will take effect at the beginning of March. An estimated 5.1 percent cut would result in over $1 billion cut from PFDA programs—that means millions of people would be without food aid, farmer training, education, and lifesaving medicine.   

Poverty-focused programs accomplish so much and reach millions of people around the world, while representing less than 1 percent of the entire U.S. federal budget. These programs are vital to lifting people around the world out of poverty. They also promote a positive image of the United States overseas, strengthen our national security by encouraging stability, and support jobs both at home and abroad.   

Funding for PFDA has more or less flat-lined over the past few years, but these programs have continued to provide lifesaving food aid, help thousands of farmers learn techniques that help increase their yields and incomes, slow mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS, and educate children. Still, our work is not done: there are 900 million people who go to bed hungry every night and more than 1 billion people who live on less than $1.25 a day. But if PFDA funding is cut, it will be incredibly difficult to continue to work toward a world without hunger and poverty.

We all agree that America’s budget deficit must be dealt with, but cutting PFDA won’t help balance the ledger. As those on Capitol Hill work to come to an agreement around the debt ceiling and government spending, we urge Congress to protect programs that serve the world’s poor and vulnerable people.

Alex Loken is the government relations research assistant at Bread for the World.

For more information on PFDA, please see the Bread for the World Policy brief "Poverty-Focused Development Assistance 101."

Jane Sebbi, carries matoke scraps to feed her pigs in Kamuli, Uganda. In addition to animal husbandry, Sebbi grows corn, bananas, coffee, amaranth, potatoes, soy beans, common beans and sweet potatoes. (Laura Elizabeth Pohl/Bread for the World)

By Robin Stephenson

How much do you know about hunger and poverty? Test your knowledge by taking this short quiz. We hope these questions—which cover great milestones in the fight against hunger and also statistics that remind us of the work still to be done—will encourage you to join us in asking the president to make ending hunger a priority. 

Tonight, President Barack Obama will  speak to Congress, and the nation, in his State of the Union address.  We're hoping he will use the opportunity to talk about ending hunger in the United States and abroad.

So, once you've taken the quiz, take a few seconds to sign this petition asking President Obama to set a goal and work with Congress to end hunger. Pass this quiz around—through email, Twitter, and/or Facebook—and help spread the word about the seriousness of hunger and what can be done to end it in our time.

Barbie Izquierdo and her children are profiled in the new movie, A Place at the Table. To see a preview of the movie and learn more about "A Place at the Table: Bread for the World's 2013 Offering of Letters," visit www.bread.org/ol.

On March 1, 2013, Bread for the World will be involved in setting places at two tables.

One is "A Place at the Table: Bread for the World’s 2013 Offering of Letters."

The other is a new feature-length documentary, A Place at the Table, which shows the persistence of hunger in the United States.

Together, the two "Tables" represent a united effort to end hunger by raising awareness and advocating for policy changes. By coordinating our Offering and Letters with the social action campaign of the movie, Bread for the World will be promoting a national dialogue about how to best secure the leadership, commitment, and unity to end hunger in our country and abroad.

Bread for the World's 2013 Offering of Letters is the most sophisticated campaign we have ever conducted, focusing on both the White House and Congress.

For the first time, we are seeking greater leadership from the White House. We want President Barack Obama to set a goal and work with Congress on a plan to end hunger at home and abroad. Beside regular communication with White House officials, we are asking our members to petition the president. We hope to generate at least 100,000 signatures.

As in past Offerings of Letters, we will continue to focus on policy makers in Congress. Domestic and international programs that help hungry and poor people continue to be threatened by budget cuts. Through handwritten letters, personal email messages, in-person visits, and phone calls, we will be asking our legislators to protect funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly food stamps); the Special Supplemental Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC); and poverty-focused development assistance (PFDA).

We are also asking legislators to support a national commitment to reduce hunger through the tax code. We want Congress to preserve the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the Child Tax Credit (CTC) while raising revenue to support anti-hunger programs.

Finally, we are asking Congress to work with the president on a plan to end hunger.

"The reality is that in order to break free from the bondage [of poverty] in this country and the world, we need elected officials to make good on their words and put love thy neighbor at the center of our legislative agenda," said seminary student and Hunger Justice Leader Derick Dailey in response to the two-pronged Offering of Letters.

This reality will be apparent to many people around the country after they watch the new documentary, A Place at the Table. When film directors Kristi Jacobson and Lori Silverbush approached Bread for the World board member Terry Meehan, seeking support for the film, the rest of the board quickly decided that this was an opportunity to speed up change.

The filmmakers were inspired by the public reaction that was generated by the 1968 CBS Special, Hunger in America. In response to that television program, Congress passed bipartisan laws that all but eradicated U.S. hunger in the 1970s. "We figured that if it worked once, maybe it could work again," said Jacobson.

National distribution of A Place at the Table became possible when Participant Media came on board to finance the film, followed by Magnolia Pictures as the distributor. It will open in theaters throughout the country on March 1 and will be available on-demand (through iTunes, Amazon.com, and other outlets).

We urge all Bread members to see this film. We have resources to help you study the issues raised in the film, as well as materials to distribute at screenings. You can preorder them from Bread's online store or by calling 800-822-7323.

Bread’s association with Participant Media does not end when the film hits the theaters. We are also partners in the social campaign accompanying the film. Through A Place at the Table’s social action campaign, Bread members will have more avenues for action—at both the national and local levels. Bread for the World and Participant Media will regularly ask our advocates to take various actions throughout this campaign. To join the campaign, text FOOD to 77177.

"Jesus tells us to give them something to eat, and the film shows that our churches do a good job of providing food through food pantries and soup kitchens," said Rev. David Beckmann. "It also shows that this will never be enough. We need to demand that our government get serious about ending hunger."

[This piece originally appeared in the February edition of Bread's e-newsletter.]