Bread also emphasizes that a major cause of hunger in the United States is poverty. The racial and gender pay gaps mean that women, particularly women of color, are at higher risk of poverty. Parents, particularly mothers, are also more likely to be poor, which means that children are also more likely to live below the poverty line. In 2020, for example, households with single mothers had a poverty rate of 32.1 percent. Mothers of color and their children had even higher poverty rates: 35.6 percent of Black families and 36.9 percent of non-white Hispanic families with single mothers lived below the poverty line.

There is no doubt that raising children is expensive. From pregnancy on, a steady stream of costs adds up, from diapers to new shoes to childcare costs that, in some areas, can rival college tuition. Becoming a parent is a major economic investment. 

Ensuring that pregnant women, new mothers, and newborns get the nutrition, health care, and support they need is pivotal to ending hunger in our country for good. Safer pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum care have an outsized impact on individuals, families, communities, the country, and the future. 

Yet the U.S. has not made as much progress as most other countries with an abundance of resources. In 2020, Norway, Belarus, Israel, and several other countries had maternal mortality rates of 3 or less per 100,000 live births. That year, the U.S. maternal mortality rate was 23.8 per 100,000 live births—more than three times the rate of most high-income peer countries. The U.S. record on maternal mortality is particularly striking because the country spends two, three, or even four times as much per person on health care as most industrialized countries.

A chief cause of the high maternal mortality rate is racial inequity. The maternal mortality rate among Black women in 2022 was 49.5 per 100,000 live births—far higher than among white, Latina, and Asian women, whose mortality rates were 19, 16.9, and 13.2 per 100,000 live births, respectively.

The U.S. has a long way to go before pregnancy and childbirth is as safe here as it is in Belarus or Norway. But maternal mortality among Black women in particular is a national emergency, both because of the very high death rate and the wide disparities with women from other racial/ethnic groups.

“Social determinants” of health are a wide range of conditions that together play a significant role in maternal mortality. The social determinants of health are the conditions where people live, learn, work, play, and age. They affect a wide range of health risks and outcomes. In fact, research from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has found that these social determinants “can drive as much as 80 percent of health outcomes.” According to the National Perinatal Task Force, “Focusing on the social determinants of health is an important step to addressing these root causes for these unwavering gaps in maternal and infant health.”  

How do larger socioeconomic problems such as racial inequity and poverty contribute to maternal mortality? There are many interconnected factors, but one of the most significant causes is preterm birth, defined as birth before 37 weeks of gestation. 

In 2023, the rate of preterm births in the U.S. was 10.4 percent. Among Black women, it was 14.7 percent. The March of Dimes reported that “an alarmingly high preterm birth rate” is one of the contributing factors to maternal and infant mortality and gave the U.S. a grade of D+ on its preterm birth performance.

The brighter news is that data from professional review committees who study the specific causes of maternal mortality shows that more than 80 percent of pregnancy-related deaths were preventable. Some strategies relate to strengthening the U.S. healthcare system, particularly in rural areas. Women in “maternity care deserts” are at higher risk because of factors such as delays in care for life-threatening complications. Others relate to preventing specific medical problems. For example, California reduced its death rate from preeclampsia–dangerously high blood pressure–by 76 percent by expanding its use of best practices in monitoring and treatment.

Reducing maternal mortality calls for a combination of efforts: improved racial and gender equity; better laws and policies, particularly on ensuring access to quality health care; research-based recommendations that stakeholders can begin to implement without delay; and allocation of the necessary resources. The country is backsliding in some of these areas, but it is completely within the power of the United States to save the lives of many more pregnant women and new mothers.

Michele Learner is Managing Editor of the Policy and Research Institute at Bread for the World.

The post Safer Pregnancies and Births in the United States appeared first on Bread for the World.

Major milestones offer opportunities to remember the stories of lament and joy in the legacies of our families and friends. Recently, I did this again with extended family as we gathered in celebration of our connections and shared history.

I could see family resemblances, similar spirited demeanors, character, and the spirit of our ancestors who walked before us. We shared stories that exposed tough decisions made during my ancestors’ violent enslavement and brutal sharecropping as well as the horror of removal of my Indigenous family from their lands with the imposition of settlers. I was grateful that despite—and through—the hardships in our history, we were able to gather and share provisions now.

As I reflect on my legacy, I witness the practices and policies that assaulted and continue to assault peoples today. With the rise of more police and militarization in our world and nation—for example, even in the Washington, D.C., area where I live and work—I am deeply troubled by the repeat of this on those who are again being disproportionately targeted. I am deeply troubled by the increasing number of people who are hurt by policies and practices that use food as weapons or diminish support for those who were or who are food insecure and will increasingly see dramatic decreases in households that need living wages.

With the July passage of H.R. 1, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” the Bread for the World Policy and Research Institute predicted that resources will decrease for households towards the bottom of the income distribution, whereas resources will increase for households in the middle and top of the income distribution. I am keenly aware of many families in the United States and globally who do not have adequate provisions due to this bill and other recent policies. Bread for the World stands with and for these families.

Future generations depend on generations now doing what many ancestors did in the past to make it possible for me to sit at table with my family for our August celebrations. The decisions we make today shape our world tomorrow.

Great leaders have understood this and have given their lives to this. People like the young Queen Esther in the Bible knew as a teenager that if her people perished, she would perish. People like the young woman Mary moved from fear to wonder and carried, bore, and embraced the baby Jesus who changed the world.

Bread for the World invites you to again consider the gifts of past and future generations as you consider your significant role of being an advocate in these days. Please go to bread.org to learn more about this moment to pray, act and give!

Angelique Walker-Smith is senior associate for Pan African and Orthodox Church engagement at Bread for the World.

The post What About the Children and Future Generations? appeared first on Bread for the World.

“The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the United States’ most important anti-hunger program. Each month 42 million people rely on SNAP to put food on the table. Forty percent of SNAP recipients are children.

“Medicaid provides health care for roughly 70 million low-income, elderly, and disabled Americans, as well as nearly half of all children in the United States. Studies show that households with children who participate in Medicaid experience significant reductions in food insecurity.

 “We need to be clear eyed and honest – this bill’s passage will significantly increase hunger in the United States. The unprecedented funding cuts enacted in the bill will bring harm to children, families, and vulnerable adults. Additionally, these cuts will have a ripple effect, impacting farmers, small business owners, hospitals, and even entire communities.”

The budget reconciliation bill, which is about to become law, cuts SNAP funding by close to $200 billion over ten years. The bulk of the funding cuts come from pushing a portion of SNAP costs on to states, expanding strict work requirements, and banning refugees and others here lawfully for humanitarian reasons from receiving SNAP. Close to 3 million people could lose their SNAP benefits. The new law will also freeze future benefit increases through the Thrifty Food Plan.

The bill cuts Medicaid funding by $1 trillion and makes significant changes to the program – including adding additional work requirements. An estimated 17 million people could lose their Medicaid coverage now that the bill has passed.

Over the past several months, Bread has worked tirelessly to stop the steep SNAP and Medicaid funding cuts. Bread members and supporters have sent tens of thousands of emails, held hundreds of congressional meetings, and made numerous phone calls urging their members of Congress to reject the cuts.

“God calls on us to care for our neighbors in need. This bill fails that test. Bread will not stop until Congress restores full funding for these vital programs,” added Cho.

The post Passage of Budget Reconciliation Will Increase Hunger and Harm Children and Families appeared first on Bread for the World.

For far too many of those millions of children, however, something else awaits beyond the boundaries of their school building – hunger.

In 2024, nearly 30 million U.S. students participated in the National School Lunch Program (NSLP). This makes the NSLP the second-largest nutrition assistance program in the country, second only to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The School Breakfast Program (SBP) served breakfast to 15.5 million children.

But what happens when school isn’t in session?

At the end of each school year, hunger among low-income and food-insecure children has historically spiked. Their ability to access consistent nutritious meals dwindles. One of the impacts is the summer slide: disproportionate learning loss among food-insecure children.

School meals are critical tools in promoting and protecting child development, education, and well-being. Research results continue to demonstrate that children who participate in school and childcare meal programs have better health and greater food security, achieve better educational outcomes and test scores, are more likely to regularly attend school, and have an improved diet. This is largely due to school meals being the most consistent and nutritious meals that many students consume.

To reduce the summer meal gap, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) operates a number of summer nutrition programs, primarily the Summer Food Service Program (SUN Meals or SFSP) and the Seamless Summer Option (SSO). In contrast to the participation of nearly 30 million children in the NSLP in 2024, an analysis showed that Summer Nutrition Programs reached just 2.8 million children in 2023.

However, in 2022 Congress passed a law that improved the existing SUN Meals program and permanently authorized a brand-new summer nutrition program – SUN Bucks (Summer EBT). As a result, nearly 21 million children received additional financial resources to purchase food throughout the summer. 

Originally piloted in 2011, Summer EBT was offered to all states beginning in 2024. The expansion brought in 37 states, the District of Columbia, every U.S. territory, and two tribal nations as participants that year. Households with children who received free or reduced-priced meals received an electronic benefit transfer (EBT) card that could be used at participating grocery retailers. Enrolled families received $40 per child per month, or $120 per child over the course of the summer.

In 2024, participation rates and economic impact varied by state, but the effectiveness of the program was steady. Researchers who evaluated the program found that the number of children skipping meals over the summer was reduced by a third. Participants in SUN Bucks say that the program is crucial to their family’s well-being in the summer. Joelanis Kercado-Martes, for example, says: “If it wasn’t for this program—these Summer EBT benefits that are being distributed to our family— we probably would’ve never made it, so I’m grateful from the bottom of my heart.”

Additionally, families who received these benefits were more likely to purchase and consume fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and dairy, and less likely to purchase artificially sweetened beverages.

Following these promising results, and data suggesting that SUN Bucks are effective in reducing child hunger during the summer, one would assume that more states, if not all, would be eager to participate in 2025. Instead, again, just 37 states and 5 tribal nations opted to participate. Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming chose not to make this program, funded by the federal government, available to the families and children in their state. Even more startling, Indiana and Tennessee participated in the program in 2024 and still elected not to participate in 2025. These choices exposed more than 1.3 million children to increased hunger and food insecurity.

Some states respond that they can’t afford the technology upgrades and administrative costs associated with joining Summer EBT. Others say that they can meet their children’s needs with their own meals programs. State programs may not be reaching everyone, given the large gap between the number of children who receive meals during the school year and those who access meals over the summer. In the end, it is a matter of priorities.

Several of the 13 states who chose not to participate in Sun Bucks this year also have higher-than-average rates of food insecurity. These higher food insecurity rates undoubtedly impact the children who live there.

Summer should be a time of growth, discovery, and joy for every child—not one of needless hunger and hardship. Yet by refusing to implement proven solutions like SUN Bucks, some states are choosing to leave vulnerable children behind. Policymakers must recognize that access to nutritious food is not a luxury—it is a fundamental building block of a child’s health, education, and future. Without it, children will suffer not just this summer, but well into the future.

With strong federal support and clear evidence of success, the path forward is visible to all. Participating in Summer EBT is the right thing to do, and it is time for every state to make the choice to adopt it.

Taylor Johnson is domestic policy advisor, Policy and Research Institute, with Bread for the World.

The post After the Bell Rings: Tackling Summer Hunger with SUN Bucks appeared first on Bread for the World.

The United States and most other countries adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015. The goals include, for example, SDG 2, ending hunger and all forms of malnutrition, SDG 1, ending extreme poverty, and SDG 3, promoting good health for all. 

Bread for the World members focus largely on SDG2, but we know that the goals are interconnected. A sustainable end to hunger and malnutrition depends partly on advancements toward the other goals. Among the specific targets in SDG 3 is to reduce maternal mortality. 

A woman dies of complications of pregnancy or childbirth every two minutes. Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization, said that the data “highlights how dangerous pregnancy still is in much of the world today.”

World Health Day is celebrated each year on April 7. This year’s campaign focused on improving maternal and newborn health and survival. Significant progress has been made in the past generation. In 2023, the estimated maternal mortality rate was 197 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births (the standard way of reporting such data), down from 328 deaths per 100,000 births in 2000. 

But this is still far from the SDG target of 70 deaths per 100,000 births by 2030. The effort has stalled in recent years — so much so that meeting the target would require speeding up progress by literally a factor of 10. Rather than the current estimated rate of progress of 1.5 percent fewer deaths per year, the world would need to reduce maternal mortality by 15 percent each year until 2030.  

Experts agree that the COVID-19 global pandemic and its aftermath caused setbacks in reaching the Sustainable Development Goals. Teams of researchers have made painstaking efforts to identify both broad impacts (for example, which consequences of the pandemic will cause most damage in the long run) and specific impacts (for example, how individual countries and demographic groups have fared). 

On World Health Day, a group of UN agencies released the report Trends in Maternal Mortality 2020-2023, which included an initial estimate of the pandemic’s impact on maternal survival. In 2021, approximately 40,000 additional women died due to pregnancy or childbirth complications. This was due not only to COVID-19 itself, but also to interruptions in access to maternity services.

This highlights the importance of ensuring access to maternal and newborn care during pandemics and other emergencies. The report warns that currently, there is an emergency of a different kind–recent drastic cuts to humanitarian and development assistance. 

As UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell explained, “When a mother dies in pregnancy or childbirth, her baby’s life is also at risk. Too often, both are lost to causes we know how to prevent. Global funding cuts to health services are putting more pregnant women at risk, especially in the most fragile settings….”  

The U.S. spent $500,697,000 on maternal and child health programs abroad in fiscal 2023, according to an analysis from health policy nonprofit KFF. A leaked memo from Nicholas Enrich, acting assistant administrator for global health at USAID, shows that the agency estimated that if programs in maternal health were permanently suspended, 16,800,000 pregnant women in 48 countries would not be reached through life-saving services in the first year alone. 

According to the memo, “USAID programs have been pivotal in supporting maternal and neonatal care  in low-income countries—from training midwives to supplying essential medicine (like oxytocin for hemorrhage or magnesium sulfate for pre-eclampsia).” 

Many preventive measures apply to pregnant women nearly universally, such as making iron supplements available and ensuring that trained birth attendants and emergency medical help are accessible.

Other effective actions to preserve the lives of women and newborns may apply mainly to specific groups. The SDG principle of “leaving no one behind” is helpful in identifying women who might otherwise be overlooked. Perhaps these women are from the poorest families and/or from marginalized religious or linguistic groups in their countries. Perhaps they are child brides who are pregnant before they are physically mature, putting their lives and those of their babies at risk. 

The hopeful news is that, despite tragic and discouraging events such as a global pandemic, the world knows what to do, has made progress in the past, and has a framework to enable further progress. We must use all of these to intensify and accelerate efforts to save the lives and health of pregnant women and newborns around the world.

Michele Learner is managing editor, Policy and Research Institute, with Bread for the World.

The post Speeding Up Progress on Maternal and Newborn Health appeared first on Bread for the World.

Head Start provides comprehensive services, including early childhood education, health, and family engagement, to low-income families. In fiscal year 2023, Head Start programs were in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and six U.S. territories, and served 778,420 children ages 0 to 5. 

President Lyndon B. Johnson established Head Start in 1965; it has served children and families for 60 years. Head Start families have limited material resources. With few exceptions, eligible families must have incomes below the federal poverty line. This means, for example, a maximum household income of $32,150 for a family of four.

People who support a plan that would impose budget cuts on Head Start, let alone eliminate it entirely, support reducing access to childcare and other essential services for the most vulnerable families. It is that simple. 

But there is such a blueprint, originally seen on Page 482 of the Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise–also known as Project 2025. 

What are the potential impacts of eliminating Head Start? The family of four mentioned earlier, with two adults and two children, has an income of no more than $32,150 before taxes. In 2023, the average cost of child care in the U.S. was $11,582 – more than a third of the family’s income. The average cost of infant care is even higher—around $16,000. The family’s total annual cost for childcare would be $27,582 –nearly 86 percent of their combined income. At the same time, ACF views “affordable child care” as a cost of no more than 7 percent of a family’s annual income.

 The wider impacts on hunger and poverty of eliminating Head Start will be reflected in the lived experience of thousands of children and families around the country. The stories of families who have benefited from Head Start make this clear. Ashley Grillot’s child attended Head Start, and she describes her family as being more “economically stable and grounded” now. Kay Dease and Michelle Michaud are two of the many parents who were able to obtain their GEDs because they enrolled their children in Head Start, which provided the necessary child care for them to focus on finishing school. Head Start had longer-term impacts for former students like Frankie Caldwell and Stephanie V. McKee-Anderson, who attribute their success to participating in Head Start.  

The impacts on families of losing affordable childcare options would be catastrophic. They would face deeper levels of food insecurity and poverty. Many Head Start programs offer full-day care and some offer extended or after-hours care. If Head Start were eliminated, parents with children in these programs would need to dramatically alter their work schedules – potentially leaving the workforce entirely. Loss of income from work would only add to the  financial constraints on families. Head Start teachers and staff—about 248,000 people—would lose their jobs. 

Childcare programs are a natural venue to help reduce food insecurity. Children in many Head Start programs receive consistent nutritious meals and snacks offered throughout the day, funded by programs such as the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP). Families also have access to important nutrition education programs. 

The importance of quality childcare and education in the early years of a child’s life has been well documented. Bread has done extensive work and analysis on the importance of investing in mothers and very young children, especially up to a child’s second birthday. 

HHS, the agency that administers Head Start points out that such programs support the child’s “cognitive and behavioral foundation for the rest of their development and learning.” 

Children enrolled in quality childcare programs are more likely to graduate from high school, maintain consistent employment as adults, and enjoy better long-term health. It follows that those who do not have access to these programs are less likely to have the tools and skills that are essential to building an economically secure future.

Critics of Head Start say that it does not work. Some even call it a tool for government indoctrination. On the contrary, decades of research find that Head Start is extremely effective at supporting the family unit, increasing parental involvement, and improving childhood outcomes. (See evidence from Brookings, American Sociological Association, American Economic Review, Education Next, and National Head Start Association.) 

Head Start is not optional – it is a critical lifeline for the most vulnerable children and families in the U.S., and a commonsense investment with proven results. Giving children a fair start and creating pathways out of poverty reflect the best of American values. The real costs of dismantling Head Start go far beyond its annual cost now. They are the costs of leaving generations of children and their families behind. 

Taylor Johnson is a domestic policy advisor, Policy and Research Institute, with Bread for the World.

The post Cutting Head Start: A Recipe for Increased Poverty  appeared first on Bread for the World.

This is an existential threat and an escalation of persistent efforts to disrupt U.S. assistance to vulnerable people around the world. The first Trump administration, 2017-2021, had a record of efforts to cut support for essential humanitarian and development programs. Among its proposals were cutting off aid to the countries in Central America’s Northern Triangle over issues of immigration and asylum-seekers, approving U.S. assistance only to countries that voted with the United States at the United Nations, and slashing the budget of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) by nearly a third. 

During the 2024 presidential campaign, multiple conservative policy platforms championed many of the same ideas, even proposing an immediate freeze on disbursing resources until after an assessment of the programs, using the lens of their political views, was complete. 

This is precisely what the Trump administration has done. Each administration has the right to review its programs, but it should conduct its review without interrupting lifesaving programs, as past administrations have done. 

U.S. foreign assistance, dating back to the Marshall Plan following World War II, is designed to serve the U.S. national interest. But it also considers other priorities. One important consideration is that U.S. foreign assistance should represent American values. 

Human needs should be the main consideration when it comes to allocating U.S. assistance. The Sustainable Development Goals, adopted globally in 2015, emphasize that objectives such as ending hunger and expanding access to education apply to everyone. They are universal. No one should be left behind as the global economy grows and changes. Countries with the highest levels of hunger, deep poverty, death from preventable causes, or other measures of suffering should be prioritized. 

One of the most essential programs, operating since the 1960s, is lifesaving nutrition assistance. In some years, tens of millions of people have received food. The assistance goes mainly to women and children because they are at highest risk of hunger and malnutrition. In 2023, USAID nutrition programs reached more than 39 million women and children globally with critical nutrition assistance, including:

• 28 million children with nutrition services
• 11 million women with micronutrient supplements and counseling on maternal and child nutrition
• 6 million infants and young children, whose families and caregivers are provided with nutrition resources, programs, and education 
• 256,000 people with professional training in nutrition and skills development programs to equip them to deliver nutrition services

The stop-work order threatens global health. Disease does not respect borders. Even a brief pause in disease prevention and control programs can lead to a spike in infections like malaria and HIV, and Americans will be affected. 

One major U.S. health initiative, launched in 2003 under President George W. Bush, was the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). Every day, more than 222,000 people received medication to keep HIV in check. At the time of the stop-work order, PEPFAR was providing HIV treatments to nearly 680,000 pregnant women living with HIV. Because this treatment prevents transmission of the virus during childbirth, the 90-day “pause” that was been ordered was projected to lead to the birth of nearly 136,000 HIV-positive babies.

Humanitarian and development assistance often contributes to and reinforces other U.S. foreign policy goals. Feed the Future, the flagship global food security initiative of the United States, was a whole-of-government initiative that brought together a range of U.S. federal agencies and other stakeholders to work toward ending hunger, poverty, and malnutrition. 

Feed the Future also benefitted the U.S. economy. In the first decade of its operations, Feed the Future enabled the development of agricultural markets in its focus countries. U.S. agriculture and food exports to Feed the Future countries increased by $1.4 billion.

For decades, the American people have, in solidarity, provided aid to their neighbors in need. Foreign assistance, while strategic for our national interest, is about living up to American values and meeting human needs. We do it because we can. The Bible is clear, reminding us that as we do unto the ‘least of these’ among us, we do as unto Jesus (Matthew 25:40). 

Jordan Teague Jacobs is senior international policy advisor with Bread for the World Institute.

The post Meeting Human Needs Because We Can appeared first on Bread for the World.

The work on debt distress continues Bread’s longstanding focus on debt, most notably our leadership role in the Jubilee 2000 campaign. The Jubilee year in the Bible was meant to happen every 50 years. It was intended to be a year of liberation – an economic, cultural, and environmental reset and an expression of God’s desire for all creation to flourish. The Year of Jubilee was a year for releasing people from their debts, releasing enslaved people, returning property to its owners, and resting the land. It honored the principle that God’s people have a part to play in setting things right. 

Pope Francis has declared 2025 a Jubilee Year of Hope. Bread’s values of human flourishing also reflect the spirit of Jubilee. Between 2000 and 2015, the Jubilee campaign, including Bread and its coalition partners, secured $130 billion of debt cancellation for developing countries. Faith groups were the primary U.S. supporters of the Jubilee campaign. The role of faith leaders in encouraging members to contact their elected representatives about debt relief was pivotal. According to experts, the Jubilee campaign was one of the most successful movements aimed at ending poverty. However, there is still work to do. According to the U.K. advocacy group Debt Justice, “The campaign did not prevent debt crises [from] recurring. The same structural causes that led to the crisis remain in place.”

In keeping with the NOF campaign’s focus on putting children at the heart of our advocacy, Bread calls on the U.S. and other countries that make financial contributions to international financial institutions, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), to help alleviate debt burdens. This is particularly important in countries where child hunger is extremely high.

According to the U.N., more than 200 million children live in countries in debt distress or at high risk of falling into it and many of them are on the continent of Africa. The IMF lists 10 countries where children are impacted by debt distress: Sudan, the Republic of Congo, Ghana, Grenada, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Malawi, São Tomé y Príncipe, Somalia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. An additional 26 countries at high risk of debt distress are: Afghanistan, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Djibouti, Dominica, Ethiopia, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Kenya, Kiribati, Maldives, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Mozambique, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Tajikistan, Tonga, and Tuvalu. 

Bread also calls on policy makers to urgently address the adverse impact of climate change on children in hunger hotspots, where the effects of the La Niña weather pattern is exacerbating food insecurity and causing devastating floods in countries like Nigeria and South Sudan, and contributing to dry conditions in Somalia, Kenya, and Ethiopia. 

Climate financing is important for addressing climate injustice. Extreme weather events in hunger hotspots pose a threat to children’s lives, their access to food and nutrition security, ability to go to school, and ability to grow up in a healthy and safe environment. The continent of Africa is projected to enjoy a population boom from its current 1.5 billion to 2.5 billion by 2050, with its youth population already the largest in the world and projected to double to over 830 million.Extreme weather events threaten already fragile food systems in Africa, putting millions of children at risk of hunger.

About a decade before the founding of Bread, in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said “I have the audacity to believe that people everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality, and freedom for their spirits.” This was about a year after his history making “I have A Dream Speech” which Bread’s founder Reverend Art Simon attended in Washington, D.C. and indicated was a pivotal moment in his formation as an up and coming activist in the movement for justice and equality. 

The spirit of audacity that Dr. King speaks about is aspirational, and it is one that continues to inspire Bread for the World’s 300,000 grassroots supporters to keep working towards the end of hunger, to keep caring for our climate and God’s creation, and to keep underscoring the injustice of unconscionable debt in the lives of God’s children through advocacy for equitable policies.

Whether through God’s divine request or his divine appointment, as the Honorable Shirley Chisholm articulated, “You don’t make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas.” Congresswoman Chisholm (D-NY) did not just talk about it, she was about putting ideas into action as the first African American woman to be elected to Congress in 1968. She paved the way for Black women in U.S. politics and played an essential role in the creation of one of Bread’s NOF domestic policy passions – WIC, ensuring that low-income mothers everywhere in the U.S. could access free, healthy food for their young children. Thanks to her ground laying work, Bread and its supporters can continue to work to empower families across rural and urban America through our advocacy to protect WIC for children and women. 

In the faith and global space, Representative Chisolm’s clarion call to not stand by the sidelines was echoed recently at a summit with international financial leaders and policy makers, where Pope Francis warned against what he described as the globalization of indifference. He encouraged the cancellation of debts. Debt accumulation is often caused by the impact of climate change and injustice, causing unbearable sacrifices by millions of children who are mired in extreme poverty and lack food, housing, medical care, schools, electricity, drinkable water, and sanitation services. 

In a world of abundance, climate and debt injustice should not be causing hunger and malnutrition among our children. In a world of abundance, Bread and its 300,000 supporters will continue to advocate for just policies. In a world of abundance, we urge policy makers in the U.S. and across the globe to be resolved to work with Bread and other partners on God’s important mandate for all children: flourishing.

Learn more about what you can do to partner with us on human flourishing at www.bread.org. 

Abiola Afolayan is director, Policy and Research Institute, with Bread for the World.

The post Climate and Debt Justice: The Audacity of Three Meals a Day for Our Children’s Bodies, in a World of Globalized Indifference appeared first on Bread for the World.

In our last piece on protecting the lives of the very youngest children, those in the “neonatal” period between birth and four weeks old, we listed some factors that have enabled Bangladesh to make significant progress on newborn survival and health. Among the most important were investing in better roads and more healthcare facilities. In fact, by 2016, nearly all women of reproductive age could reach a healthcare facility within an hour. This contributed to a large increase in the percentage of births taking place with the support of a trained provider—another key factor in safer motherhood and protecting newborn lives. 

Despite fewer material resources, the world’s lowest-income countries have made progress on health indicators such as maternal mortality. Between 2000 and 2020, the group reduced its maternal mortality rate by nearly half, to 409  maternal deaths per 100, 000 live births (the standard way of reporting these statistics) in 2020.

On the other hand, progress has slowed, even stalled, in many countries over the past few years. While certainly broad problems such as the worldwide economic downturn during and after the COVID-19 pandemic and increasing levels of armed conflict are major reasons for this, the fact is that many goals become more difficult to reach as progress continues. The “easier” parts of the problem are naturally solved first, which leaves conditions and barriers that pose the most difficulty for the end. This is sometimes known as the “last mile” problem. 

The Sustainable Development Goals emphasize that “leaving no one behind” is critical to meeting the 17 goals, which include ending hunger and all forms of malnutrition. When it comes to complex problems such as maternal and newborn survival and health, this calls for political commitment, resources, and creative solutions.  

A closer look at the threats to mothers and babies in one of the world’s poorest countries, Chad, illustrates some of the difficult decisions that face public health authorities, healthcare providers, and people who want to start a family.  

Chad is a large, very poor country whose northern border is the Sahara Desert. Geographic isolation is one of the major problems. Without a strong network of roads suitable for vehicles, many people must walk for several hours to reach the nearest health clinic—including women on the verge of giving birth.

Without easy access to skilled healthcare providers, itfollows that one of the leading causes of death among women in Chad is complications of pregnancy and childbirth. The risk of death during pregnancy, childbirth, and the weeks after birth in Chad is one of the highest in the world. In 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported a maternal mortality rate of 1,063 per 100,000 live births (Source: WHO, UNICEF, UNFPA, World Bank Group and UNDESA/Population Division (eds)., Geneva, World Health Organization, 2023).

The difficulties of reducing the maternal mortality rate are summed up in the results of research supported by the U.N. Global Fund and the Liverpool School of Medicine. Very limited resources are available, with annual healthcare spending at $29 per person. There is a significant shortage of doctors and nurses/midwives—compared with other countries in Africa, there are 80 to 85 percent fewer healthcare providers. Nearly half of the country’s skilled health workforce is in the capital city of N’Djamena, although less than 10 percent of the population lives there (source: Ministere de la Santé Publique, Plan Stratégique de Santé Communautaire 2015-2018, government of Chad).

Underreporting of maternal deaths is another significant problem. There appears to be little to no recent data on newborn survival and health. Perhaps the most striking difficulty the researchers identified was lack of the information essential to setting priorities and making decisions. Their report, published in December 2024, contains statements such as “… but data on individual interventions in Chad were seldom available” and “As cause-specific maternal mortality data are limited in Chad…”.

Despite all the limitations, the researchers were able to use qualitative interviews, site visits, and data that was available to identify the regions of the country most in need and make a list of the highest-priority actions. As a result, health planners can begin to “develop more equitable frameworks and allocate their resources in ways that have a greater impact.”

Michele Learner is managing editor, Policy and Research Institute, with Bread for the World.

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One powerful motivation for Bread for the World’s work is concern for children. Our members work to ensure that all children, no matter where they were born, have access to nutritious food. This has been true throughout Bread’s history, from our campaigns for vaccination against childhood diseases in the 1970s and 1980s to our newest campaign, Nourish Our Future.  

Bread members focus on the most vulnerable children. One of the most vulnerable groups is the youngest children, the age group that has been known as the “1,000 Days” since 2008, when researchers established definitively that the 1,000 days from pregnancy to the second birthday is the most important window for human nutrition. 

This is because it is a window of both great opportunity and great risk. Pregnant women, babies, and toddlers need the right nutrients at the right times. Eating foods that contain these can establish a lasting foundation for a healthy life. But even with progress over the past 20 years, far too many children do not get what they need. They are at far greater risk of dying from childhood illnesses or infections. Those who survive may suffer from stunting, a condition that brings lifelong health problems and damage to physical and cognitive development. About one child in five alive today suffers from stunting.  

Strenuous efforts to reduce the rates of stunting must continue if the world is to meet the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), goals that Bread often mentions, by 2030.

The world has made impressive progress over the past one to two generations in ensuring that children reach their milestone fifth birthday. When we mention childhood malnutrition, we are generally talking about children younger than 5. This is because, while older children, teens, and adults can also suffer serious consequences from malnutrition, they are better able to recover than young children.

Among children born around the world in 1990, one child in 11 did not survive to age 5. Among children born in 2022, this figure drops to one child in 27. While this is still far too many, it also shows significant progress.  The U.N. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the predecessor of the Sustainable Development Goals, called for reducing the neonatal mortality rate by two-thirds by 2015, compared to the rate in 1990. The MDGs spurred national efforts to advance more rapidly in areas such as public health, immunization against childhood diseases, clean water, skilled attendants at birth, and micronutrient supplementation, all of which contributed significantly to the progress. Expanded educational opportunities and achievement for girls was another key contributing factor. About 60 countries met the goal by 2015.

 Many more children who are between one month and 5 years old are surviving. As their survival rate increases, a larger and larger share of those who die are newborns. The most fragile time in human life is birth to four weeks old, sometimes called the “neonatal period.” Progress on reducing mortality among these babies has also been made, but at a slower pace. This means that a larger share of all deaths of children under 5 are of babies in the first month after birth. The need to save newborn lives is receiving more attention now that childhood deaths are more likely to be those of newborns. 

• As of 2019 (latest available data), 47 percent of all deaths among children under 5 occur during the first four weeks, about one-third on the day of birth. Nearly three-fourths occur within the first week. 
  
• Also in 2019, Sub-Saharan Africa had the highest neonatal mortality rate, 27 deaths per 1,000 live births. The second-highest rate was in Central and Southern Asia, with 24 deaths per 1,000 live births.

• According to the World Health Organization, a child born in a sub-Saharan Africa or Southern Asian country is 10 times more likely to die in the first month than a child born in a high-income country. 

When we look at neonatal survival worldwide, we realize that in lower-income and higher-income countries alike, some babies do not survive. They are born far too early and/or with severe congenital conditions, and today’s medical knowledge cannot save their lives. 

Most other causes of neonatal mortality, however, show stark inequities, particularly among premature newborns. Many newborns die simply because of where they were born. 

Researchers and medical professionals have developed a clear understanding of some relatively straightforward ways of improving the survival of newborns and reducing preventable stillbirths. An effective strategy must include sufficient high-quality prenatal care, skilled care during birth, postnatal care for mother and baby, and identification and medical attention for babies who have low birthweights or illnesses. Often what is needed, however, is not expensive technology, but a system of trained midwives who provide continuity of care. In fact, continuity of care can reduce preterm births by up to 24 percent.

In lower-income countries, babies continue to be born without the support of a trained healthcare provider, although this is becoming less common. Those born in rural areas, far from the nearest well-equipped clinic or hospital, are at higher risk, as are those born to women who have not had four or more prenatal checkups. 

But the main risk factor for newborn death is premature birth. Complications from prematurity is the leading cause of death among children under 5 worldwide. In 2019, there were approximately 900,000 deaths among premature infants.

In our next piece, we will look at some solutions that are enabling more babies to survive and how some countries are meeting with success in implementing them.

Michele Learner is managing editor, Policy and Research Institute, with Bread for the World.

The post Nourish Our Future: The Youngest Children appeared first on Bread for the World.

“It takes a village” is a cliché. But when it comes to protecting the newest lives, babies from birth to four weeks old, it is absolutely accurate. 

Bread for the World tells the story of the encouraging progress in saving the lives of young children over the past generation. Babies born in 1990 had a 1 in 11 chance of not living to their fifth birthday, but babies born in 2022 had a much lower chance, 1 in 27. This is still far too many deaths, but it is significant progress. 

Of all deaths among children under 5, 47 percent are newborns, babies not yet four weeks old. The world has made progress in saving the lives of these babies, but it has not been as rapid as among older babies and children. 

Most countries are capable of making faster progress. According to UNICEF, “The elements necessary to … [reduce] newborn mortality—ensuring high-quality maternal and newborn care—are well-known and within most countries’ capacity to implement.”

We all realize that the lives and health of newborns are inextricably linked to the lives and health of their mothers. The health and nutritional status of girls and women is of paramount importance to the health of their babies. 

Globally, prematurity is the leading cause of death in children under 5. In countries around the world, the rate of preterm birth in 2020 ranged from 4 percent to 16 percent. Preterm birth was the cause of approximately 900,000 deaths in 2019 (latest data available). While risks can be managed, more research is needed because in many cases, the cause is unknown. 

Preventing deaths and complications from preterm birth starts with a healthy pregnancy. The World Health Organization’s guidelines emphasize eating a nutritious diet and not smoking. In addition, receiving continuity of care by professional midwives can reduce preterm labor by up to 24 percent.  

Much of the world’s progress in quality of life issues can be credited to learning from the successes of others, and neonatal survival is no exception. 

One success story is Bangladesh. In just a little over one generation, Bangladesh has reduced its neonatal death rate from 64.2 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1990, to 42.4 per 1,000 births in 2000, to 20.1 per 1,000 birthsin 2023. Here is a brief look at what made this very significant progress possible. 

We know that health is inextricably tied to larger socioeconomic conditions. Bangladesh’s success in other areas of development and economic growth provided the backdrop for progress. A large network of roads was built, reducing barriers to seeking medical attention. Access to electricity improved—important since babies are born at all hours. The country has made enormous progress in developing the capacity to manufacture its own pharmaceuticals. More affordable pricing makes a difference in a lower-income country with more than 176 million people as of 2024.

Many more health clinics were opened. In 2016, the country reached the point where almost all women of reproductive age could reach a health facility within one hour.

Dr. Abdul Mannan, a physician and chair of the neonatology department at Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University in Dhaka, said that a key factor in improving newborn survival was reducing the share of births that were taking place in homes instead of health-care facilities, adding: “In 1990 about 90 percent of deliveries were happening in homes, basically just assisted by relatives [of the mother] who had no training.”

Evidence over decades has shown that a major factor in progress against child malnutrition is education for girls.Bangladesh made rapid progress in this area. By 2019, 68 percent of women were literate, up from just 26 percent in 2000. 

Early marriage is associated with higher rates of maternal and newborn mortality because girls are giving birth before their bodies are mature. Since the turn of the millennium, the decrease in very early marriage has been rapid: among women ages 20 to 24, the proportion who had been married by the age of 15 fell from 38 percent in 2000 to 19 percent in 2017. 

Government programs were successful in reaching many women and girls from lower-income families. For example, health and family welfare workers identified pregnant women in several hundred of the poorest subdistricts and gave them information and vouchers for transportation. 

Researchers found that a long-standing initiative that provides stipends and tuition assistance for girls in rural secondary schools has reached more than 2 million girls. These initiatives“demonstrate the power of investing intersectorally in social programs that reduce health disparities.”

In our next piece, we will examine the possibilities of progress in countries that lack some of the ingredients of Bangladesh’s success.

Michele Learner is managing editor, Policy and Research Institute, with Bread for the World.

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WASHINGTON, D.C. – February 4, 2025 – Bread for the World, a Christian advocacy organization urging U.S. decision-makers to pursue a world without hunger, announced Tuesday night the launch of its “Nourish Our Future” campaign focused on eradicating child hunger in the United States and around the world. 

Rev. Eugene Cho, president and CEO of Bread for the World; Rev. Heather Taylor, Bread for the World managing director; and Dr. Jeremy Everett, Bread for the World board chair, were joined by advocates, experts, and Republican and Democratic members of Congress at the Capitol Visitor Center for the launch along with more than 1,000 people participating online.

“Nourish Our Future” is a two-year campaign that partly comprises expanding the Child Tax Credit, addressing college hunger, fully funding and strengthening the Special Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), and robustly funding global nutrition. 

“Making sure that children, here in the United States and around the world, have the nutrition they need to grow and learn is the right thing to do. It’s also an efficient use of tax dollars. The ROI on nutrition investments is incredible, and the programs we’re supporting are evidence-based. That’s why Bread is launching ‘Nourish Our Future,’” said Cho.

During the launch, advocates with lived experience provided powerful testimonials about the importance of these programs to their lives and the well-being of their families.

Members of Congress, including Congresswoman Alma S. Adams (D-NC), Congressman Robert Aderholt (R-AL), Congressman Don Bacon (R-NE), Congresswoman Jahana Hayes (D-CT), Pablo José Hernández, Resident Commissioner of Puerto Rico, Congressman Darin LaHood (R-IL), and Congressman Jim McGovern (D-MA), also spoke about the “Nourish Our Future” priorities they have supported in Congress. 

Statements from the advocates and members of Congress are below. 

Cho noted the devastating impacts the pause on foreign aid will have, and what the proposed funding cuts to domestic programs could mean, for child nutrition programs but stressed that there is a way to move forward. 

“The best thing we can do in this political environment is advocate for the policies we believe in. It’s especially important to acknowledge that the work to end hunger has always been done in a bipartisan way. We are so honored that members of Congress from both sides of the aisle are nutrition champions supportive of ‘Nourish Our Future’ – and we’re eager to connect with every member of Congress to have critical conversations about nutrition. When kids are fed and nourished, their entire life changes for the better– they can truly flourish. The drive to ensure children are able to flourish is why Bread seeks to build the imagination for a political alternative to polarization.”  

Over 9 million children in the U.S. — one in eight — experience hunger every day. Nearly half of all preventable deaths among children under 5 are attributed to malnutrition. And yet, we are only able to reach 25 percent of those suffering from the most dangerous forms. Spending on foreign aid is, on average, less than 1 percent of the federal budget, but the impact of the programs is far-reaching. In 2023, USAID support reached 28 million children with vital nutrition programs. For every $1 invested in addressing undernutrition, countries see $23 in returns.

The “Nourish Our Future” campaign seeks to ensure a hunger-free future for vulnerable children by driving collective action and securing the necessary will to provide the resources needed to address the problem.

Statements from advocates with lived experience:

Child Tax Credit

“As a hardworking Arkansan, I’ve faced numerous challenges, including affordable childcare, food instability, and timely utility payments and rent. The Child Tax Credit has been a vital support system, helping me provide a more stable financial future for my family,” said Julie Sigears of Springdale, Arkansas. “The Child Tax Credit helps families like mine stay above water when unexpected events happen. During covid, I was able to use the Child Tax Credit to pay for childcare when my work schedule changed, requiring me to find different childcare arrangements. Without this support, I might have had to leave my job, pushing my family into a financial crisis. I firmly believe a permanent Child Tax Credit with full refundability and monthly payments is essential for families like mine. It’s not just about helping us, it’s about investing in our community’s well-being. I urge those lawmakers here tonight to prioritize this support for families and make it a reality. ”

College Hunger

“I have double majored in political science and human development and family science, and double minored in sociology and youth studies. In May, I will be the first in my family to graduate from college. Like many first-generation students, I work long hours to support myself and often don’t have money to access enough nutritious food,” said Mya Bell, a student at Purdue University Northwest in Indiana. “As a child, I helped my mom apply for SNAP. Having this responsibility at a young age filled me with immense worry for my family’s well-being, a worry I still carry with me today. As president of my university’s food pantry, I also help other students apply for SNAP, but it wasn’t until last week that a Bread for the World organizer suggested I apply for SNAP myself. Again, I experienced that same intense fear of misunderstanding or answering something incorrectly and becoming ineligible to receive food. It took me back to my childhood and to fears that I hoped I would never have to experience again.”

WIC

“Many have asked me why — with a master’s degree in biological sciences and a career as a research coordinator — I would need WIC,” said Ashley Blair, a mother from Memphis, Tennessee. “To be honest, when I first took on the role, I was being paid less than a worker at McDonald’s. The notion that someone with a degree would not need financial assistance is just not true. We wrestle with many of the same financial hardships as others. At one point, I had to carefully budget every penny. I vividly remember my daughter having a dentist’s appointment where her exam was not covered under my insurance. I had to choose between paying for my daughter’s dental exam or providing her with the food she needed. No parent should have to choose between feeding their child or getting the necessary screenings done to ensure quality of life. Having access to WIC has made a huge difference in my life and I am here asking that the WIC program be fully funded and modernized. The ‘Nourish Our Future’ platform will strengthen families so the fight to end hunger can be resolved. I’m excited to be a voice for Bread for the World and I cannot wait to see what they accomplish now and in the future. I urge those lawmakers here tonight to prioritize this support for families and support funding the WIC program.”

Global Nutrition

“’How did they survive? What did they eat?’ These questions weighed heavily on me as I first learned of my grandparents’ experience of World War II in Asia. My grandparents are from Singapore and these questions of survival echo in my work today,” said Joy Lee, program administrator for the Master of Arts in Humanitarian & Disaster Leadership program at Wheaton College in Illinois. “I’ve had the privilege of working with graduate students from Liberia, Malawi, and Uganda, countries where many people live with malnutrition. Walking with them as they serve and advocate in places of loss and survival led me to understand the complex challenges of global malnutrition, and an even deeper concern for the harsh realities of hunger, particularly for children.

Amidst these challenges that can bring us to tears, I’ve grown to see the glimmers of God’s love moving as people take action to learn more, transform food systems, and enhance global nutrition. The legacy of hope and partnership from the United States is essential and supports U.S. strategic interests. Tonight, in these uncertain times, I stand with Bread for the World to urge Congress to take action and provide robust funding for global nutrition in the federal budget so children, made in the image of God who are asking ‘how will I survive? What will I eat?’, can walk their unique paths of boundless potential.”

Statements from members of Congress:

“You can’t be healthy if you’re hungry. We need many approaches to tackle hunger in our communities and across the country. Now more than ever, addressing college hunger, fully funding WIC, expanding the child tax credit, and fighting hunger abroad must all be essential strategies in addressing what I call my four H’s: hunger, housing, healthcare, and higher education. I commend Bread for the World’s efforts to literally ‘nourish our future’ and am proud to have led on – and continue to lead on – these issues,” said Congresswoman Alma S. Adams, Ph.D., (D-NC).

“I was honored to speak at the launch of Bread for the World’s ‘Nourish Our Future’ campaign. This incredible organization continues to do vital work in addressing hunger and supporting families across the country and around the world. At the event, I was excited to discuss the importance of expanding the Child Tax Credit—ensuring that it supports even the lowest-income families. Strengthening this policy will help lift millions of children out of poverty and give families the resources they need to thrive. I’m grateful for Bread for the World’s leadership and advocacy in this space, and I look forward to working together to create a brighter future for our children and our nation,” said Congressman Robert Aderholt (R-AL).

“Many people believe hunger is an overseas problem, but it’s not just that. It’s an American problem as well. It’s not because there isn’t enough food available, but access to it is limited. That is why I support Bread for World’s ‘Nourish Our Future’ campaign, which includes a call to fully fund WIC which provides mothers and young children with nutritious food, breastfeeding support and other programs. As a parent, I’m also concerned about college food insecurity. Many people don’t know this even exists and I’m excited to learn more about it and lead on this issue,” said Congressman Don Bacon (R-NE).

“I was honored to attend Bread for the World’s Launch of the ‘Nourish Our Future’ Campaign last evening. Food assistance programs are not just about feeding people; they are about creating stability, dignity, and opportunity. Transitioning from NAP to SNAP and strengthening WIC in Puerto Rico would help ensure that every family has access to the nutrition and support they deserve. But food security is just one piece of the puzzle. That’s why I am laser-focused on fueling Puerto Rico’s economic development and ensuring equal treatment in all federal benefits,” said Pablo José Hernández, Resident Commissioner of Puerto Rico.

“Bread for the World plays a critical role in educating and advocating for the improved health and well-being of children and families. It was an honor to speak at the ‘Nourish Our Future’ kick-off event and I want to congratulate Bread on celebrating their 50th anniversary. While we have made some strides in reducing childhood hunger, we must do a better job prioritizing federal policy aimed at addressing the global nutrition crisis. I am committed to working alongside Republicans and Democrats in Congress to address the challenges of global child hunger,” said Congressman Darin LaHood (R-IL).

“I’m always thrilled to join my friends at Bread for the World, and especially as they launch their new ‘Nourish Our Future’ platform. Now, more than ever, we as anti-hunger advocates need to speak up loud and clear about the scourge of hunger. We cannot allow our vital anti-hunger programs to be gutted. I extend my sincere thanks to everyone at Bread for the World for recommitting themselves to the vital mission to end hunger once and for all,” said Congressman Jim McGovern (D-MA).

To learn more about Bread for the World’s commitment to a world without hunger and its 50 years of faithful advocacy, visit www.bread.org.

About Bread for the World

Bread for the World is a Christian advocacy organization urging U.S. decision-makers to do all they can to pursue a world without hunger. www.bread.org.

The post Bread for the World Launches “Nourish Our Future” Campaign Focused on Child Hunger with Bipartisan Support on Capitol Hill appeared first on Bread for the World.

As we strive to end childhood hunger both at home and abroad, we must find ways to turn abundance for some into a world without malnutrition. Understanding the scope and nature of the problem is a vital first step. 

In this article, we will discuss:

• The Prevalence and Impact of Childhood Food Insecurity in the U.S.
• WIC Modernization and Funding
• SNAP and Child Tax Credit
• School and Summer Meal Programs
• The Prevalence and Impact of Childhood Food Insecurity Globally
• The Thousand Days Framework
• Funding Advocacy
  

The Facts About Childhood Hunger in the U.S.

In the United States, 13.5 percent of households consistently struggle to put food on the table. That’s more than 47 million people, including nearly 14 million children. One in five American children is at risk of hunger, and that rate is almost one in three for Black and Latino(a) children. Nearly 38 percent of children with a single mother and 25 percent of children with a single father lack needed nourishment.

Food insecurity looks different for each family affected: adults in households bearing the brunt of restricted access to food by choosing to eat less so that their children have enough food, families skipping meals to stretch limited resources, facing tough choices between buying food or paying for utilities and rent. 

There is enough food produced in the U.S. to feed everyone in the country. Here, and in other wealthier countries, hunger is not a result of food availability, but rather of access. 

Over the last few years, rising inflation has continued to squeeze budgets even further by pushing up the prices of food, rent, and healthcare, causing a growing number of families to grapple with food insecurity and make difficult decisions on how to spend money. 

The Impacts of Childhood Food Insecurity

Insufficient access to food has wide-ranging consequences for children, from education to healthcare, crime, and socialization. 

Children’s performance at school declines when they regularly experience hunger. Concentration, mood, motor skills, and memory can all be affected by an empty stomach, making it difficult to learn and focus in a classroom environment. Children who are hungry have lower scores on measures of vocabulary and letter-word recognition, as well as worse reading and math scores. 

Since education is cumulative, with each year building on the previous one, missing out on key lessons and developmental milestones due to hunger can have long-term effects on academic achievement and future opportunities. 

Food insecure students are about 3.5 times more likely than their peers to consider dropping out of school, and 3 times more likely to forgo academics in favor of earning income to support themselves.

Child hunger leads to higher healthcare costs for families already struggling to pay bills. Underfed children are more likely to be hospitalized, and the average pediatric hospitalization costs over $10,000. Rising healthcare and insurance costs place additional burdens on families, further compounding the challenges they face.

Lastly, kids without enough food are more likely to be disruptive at school and more likely to end up involved in the juvenile justice system. Hunger can impact emotional regulation and decision-making, increasing the risk of conflicts with peers and authority figures both in and outside the classroom.

What We Can Do To Address Domestic Childhood Food Insecurity?

There are many ways to alleviate child hunger. From food banks and community gardens to meal delivery services, sandwich distribution projects, and other programs carried out by churches and charities, people are stepping up to make a difference in their communities regarding hunger. Additionally, federal and state governments have safety-net programs to address this crisis. While every piece of the puzzle is essential to solving a problem this complicated, government programs provide many times more hunger-related assistance than private charities. At Bread, we work to ensure that critical anti-hunger programs – many of which are being challenged in Washington – are funded and expanded when necessary. 

WIC

One federal initiative critical to addressing childhood malnutrition is the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, known as WIC. WIC seeks to bolster the nutrition and healthcare of lower-income pregnant women, women who are breastfeeding, and children under the age of five.

Through the provision of nutritious foods, nutrition education, breastfeeding support, immunization screening, and important health and social services referrals, WIC gives vulnerable families access to essential resources for healthy growth and development. In 2023, the last year data is available, the program reached nearly 6.6 million women and young children, including about 40 percent of all infants born in the U.S.

WIC was launched as a pilot project in 1972 and became a permanent program in 1975. WIC has long enjoyed bipartisan support and funding. Recently, however, its funding has become more politically divisive. For the continued success of families, it’s essential that we help ensure programs like WIC continue to receive broad bipartisan support

In addition to a bipartisan commitment to full funding, WIC needs to be updated for the modern world.  It is vital that Congress reduce barriers and improve access to WIC by providing electronic and telehealth options so that families can become certified and recertified for the program, conduct appointments, and receive benefit payments without burdensome in-person visits.

These improvements help keep families engaged and enrolled in the program – ensuring they have the nutritional support they need.

SNAP

Another federal initiative with a significant impact on childhood food insecurity is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps. SNAP provides food benefits to low-income families to supplement their grocery budget, making nutritious food more affordable for an average of 41 million people in the U.S. per month.

SNAP plays a crucial role in protecting children from hunger during economic downturns and was designed to respond quickly and efficiently to increases in need. During the pandemic, SNAP helped ensure families had the nutrition they needed.

Improving SNAP participation among eligible college students is one way to make the program even more effective. In 2020, an estimated 3.3 million college students were eligible for SNAP benefits. Of those eligible students, 2.2 million students reported that their household did not receive any SNAP benefits. In other words, two-thirds of students who likely meet the stringent eligibility criteria to enroll in SNAP are not benefiting from the program. This is called the “SNAP GAP.” College students who are at risk of food insecurity and eligible to participate should be made aware that they can get help from SNAP.

Child Tax Credit

Another proven policy tool for reducing child poverty and hunger is the child tax credit (CTC). The CTC has strong bipartisan support and was previously expanded under Republican and Democrat congressional majorities, most recently in 2017 and 2021, respectively. The 2021 expanded CTC, significantly reduced child hunger and led to a 50 percent reduction in childhood poverty – a record one-year decline. By extending the full benefit to the lowest income families and allowing families to receive the benefit in monthly payments, the expanded credit allowed millions of households to afford more consistent, nutritious meals for their children.

In 2024, Bread welcomed the House of Representatives’ passage of a child tax credit expansion included in the bipartisan, bicameral Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act. Unfortunately, the Senate failed to move the legislation forward. In the first year, the expansion would have benefited 16 million children, including nearly 3 million kids under the age of three. It was also projected to lift 400,000 children out of poverty.

The clear, data-backed success of expanding the CTC emphasizes how targeted financial policies can directly reduce childhood hunger. Bread for the World continues to urge Congress to expand the child tax credit as a proven step toward prioritizing the reduction of child poverty and hunger.

School and Summer Meals

The National School Lunch Program (NSLP) makes a tangible difference in ensuring that American children have enough to eat. The program provides free or reduced-cost lunches to children and operates in nearly 100,000 schools and childcare institutions. In 2023, the program gave 4.6 billion lunches to nearly 30 million children.

Although a brief two-year period during the pandemic saw a program expansion that gave all children at qualifying schools access to free lunch, regardless of family income, it has since been allowed to expire, despite the efforts of Bread and other advocacy organizations that worked to prevent it from lapsing. 

Still, some states have enacted legislation to establish universal school meals: California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, and Vermont. Children in dozens of other states, however, are being left out. Making school meals available to all children who need them is the original objective of NSLP and the School Breakfast Program.

Collectively, these programs provide tens of millions of children in the U.S. with the nutrition they need to grow and develop. 

The Facts About Childhood Hunger Globally

After decades of progress, global hunger and malnutrition began to reverse course in 2014 and continue to get worse. Conflict and political instability, rising food prices, climate impacts, and economic downturns are primary drivers of the crisis. In 2023, chronic hunger, as measured by not consuming enough calories to lead an active and healthy life, affected about 9.1 percent of the global population – nearly one in every 10 people on Earth. Most of the people living with malnutrition are concentrated in South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and Central America.

The United Nations estimates that almost 45 million children under the age of 5 suffer from wasting (a condition whereby a child is severely thin for their height due to poor nutrition). Nearly half of all preventable deaths among children under five are attributed to malnutrition. And yet, we are only able to reach roughly 25 percent of children suffering from the most dangerous form of malnutrition.

Children who survive malnutrition in their early years are at high risk of stunting: lifelong damage to their health and their physical and cognitive development, which experts believe is largely irreversible. More than one-fifth of the world’s children under five, an estimated 22 percent, are affected by stunting.

What We Can Do To Address Global Childhood Food Insecurity

Programs that help prevent and treat child malnutrition in lower-income countries save lives, help communities thrive, and are a truly Christ-inspired approach to foreign assistance. Robustly funding global nutrition programs requires only a tiny fraction of the U.S. federal budget, but will reach millions of children and mothers with lifesaving aid. These programs also support U.S. strategic interests by building and maintaining relationships with partner countries and promoting regional stability.

Although hunger is on the rise, real progress has still been made: extreme poverty has been cut by two-thirds since 1990, as humanitarian aid, debt forgiveness, and sustained global economic growth have cut down the number of people in desperate need. This shows the impact that committed aid can have. 

One strategy to boost global childhood food insecurity is to focus on the first 1000 days, the time between pregnancy and a child’s second birthday – the most critical window for human nutrition. Strategies to address the first 1000 days include treatment of acute malnutrition, education and promotion of breastfeeding, nutrition supplements for children, adolescent girls, and pregnant women, and preventive malaria treatment. 

Government programs often partner with local organizations that are already working to end childhood hunger and malnutrition on the ground. Assistance from the U.S. government gives people tools to help themselves. For nutrition programs to be impactful, they must be funded appropriately, and when they are, history shows the great strides that can be made. With continued and robust funding, U.S. foreign assistance can help cut global childhood malnutrition to nearly zero.

Conclusion

Childhood hunger and malnutrition are crises that we as Christians have an obligation to end. And unlike many problems that we face, it is solvable, through smart policy, strong commitments, and the will to make it happen. We can nourish our future if we choose to; we can help feed a hungry and malnourished world if we follow the teachings and model the love of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

“Let the children come to me, and do not stop them, for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs,” said Jesus in Matthew 19:14 (NRSVUE).

Participate in Bread for the World’s 2025 ‘Offering of Letters’ by emailing your members of Congress and urging them to fully fund and strengthen the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) and secure essential funding for global nutrition programs.

The post Improving Child Nutrition At Home and Abroad appeared first on Bread for the World.

The idea is straightforward: an expanded CTC would put more money in the pockets of working parents who are struggling to put food on the table.  

We have solid evidence that a permanent expansion of the CTC could significantly reduce the rate of childhood hunger in the United States. This evidence can be summed up as the results of a similar but temporary CTC expansion just three years ago. The American Rescue Plan of 2021 increased the amount of the CTC and made payments monthly rather than structuring the benefit as a lump sum paid as a federal tax refund. For six months, from July 2021 through December 2021, millions of additional families with children received monthly benefits of $250 for each of their children ages 6 to 17 and $300 for each child under 6. 

For our country’s lowest-income families, an even more important provision of the CTC expansion was that all families with children, including households whose taxable incomes had previously been too low to be eligible, could now qualify for the full CTC amounts. As recently as 2018 (latest data available), an estimated 27 million children lived in these households. 

The impact was immediate: a steep decline in parents reporting that their families did not have enough food. On August 16, 2021, 25 percent fewer parents reported food insecurity than on July 5, 2021. 

In addition to its essential role of enabling more families to meet their immediate needs, an expanded CTC has a second important long-term benefit: contributing to racial, gender, and class equity in our country. As Bread has discussed, equity requires making conditions fair for all. Policies that promote equity help to move everyone closer to a “starting point,” whether they started out or continued being “left behind” because of disability, poverty, racial or gender discrimination, or a combination of these and other factors. 

Most people realize that raising children is expensive. As a group, families with children are more likely to be food insecure than families without children. But the risks are even higher for some demographic groups and family structures, including Black families, Latino/a families, Native American families, and families with single mothers, among others. (Other families with higher rates of food insecurity include, for example, families with single fathers and families with parents living with a disability).  

When all families with children are eligible for the same CTC amounts, there is a greater benefit for families at higher risk of hunger, because these dollars make up a larger part of their total income. This is even more likely to be the case for families who belong to more than one marginalized group—perhaps a family whose single mother is Black or Native American or biracial. 

Researchers projected that children from groups with disproportionately high poverty rates would benefit most from the 2021 expansion. Poverty rates would be cut by 62 percent, 52 percent, and 45 percent among Native American children, Latino children, and Black children, respectively. The children of single mothers have very high poverty rates. At the height of the pandemic in 2021, for example, the national poverty rate for households with single mothers was 31.3 percent. Mothers of color and their children had even higher poverty rates: 37.4 percent of Black families, 35.9 percent of Hispanic/Latina families, and 42.6 percent of Native American families with single mothers.

We sometimes think or talk about the CTC as a program for low-income people, but this is not the case. Almost all families with children except the very poorest are eligible. The gap between the lowest-income families with children and other families with children will widen if all families except the poorest receive the CTC benefit. 

The CTC’s restrictions on high-income families–$200,000 for individuals and $400,000 for married couples—exclude just a small percentage of families. A single parent with an income of $200,000 is at the 95th percentile of individual income earners, so only the 5 percent whose incomes are higher than hers would be ineligible for the benefit. 

Bread is deeply disappointed that a bipartisan version of the CTC expansion stalled in the U.S. Senate. Passage of this expansion would make more grocery money available to millions of parents whose jobs do not pay enough to make ends meet. Even when Congress does not act, children still need to eat.

Yet, that proposed expansion would include not all low-income families with children, but, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, only those with incomes of about $16,000 or more per year. Such a policy excludes millions of families who work full-time but are paid less. For example, a family might be composed of a woman who lives with her two children in Georgia, Wyoming, or Tennessee. She works 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, at the federal minimum wage. Her annual income is $15,080 before taxes. 

Georgia, Wyoming, and Tennessee are three of the seven states whose minimum wage is the same as the federal minimum wage. The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. It has been $7.25 an hour, with no adjustments for inflation, for 15 years now – since 2009. A CTC that does not exclude the lowest-wage workers would make a big difference in the lives of children whose parents belong to a group often referred to as “the working poor.”

Michele Learner is managing editor, Policy and Research Institute, with Bread for the World.

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“We need food,” is the first thing Gazans say upon meeting James Elder, spokesperson for UNICEF, the U.N. children’s agency. 

“[Gazans] are saying that because their assumption is the world doesn’t know, because how would this be allowed to happen if the world knew?” Elder said in an interview.

In the seven months ending April 5, 2024, more than 33,000 people had been killed, including 14,500 children. The deaths are the result of an ongoing Israeli military attack that began in response to an attack on Israel by Hamas. On October 7, 2023, members of Hamas crossed the border from the Gaza Strip into Israel, killed hundreds of Israeli civilians, and abducted more than 230 people. 

“The number of children reported killed in just over 4 months in Gaza is higher than the number of children killed in 4 years of wars [elsewhere in] the world combined. This war is a war on children. It is a war on their childhood and their future.” Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General, U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees 

Several months later, the entire population of the Gaza Strip, 2.23 million people, are living on the verge of famine. Conditions for many are expected to deteriorate even further. By mid-July 2024, half of the population (1.11 million people) will face catastrophic conditions, the most severe level of food insecurity, “in the most likely scenario and under the assumption of an escalation of the conflict, including a ground offensive in Rafah,” according to an analysis by food security experts. 

 More than 50,000 children are believed to be suffering from acute malnutrition, a condition that is frequently fatal if not promptly treated, and 73,000 injuries have been reported.  Yet, only 10 of 36 main hospitals are “functioning to some extent,” according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

“Hunger and disease are a deadly combination,” said Dr. Mike Ryan, Executive Director of WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme. “Hungry, weakened, and deeply traumatized children are more likely to get sick, and children who are sick, especially with diarrhea, cannot absorb nutrients well. It’s dangerous, and tragic, and happening before our eyes.”

“I feel like my children will die in front of my eyes. What can I say? I don’t know what I am to do. I can feel them dying before my eyes. This is my daughter. It’s been five days she is without food or drink. I don’t know what to do for her.” Khuloud al-Masri, Gazan mother of two.

Extremely limited humanitarian access to border crossings and within the Gaza Strip continues to impede the provision of urgently needed assistance. Humanitarian workers, both Gazans and citizens of many other countries, continue to do their best to deliver food to desperate people. But their jobs are incredibly dangerous: as of April 11, 2024, according to the United Nations, a total of 203 aid workers have been killed in Gaza, including seven workers from the U.S.-headquartered World Central Kitchen. All warring parties should change course to respect the neutrality of humanitarian workers and work to coordinate their safe passage.

The vast majority of Gazans, about 85 percent, have been forced to flee their homes. These 1.9 million displaced people are largely without shelter, because more than 70 percent of all buildings in the north, and half of all buildings in the whole country, have been either damaged or destroyed. 

The scale of destruction is almost unimaginable. This is why the International Crisis Group reported last month that famine cannot be prevented solely by providing food, because so much of the infrastructure needed for basic services like clean water and sanitation has been destroyed. Johns Hopkins University’s projections suggest that even in the most optimistic ceasefire scenario, thousands of “excess” deaths are inevitable.

Top priorities—that can nonetheless only begin after a lasting ceasefire is in effect—include restoring the infrastructure needed for clean water and sanitation; building temporary shelters so that people are protected during the longer process of rebuilding homes and schools; rebuilding and reopening hospitals and clinics; and reestablishing the capacity to provide basic health care and treat malnutrition. 

This daunting list of even the most urgent tasks points to both the importance of funding UNRWA, an agency with the experience and local knowledge to provide effective assistance, and the need for other humanitarian assistance programs to continue to do all they possibly can. Every hour and every day are critical to a human being.

Humanitarian action is guided by four principles: humanity, impartiality, neutrality, and independence. Humanitarians are committed to alleviating human suffering, protecting life and health, ensuring respect for human beings wherever they live, and prioritizing the most urgent cases without discrimination.

International humanitarian law strictly prohibits using starvation as a weapon of war. People who are living in a territory under occupation have additional rights. Specifically, humanitarian law holds the occupying authorities responsible for ensuring sufficient civilian access to food and essential medical care. If there are shortages, the occupying authorities are required to import supplies or authorize relief efforts. 

Bread for the World is calling for diplomatic efforts towards a ceasefire, the release of all hostages, the allocation of sufficient humanitarian assistance, the access needed to deliver assistance, and safety and security for aid workers.

Syeda Lamia Hossain is a global hunger fellow, Policy and Research Institute, with Bread for the World.

The post A Manmade Famine in Gaza appeared first on Bread for the World.

According to the U.S. Strategy to Prevent Conflict and Promote Stability Plan for Haiti, the country does not have a Women Peace and Security National Action Plan, and gangs target women and girls as a weapon of war, contributing to a rise in sexual and gender-based violence (GBV). Women and girls disproportionately face hunger and malnutrition worsened by danger to their physical safety. The people of Haiti and the world know that inaction can never be a viable option in the face of hunger, malnutrition, and physical and sexual violence. 

Bread for the World acknowledges, along with the rest of the global community, that the larger context in Haiti is heartbreaking. On March 22, 2024, humanitarian officials published an update on the extent of the hunger emergency in Haiti, titled, “Gang Activity Drives Nearly 5 Million People Into High Levels of Acute Food Insecurity.”  Additionally, an estimated 1.4 million people are living on the verge of famine. 

The same day, March 22, CNN reporters in Haiti’s capital published disturbing videos and photos with a headline beginning “Carnage on the Streets of Port-au-Prince…” The language is unusual for a news report: “Haiti’s capital has been trapped in a gory cycle… An insurgent league of heavily armed gangs is waging war on the city itself… Much of the Haitian state has disintegrated, its courts occupied by gangs, its prisons left open, the prime minister effectively exiled…”

The most recent spate of violence means women and girls will be affected by the violence and destruction. According to the U.S government, civil unrest, political instability, failure to respect the rule of law, and lack of economic opportunity are contributing to high rates of GBV in Haiti, with one in three Haitian girls and women ages 15 to 49 reporting physical and/or sexual violence. Reports indicate that rape, sexual assault, and harassment occurred with impunity even before the recent rise in gang activity, and survivors are frequently blamed for the rape and abuse they endure.

As it relates to women, peace, and security integration into the political infrastructure of Haiti, women are chronically underrepresented in decision-making roles and have been left out of key judicial, administrative, legislative, and democratic systems, with only 11.5 percent of the judiciary and 3 percent of parliament seats currently filled by women. Haiti ranks 187th out of 190 countries in terms of women’s political representation (190 is the lowest). The lack of Haitian women having a seat at the leadership table imperils peace and security for everyone. Insecurity traumatizes people and communities.

However, local women’s groups remain a major pillar of resilience in Haiti, notwithstanding the dangerous and chaotic situation around them. It is critical to center the rights of women and girls and provide them with essential forms of support, including economic, psychosocial, nutrition, relocation assistance, and other necessities. UN Women is working with various local organizations, with the support of the UN Peacebuilding Fund, to carry out this work.

The Peacebuilding Fund has supported projects in Haiti that reached thousands of women and girls, connecting them with the tools they need to build stronger livelihoods, such as training in agricultural best practices, running a business, gender equality, and women’s leadership. Support from the Women’s Peace and Humanitarian Fund and local partners also brings hope and has given some women an opportunity to rebuild their lives after surviving gender-based violence, hunger, and other traumas. 

One such initiative is the Strategic Support Unit for Agricultural Development (CASDA) program, which focuses on empowering women who have survived gender-based violence. The program provides counseling, workshops on empowerment and women’s rights, and training aimed at strengthening their resilience and economic independence.

One program participant explained, “My life was filled with fear and uncertainty. The violence I suffered left me without hope,” she said. “But thanks to the opportunity provided by CASDA, I was able to start my own small business. Today, I am proud to say that I am financially independent and that I can provide for the needs of my family.” 

“This project has given me confidence in myself and in the future,” she said. “I am grateful to all those who have made this possible.”

These stories of hope where women thrive and enable their families and communities to thrive, even in the most difficult circumstances, remind us that programs that promote food security, personal safety, and resilience remain important. Inaction is never a viable option. 

The World Food Programme (WFP), with the support of Food for Peace and other supplemental humanitarian resources, provides lifesaving food aid in Haiti. However, WFP indicated that it needs financial and other support from leaders such as the United States to help meet funding needs. In order to continue to implement its lifesaving operations in Haiti, WFP is seeking at least an additional $95 million.

Haiti is a near neighbor of the U.S., and saving the lives of people who are unprotected from extreme violence and acute food insecurity is key for our national and economic interests, and it is a bipartisan moral imperative. 

Abiola Afolayan is Co-Director, Policy and Research Institute, at Bread for the World.

The post Women and Girls in the Beautiful Island of Haiti Need Food, Peace, and Security  appeared first on Bread for the World.

Bread for the World’s new campaign Nourishing Our Future emphasizes preventing and ending hunger among children. It is extremely important to take action to minimize the harm that climate change is currently causing children because, as Bread has pointed out, climate change is a leading cause of global hunger among children and adults alike.

Nearly half of the world’s children live in countries that are at extremely high risk from climate change. Whether climate change takes the form of a sudden disaster (such as a hurricane) or a slow-onset climate shock (such as drought), it affects hundreds of millions of children. It is not difficult to see how, when climate impacts are combined with preexisting social and economic problems, the most vulnerable children can be pushed into deeper hunger, malnutrition, and poverty. 

Losing access to essential resources can easily create a cycle of vulnerability, because these are the things that enable children to build up their resilience and their capacity to adapt to difficult circumstances. As the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) points out, the climate crisis is a children’s rights crisis. UNICEF describes the multitudes of ways the climate crisis can impact children specifically and has created a Children’s Climate Index. Already, for example, the education of an estimated 40 million children is disrupted every year, whether from physical destruction of schools or impassible routes to walk there, or less directly from being forced to drop out of school to earn even minimal extra income to help their families survive because of the impact of climate change. 

The families most at risk of being forced to leave their homes in search of food are those who had the fewest material resources to begin with, especially those whose governments have little capacity to meet their emergency needs.  The quickening pace of climate-induced displacement and migration is because increasing numbers of people are caught in desperate situations with few options. 

Approximately 32 million people were internally displaced by disasters in 2022. In displacement contexts, children are at increased risk of family separation, trauma, loss of access to education, exploitation and abuse, and violence.

Acting to Protect Children

Bread recommends actions that the United States can take to help reduce the toll of climate change on children. Some are included here, while others will be discussed in future articles on child hunger and climate change.

As most people now understand, the U.S. and other top producers of greenhouse gas emissions must reduce them as quickly as possible, reaching net zero emissions by 2050 at the latest. The consequences of not doing so are, in one word, grim. Exactly how climate change will affect migration depends, of course, on the world’s success in reducing emissions, but the U.N. International Organization on Migration (IOM) reports that by 2050, as many as 216 million people could be forcibly displaced within their own countries.  

The U.S. can contribute to closing funding shortfalls for low-income countries. As Bread and many others have argued, the communities suffering the most from climate change are those who have contributed the least to greenhouse gas emissions. A good example is Madagascar, whose 2022 hunger crisis was caused largely by climate change, although its greenhouse gas emissions are less than 0.01 percent—that’s one in 10,000—of the world total.

One fund established recently is the Loss and Damage Fund (LDF). Countries that are eligible to receive resources from the LDF are developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change.

But the needs far outweigh the projected funding available. Climate adaptation includes a wide range of actions taken to build resilience to climate change impacts—for example, using drought-resistant seeds or improving weather advisory systems. The cost estimate to build resilience sufficiently to protect the populations of low-income countries is more than $194 billion annually.

The United States could also facilitate debt relief for low-income countries that urgently need to take climate adaptation measures. Enabling governments to spend more on social safety systems would help build children’s resilience to climate shocks. According to UNICEF’s model, improved health and nutrition services could considerably reduce overall climate risk for 460 million children. 

Isabel Vander Molen is a climate-hunger fellow, Policy and Research Institute, with Bread for the World.

The post Children Pay the Price of Climate Change  appeared first on Bread for the World.

The proof is apparent via some depressing news, unfortunately. In 2022, the Census report shows, the child poverty rate more than doubled, rising to 12.4 percent, compared to 5.2 percent in 2021. The increase in child poverty was caused mostly by the expiration of improvements to the Child Tax Credit made in 2021 in the American Rescue Plan. As many of our supporters know Bread for the World has been a persistent advocate for these improvements.

Between July and December of 2021, the Child Tax Credit increased from a maximum of $2,000 per child to $3,600 for children under age six, and to $3,000 for children between ages six and 17. Moreover, the credit was restructured to be delivered in monthly installments, rather than a lump sum payment during tax season: $300 per month to the families with children under age 6 and $250 to those with children 6 to 17. Hard to overstate this improvement to what resulted in similar dramatic progress against child hunger in 2021. 

But the most important improvement of all was that the credit was made refundable, allowing it to become available to millions of families who previously earned too little income to qualify. It meant some 18 million children were newly eligible for the full tax credit, including 40 percent of all Black and Latino children, nearly half of all children in single-parent households, and more than one-third of rural children.

As a result of these changes, the Child Tax Credit became a form of universal basic income. You can call it anything you want; universal basic income is simply a recurrent payment—often delivered monthly—and is available to all members of a community with no work requirements or other conditions imposed on the recipients. That’s worth noting because work requirements became the main sticking point in negotiations to extend the improvements to Child Tax Credit beyond 2021.

Hence, it was a short-lived experiment, lasting only six months during the second half of 2021, but it led to an unprecedented reduction in child poverty and child hunger. And then it ended. What members of Congress giveth in 2021, they voted to taketh away in 2022—not all of them, but a majority was all it took to undo. Those 18 million children who benefited in 2021 were no longer eligible for the full tax credit in 2022. 

The postmortems following release of the report emphasized how policies can make a difference in achieving progress against poverty and other hardships. In an op-ed published by Religion News Service, David Beckmann, Bread for the World’s president emeritus, lays this out as well as anybody has. 

Another outcome revealed by the Census report also merits attention. It used to seem axiomatic to call “a job” the best anti-poverty program. (We don’t want to understate the value of steady employment. Earnings make up most of household resources, including for families that are in poverty). Jobs remain necessary to escaping poverty, but they clearly are not always sufficient—and haven’t been for some time. No year tests that theory better than 2022, when the unemployment rate was near historically low levels. Yes, inflation took a bite out of paychecks, but wages were rising for workers at the bottom of the income ladder faster than for workers on rungs higher up. 

It is sad that policymakers for whom work requirements dominate their thinking about addressing child poverty won’t do more to improve jobs for parents who clearly want to provide for their kids. Here are a few examples of policy inaction: The federal minimum wage hasn’t received a raise since 2009, childcare policy lags behind other wealthy countries, and there remains no federal law guaranteeing a right to paid family and medical leave. There are many others, but those alone are enough for an evidence-based indictment of inaction.

So then, it’s not just that policies matter in addressing child poverty. It’s a very particular policy: a form of universal basic income delivered through the Child Tax Credit. 

Public outrage over harmful government actions has a fleeting half-life. The best time to make an issue of the harm done to children by reversing improvements made to the Child Tax Credit is now.

Todd Post is senior domestic policy advisor, Policy and Research Institute, with Bread for the World.

The post The Best Anti-Poverty Program: Give Them Money appeared first on Bread for the World.

The NSLP is second only to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in the number of people it serves. In 2022, the program provided healthy meals to 30 million children, two-thirds of them free or at a reduced price. 

Children are eligible for free school meals if they live in households with incomes of 130 percent of the federal poverty level or less. In 2023, this means a family of three that earns $29,940 a year or less. Children in households that earn between 130 percent and 185 percent of the poverty level are eligible for reduced-price meals.

The NSLP was established in 1946, making it the longest continually operating federal nutrition program. It has always had a rationale based in national security concerns. More than one-third of potential Army recruits for World War II were rejected because they had health problems associated with poor nutrition. As the U.S. military shifted its focus from winning World War II to waging the so-called Cold War against the Soviet Union, civilian and military leaders became increasingly alarmed about poor nutrition among children and teens. 

Military leaders continue to support the school lunch program wholeheartedly as a vital component of national security. The NSLP provides most children, especially those growing up in low-income families, with some of the healthiest food they are likely to eat on a given day. 

The COVID-19 global pandemic meant that the U.S. government needed to respond to the population’s needs in new ways. For two school years, all children, regardless of family income, were eligible for free meals at participating schools. This was a radical change: before the pandemic, universal free school lunch and breakfast were not White House or congressional priorities. 

It was a blow when, before the start of the 2022-2023 school year, Congress allowed universal access to free school meals to expire, which Bread and other advocacy organizations fought to prevent. Since then, policymakers in several states have worked to establish universal access. At this writing, seven states have enacted legislation that provides free meals for all students: California, Maine, Colorado, Minnesota, New Mexico, Vermont, and Michigan. Several others are making progress towards such legislation. 

Children in other states, however, are being left out. Making school meals available to all children is the original objective of NSLP and the School Breakfast Program. U.S. taxpayers fund school meal programs, and it is the responsibility of the federal government to ensure that all children have equitable access to them.

The next best thing to universal school meals is a policy known as the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP). This allows schools with 40 percent or more of their students eligible for federal nutrition assistance to offer free meals to all their students, and more than 82 percent of the eligible schools did so during the 2022-2023 school year. 

The 40 percent eligibility threshold is too high, however. Reducing it would enable the community eligibility provision to benefit more children. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has proposed lowering the minimum percentage of eligible students to 25 percent. Bread for the World, noting USDA’s definition of a “high poverty” area as one where 20 percent or more of the households have incomes below the poverty line, suggests reducing the percentage to be consistent with the rate the agency considers high poverty in similar contexts.

Congress could take up this question of expanding which children are impacted by living in high poverty areas in the next Child Nutrition Reauthorization (CNR). The community eligibility provision was itself new in the most recent CNR, which made other major improvements as well. However, the most recent reauthorization was in 2010, meaning that a renewal—with opportunities to include policy improvements in all child nutrition programs —was due in 2015. The start of a new school year is a good time to point out that Congress is eight years late, and counting, to reauthorize child nutrition.

The COVID-19 pandemic spurred another transformational change that benefited the country’s low-income children. In 2021, an expansion of the Child Tax Credit (CTC) had an unprecedented impact: child poverty dropped by 30 percent. CTC expansion no doubt contributed to sizeable reductions in child hunger as well.

Despite this remarkable progress—and to the astonishment of many anti-hunger advocates who have been working toward significant steps forward such as this—Congress let the CTC expansion expire after six months. We will know more about the impacts of this decision on children and families later this year when USDA publishes Household Food Security in the United States in 2022. 

Todd Post is senior domestic policy advisor, Policy and Research Institute, with Bread for the World.

This article appears in the August 2023 edition of Bread for the World’s Institute Insights newsletter. Institute Insights provides an in-depth look at the causes of hunger and malnutrition and offers potential solutions to address them. Click here to sign up for the monthly Institute Insights newsletter.

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In encouraging news, efforts to help every newborn not only survive, but reach kindergarten age in good health and prepared to expand his or her world to school and community, have brought impressive results over the past generation. In 1990, 10 out of 11 babies born, about 90 percent, reached their fifth birthday, while in 2021, 25 out of 26, about 95 percent, reached this milestone. Moreover, progress sped up as time went on—the death rate fell more than twice as quickly during the decade 2000-2010 as during the 1990s. Even the most recent data, which includes the global pandemic years 2020 and 2021, shows continued progress.

Nonetheless, the world still loses far too many young children to preventable causes. Nearly half of all deaths in children under 5 can be attributed to malnutrition, which claims the lives of up to 3 million children every year. Each is a unique and irreplaceable person made in the image of God.

The record of significant global progress on “child survival” rates can also mask the very difficult living conditions that many young children endure. In 2022, there were more hunger emergencies, and those emergencies were more severe, than the world had been seen in many years. Five countries had famine conditions at some point during the year, compared with four famines total in the previous two decades. By definition, famine means dire conditions as measured by heartbreaking statistics, including an acute malnutrition rate of 30 percent or higher. Babies and toddlers caught in hunger emergencies should be a top priority for humanitarian relief efforts since if they are malnourished now, they cannot make up lost ground when they are older.

As some of the main causes of childhood death begin to be resolved, it is becoming more important to focus on areas that may not have received a lot of attention earlier, but which are now responsible for an increasing share of preventable deaths.

One of these is neonatal mortality, meaning death within the first four weeks after birth. UNICEF’s report Every Child Alive: The Urgent Need to End Newborn Deaths lists several causes and recommends solutions.

Improving the status of women, particularly their access to education and their ability to make decisions within the family, is important to reducing death and serious illness among newborns. Research findings indicate that a significant amount of the risk that children will be stunted at age 2 is due to conditions that are in place before they are born. This means that children’s futures depend in large part on whether pregnant women are in good health, have access to nutritious food, and receive essential health care, including at least four prenatal checkups and skilled care during childbirth and the immediate postnatal period.

Researchers also identified other factors, largely beyond the control of mothers, that affect children’s futures. Both babies who are born prematurely, and those who are small for their gestational age, face a more difficult start in life and are less likely to survive infancy. This is because a baby’s weight and length at birth are important determinants of her health in early childhood. Some women are too short, even as adults, to safely carry a pregnancy to term and give birth. The infants of girls who have not reached maturity themselves are also at higher risk. Babies whose mothers are younger than 15 are at highest risk, but those born to mothers who are 18 or 19 are also at higher risk than those born to women in their twenties.

Some actions we may be more familiar with, such as exclusive breastfeeding, supplementing vital micronutrients such as iron and zinc, and vaccination against childhood diseases, were also found to be essential to children’s lives and health. These interventions save lives every day and are especially critical to young children living through hunger crises with their parents.

Michele Learner is managing editor, Policy and Research Institute, with Bread for the World.

The post Hunger Hotspots: Babies and Toddlers appeared first on Bread for the World.

Bread for the World continues to draw attention to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on hunger, malnutrition, and food insecurity, both in the United States and around the world. Bread has called for measures to increase equity, including equitable access to vaccines, in pandemic and post-pandemic responses.

Experts say that the United States will be coping for years to come with the impacts of delayed medical care during the height of the pandemic. We saw hospitals filled beyond capacity with COVID patients, resources and staff shifted to respond to the emergency. As conditions become more like those of the pre-pandemic era, the U.S. healthcare system must respond to a backlog of postponed minor and sometimes major surgeries, along with millions of people struggling with long COVID, a condition still poorly understood.

The consequences that may prove most important in the years to come, however, may be the impacts of hundreds of millions of missed routine screenings for early detection, appointments for treatment of chronic conditions, doses of prescription medications that people couldn’t obtain or afford, and progression of undiagnosed medical problems that people developed during quarantine. Only time will uncover the cumulative impacts.

Lower-income countries, including those with fewer cases of COVID than neighboring countries, face all of these problems as well—but with far fewer resources to implement solutions. Many governments and healthcare providers in Africa last faced decisions of such consequence to so many human lives during the worst of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in the 1990s.

Bread is particularly concerned about one of the most urgent problems: missed vaccinations against childhood diseases. Quarantine mandates and other restrictions, while meant to slow the transmission of COVID-19, also created an enormous gap in protection from preventable diseases. This threatens to exacerbate the impacts of hunger for millions of children. Unvaccinated children, particularly those already struggling with malnutrition, are at enormous risk right now.

Because malnourished children have greatly weakened immune systems, they struggle to fight off childhood diseases and other conditions that most healthy children routinely recover from. Nearly half of all preventable deaths among children under age 5 are due to malnutrition, largely because illnesses and infections are far more dangerous. Children with severe acute malnutrition, a condition that calls for immediate medical attention and treatment with special therapeutic foods, are nine times as likely to die as well-nourished children with the same illness.

In May 2020, WHO announced that at least 80 million children not yet a year old were at risk of missing life-saving vaccinations.

The Lancet reported that rates of vaccination against childhood diseases dropped steeply almost immediately after COVID-19 became a global pandemic. In April 2020, one-third fewer doses of DPT3 vaccine were administered. Moreover, this global average obscures wide regional disparities, including a drop of 57 percent in doses given in Southeast Asia. DPT3 stands for the third dose of Diphtheria, Pertussis, Tetanus vaccine—particularly important because three doses are given in the first year of life to provide full protection.

A sharp drop in rates of vaccinations against measles is perhaps even more alarming. In 2021, a record high of 40 million children missed either their first or second dose of measles vaccine—both essential for protection. “Herd immunity” requires 95 percent coverage. In 2021, the two-dose global coverage rate was 71 percent.

Healthcare systems around the world are making efforts to catch up, with results that vary by country.  But the record number of children not protected against measles “shows the profound damage immunization systems have sustained during the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

The global community should make vaccination “catch-up strategies” a high priority and help bolster national efforts. Identifying children who are most likely to have missed coverage, who include rural children typically served by mobile vaccination clinics, is part of providing targeted catch-up services, services that are “essential to full recovery,” according to CDC’s statement of November 23, 2022.

Michele Learner is managing editor, Policy and Research Institute, with Bread for the World.

The post Global Health “Catch-Up” Strategies Are Essential, Especially for Children appeared first on Bread for the World.

“Bread for the World wholeheartedly welcomes this bipartisan and bicameral agreement and urges lawmakers to quickly pass the bill before the child nutrition waivers expire on June 30. Failing to do so would mean that many schools and summer meals programs will not be able to open their summer meals sites – leaving millions of kids without what is often the only nutritious meal of the day they receive in the summer. Children in rural communities will be at particular risk because summer meal providers will no longer be allowed to bring meals to them.

“These provisions will provide significant help for children who often do not know where they will get their next meal, particularly in communities of color who experience hunger at a disproportionate rate.

“As families face the crippling effects of higher prices on food, gas, and other basic expenses, the Keep Kids Fed Act will ensure the most vulnerable children receive the nutrition they need.”

The legislation will extend summer meals waivers through September 30 and allow children eligible for reduced-price school meals to receive free meals. It would also provide additional funding to schools and child care providers coping with supply chain challenges and high food costs so that they can continue to offer nutritious meals to the children they serve throughout the school year.

The Keep Kids Fed Act was introduced by Senate Agriculture Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) and Ranking Member John Boozman (R-AR), and House Education and Labor Chairman Bobby Scott (D-VA) and Ranking Member Virginia Foxx (R-NC).

The post Bread Urges Congress to Quickly Pass “Keep Kids Fed Act” appeared first on Bread for the World.

The first-ever, long-awaited U.N. Food Systems Summit is set to take place in September. As Bread has mentioned in previous blog posts, its goal is to build a more sustainable and equitable global system. Food Systems Summit Dialogues are taking place around the world, enabling a multitude of stakeholders to share their views on food system reform.

Last month, I wrote about the food system dialogue that Bread for the World co-convened in June with the National Association of Black Farmers, Federation of Southern Cooperatives, and Land Loss Coalition. These organizations represent large numbers of U.S. Black farmers.

This month I want to talk about child laborers in the global food system. They are a sizeable group of stakeholders, but they are mostly invisible and unheard. In fact, as far as I can tell, they have not been the focus of any Food Systems Dialogue anywhere in the world, nor are there groups that represent them. 2021 is the International Year for the Elimination of Child Labor, so it would be a truly shocking oversight and a huge missed opportunity if a global food systems summit did not pay attention to the problem of child labor and potential solutions.

The phrase “child labor” may call to mind sweatshops or sex trafficking. Both are real and revolting.  But of the estimated 160 million child laborers, 70 percent are agricultural workers. Sadly, most are forced into this work by their parents. Some people will respond that this is because families are living in poverty. That is true, but it is not an excuse. Child laborers suffer the same harms regardless of adult motivations or intentions.

More than half of all child laborers are between the ages of 5 and 11. Three-quarters of children in this age group are employed in agriculture, with approximately the same numbers of boys and girls. The U.N. International Labor Organization reports that after two decades of declining rates of child labor, the trend has reversed in recent years. The increasing rates predate the COVID-19 pandemic but they are not yet reflected in the most recent data. The pandemic appears only to have accelerated the increase in child labor.

What can be done to reduce child labor? One strategy is to strengthen social protection. As UNICEF explains, “Social protection covers the range of policies and programs needed to reduce the lifelong consequences of poverty and exclusion. Programs like cash transfers – including child grants, school meals, skills development, and more – help connect families with health care, nutritious food, and quality education to give all children, no matter what circumstances they are born into, a fair chance in life.”

Cash transfers are a form of social protection that have been used in countries around the world to help ensure that children attend school. Governments or donors give families a monthly cash benefit, provided the parents guarantee to keep children in school. Cash transfers are not a cure-all for child labor, however. In part, this is because the governments of low-income countries do not have enough resources to serve all families in need. Another reason is that attending school does not necessarily mean the end of child labor. As many as two-thirds of child laborers attend school as well, but they do poorly academically compared to their peers who are not laborers.

 What about the responsibility of people who consume the foods produced by child labor? Consumers have widely diffused influence. Moreover, focusing on personal choices can be a convenient diversion that policymakers and food industries can use to shift the burden of solving problems away from themselves. The private sector—organized companies and businesses that profit from the labor of children– must be held accountable for not doing more to eliminate child labor in their supply chains. They must develop and carry out plans to do better.

All the biggest food companies will be at the U.N. Food Systems Summit. Nestle, Cargill, and other food companies reap windfall profits from child labor. They have never been held accountable in court for their role as accessories. In most countries with a large number of children who are exploited as laborers, the legal systems do not have the capacity or perhaps the will to prosecute them.

It is possible that the countries where these children live simply recognize that their efforts will likely be futile. Most companies in this sector are U.S.-based. When six people from Mali who were former child slaves took their case to the U.S. Supreme Court, the court ruled that the companies could not be held accountable for the injuries they had caused in other countries.

No company that profits from the labor of children should leave the U.N. Food Systems Summit without pledging to invest in ending child hunger. Companies will argue that they already do make these contributions. But it has clearly not been enough. Companies that are profitable can afford to do more.

Another avenue to help reduce child labor is supporting women in agriculture. The economic empowerment of women benefits not only women but their children. When women increase their household income, families are more likely to invest in children’s education, health, and nutrition. This could be a promising area of the summit for efforts to reduce child labor, because the topic of women in agriculture is championed by the Special Envoy for the Food Systems Summit –effectively the person in charge–Dr. Agnes Kalibata, president of AGRA and Rwanda’s former minister of agriculture. Kalibata has never been one to discount the importance of gender inequality. 

But child laborers don’t have a voice at the summit. There are no prominent young people to speak up on their behalf, no one like Greta Thunberg, the young Swedish climate activist, or Malala Yousafzai, the Nobel Peace Prize Winner and advocate for girls’ education. It will be left to the adults at the U.N. Food Systems Summit to represent the interests of exploited children. Adults can sometimes be counted on, but they are not the safe bet that a respected and well-known adolescent champion would be.  

Todd Post is senior researcher, writer, and editor with Bread for the World.

The post The U.N. Food Systems Summit must address child labor appeared first on Bread for the World.

When I was 7 years old, my father went to prison. He was sentenced to more than 20 years. Like many children with an incarcerated parent, I experienced feelings of shame, depression, and withdrawal. In my case, this lasted until I was a young adult and went to college.

Having a father in prison felt like I was being punished for something beyond my control. The concept of “indirect sentencing” has resonated with me and with others I’ve met who have an incarcerated family member. There is an understanding that Incarcerating one person has emotional and economic impacts beyond that person. Families face a number of problems as their relative goes from arrest, to conviction and sentencing, to incarceration.

My father’s absence caused a financial strain. My mother had to raise me as a single parent, leaving both of us more susceptible to living in poverty. We were fortunate to have a certain level of stability because of strong support on my mother’s side of the family, but not all children with an incarcerated parent are as fortunate. The rising rate of incarceration of women has made the problem worse. With one or especially both parents in prison, many children fall deeper into hunger and poverty. 

In the United States, one in 28 children have at least one parent incarcerated —approximately 2.7 million children at any given time. An estimated 10 million children have experienced parental incarceration at some point in their lives. Many are quite young—about half of all children with an incarcerated parent or parents are under the age of 10. The likelihood of confronting parental incarceration is very closely tied to race. Broken down by race, the statistics show that one in nine African American children (11.4 percent), one in 28 Latino/a children (3.5 percent), and one in 57 white children (1.8 percent) have an incarcerated parent. 

Bread’s fact sheet Hunger and Mass Incarceration reports that more than two-thirds of all incarcerated men had been employed at the time they were sentenced to prison, and more than half had been their children’s primary source of financial support. A study by the Pew Charitable Trust found that family incomes were on average 22 percent lower in the years the father was incarcerated than during the year preceding his being sent to prison, and they remained 15 percent lower the year following his release. Many household budgets were further strained by expenses associated with incarceration, such as collect phone calls, day trips to visit their relative, and prison commissary costs—in addition to lawyers’ fees and court fees.

Many incarcerated people work, but most are paid very little, between 23 cents an hour and $1.15 an hour. They struggle to afford their own basic necessities, such as soap and toothpaste, which are sold at prices that may be twice those of n neighborhood stores. They may also be required to make restitution payments. Thus, parents in prison are able to send very little money, if any at all, home to help support their children. 

All these factors help explain why children with an incarcerated parent are more susceptible to living with hunger and poverty. The United States does not have many nonprofit or government-funded programs  targeted specifically to families who have lost a wage earner to incarceration. Some may qualify for federal nutrition programs such as SNAP or other types of social protection. But overall, the assistance available is simply not enough to respond in a meaningful way to the needs of the several million children who are living with indirect sentencing.

Karyn Bigelow is a research analyst with Bread for the World Institute.

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Forward-looking nations invest in infrastructure. It is a judicious use of resources because the investment pays for itself over time. But it often has immediate benefits as well, some of them less tangible and less likely to be touted at the time. New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie argues, for example, that President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal infrastructure investments in the 1930s paid instant dividends: they rescued democracy at a time when “it was not clear democracy would survive the long night of the Depression.”

As I discussed in a piece last month, infrastructure is not limited to bridges and roads. Every country needs to invest in its human infrastructure as well. Workers drive innovation and productivity. “Building” this infrastructure takes investments during childhood, including education, as well as supports that enable people to work productively as adults.

Accordingly, Bread for the World advocates that Congress and the administration prioritize investments in the 1,000 Days between pregnancy and a child’s second birthday. This is the most important period in setting the course of a person’s entire life, and supporting babies and toddlers has the highest “return on investment.” Of course, it will be many years before the infants and toddlers now in the 1,000 Days enter the workforce. It’s certainly an example of how “investing now” pays off later.

My earlier piece also mentioned the economist James Heckman, who developed the “Heckman curve” to illustrate the impact of investments at various life stages. (See the chart at top).

A 1,000 Days infrastructure includes WIC, Medicaid, child care, paid parental leave, and making permanent the recent one-year expansion of the Child Tax Credit. Here are some of the benefits a 1,000 Days infrastructure would bring, backed by evidence based on research:

Every dollar spent on pregnant women in WIC generates anywhere from $1.92 to $4.21 in Medicaid savings on the health care of newborns and their mothers. Medicaid covers nearly half of all births in the United States, and hospitalizations associated with pregnancy and childbirth are among Medicaid’s largest expenses.

Reducing the rate of low birthweight through WIC’s prenatal care programs is one source of these savings. The newborns of women who participate in WIC prenatal services have a 25 percent lower rate of low birthweight (weighing less than 5.5 pounds at birth). Even more strikingly, they have a 44 percent lower rate of very low birthweight (weighing less than 3 pounds, 5 ounces at birth). The cost of care for very low birthweight infants is 30 percent of all newborn healthcare costs.

Low-wage workers, who are more likely than others to qualify for WIC and Medicaid, are less likely to have access to paid family leave: fewer than one in 10 low-wage jobs offer it. New mothers whose jobs provide paid leave are able to stay with their newborns longer, and they are more likely to initiate, establish, and continue breastfeeding. An infant’s nutritional needs are best met with exclusive breastfeeding (no other food or water) for the first six months. In 2014, suboptimal breastfeeding in the United States was associated with nearly $20 billion in medical and nonmedical costs.

High-quality child care for low-income children generates an average of ​$7.30 for every dollar spent, as the children grow up healthier, do better in school, and earn more over the course of their working lives. Everyone in the country pays a price when parents can’t work because they cannot afford quality child care–particularly the higher fees for infant and toddler care. The cost to the U.S. economy is at least $57 billion annually in lost earnings, productivity, and revenue.

Similarly, estimates are that every dollar spent on expanding the Child Tax Credit will generate an average of $8 in benefits to the country as a whole. Child poverty costs the United States between $800 billion and $1.1 trillion a year. The temporary expansion of the Child Tax Credit in the American Rescue Plan is projected to cut child poverty nearly in half—which is why Bread is calling for the expansion to be made permanent.

As an anti-hunger organization, Bread for the World generally focuses on nutrition during the 1,000 Days. Bread members have been working faithfully for years to draw the attention of policymakers to the importance of nutrition in the 1,000 Days. Mothers and children everywhere need sufficient food and good nutrition during the 1,000 Days. It’s true in Kenya, and it’s true in Kansas.

But as I argued in an earlier blog post, WIC alone cannot build a 1,000 Days infrastructure strong enough to meet the needs of our nation’s babies and toddlers—or the needs of our nation’s economy. Bread advocates’ efforts over several decades have helped make WIC a strong and effective program. But much of WIC’s success depends on the success of interrelated parts of a 1,000 Days infrastructure—the aforementioned Medicaid, paid parental leave, child care, and Child Tax Credit benefits. That is why Bread advocates for a complete 1,000 Days infrastructure package.

Todd Post is senior researcher, writer, and editor with Bread for the World Institute.

The post A smart use of government resources appeared first on Bread for the World.

As Bread for the World has long emphasized, the “1,000 Days” period from pregnancy to age 2 is the most important window for human nutrition. This unique, irreplaceable opportunity in every human life is therefore a top priority in our efforts to end hunger and malnutrition.

Virtually all parents want to make sure their children have everything they need, especially food and especially very young children. But for far too many parents, conflict, climate change, economic crisis, marginalization, and other factors that lead to extreme poverty make it impossible to meet all their children’s needs. Whether their children grow up healthy, even whether they survive, is beyond their control. National governments and the global community have a responsibility to act so that young children don’t miss their best chance to survive and grow into healthy, productive adults.

Evidence that the human nutrition window is open for about 1,000 days, closing around the second birthday, had been building for years. Yet it was not until 2008 that there was broad consensus on this data and a global shift toward prioritizing this period.

The factors that determine whether a child celebrating her second birthday is well-nourished, ready to learn and explore her world, are not always obvious. We all know that human life is complicated. Although researchers can’t completely account for the outcomes for each child, they continue to collect and analyze information that will lead to better unerstanding. I’ll discuss the findings in a little more detail so we can assess what they mean for us as anti-hunger advocates.

Other recent blog posts from Bread for the World Institute include a Father’s Day reflection on children whose fathers are incarcerated, details on some of the financial returns of investments in the 1,000 Days in the United States, an update on what the international financial institutions that receive U.S. support are doing to help people devastated by the impacts of the global pandemic, and a note on our new one-pager resources, which explore how hunger, climate change, and racial equity issues are interconnected.

It is urgent to restore global health and nutrition services that have not been available up to this stage of the pandemic. We know that pregnant women, babies, and toddlers—people in the 1,000 Days—cannot fully recover from malnutrition or childhood illnesses as older children and adults usually do. Researchers continue to uncover more evidence that a healthy pregnancy is critical to preventing stunting, which, as Bread emphasizes, carries lifelong consequences for those who survive.

Research findings indicate that a significant amount of the risk that a child will be stunted at age 2 comes from conditions that are in place before he is born. Both babies who are born prematurely, and those who are small for their gestational age, face a more difficult start in life. This is because a baby’s weight and length at birth are important determinants of her health in early childhood.

When a group of scholars compared the importance of prenatal and postnatal factors in stunting, their analysis, published in the medical journal BMJ Open in 2019, found that while both weight and length at birth are important factors, other conditions also contribute to outcomes. Some of these are determined before pregnancy and continue to influence the child as she grows up (e.g., mother’s level of education), and some are intergenerational (e.g., mother’s height).

The analysis found that nutrition actions we may be more familiar with, such as exclusive breastfeeding, supplementing vital micronutrients such as iron and zinc, or vaccination against childhood diseases, are essential as well. These interventions save lives every day. Rather than downplaying their significance, the analysis emphasizes that nutrition for pregnant women and for all who may become pregnant in the future is also important. Nutrition during pregnancy is rightfully part of the 1,000 Days.

The authors of this analysis point out that everyone who is concerned about children’s survival and health, whether they’re global humanitarian workers, officials in ministries of health and agriculutre, nutritionists, doctors, community health workers, or parents of young children, should act urgently based on what we know now rather than waiting for more research.

Continued data collection and analysis are also necessary. Research priorities include pinpointing more specific risk factors for stunting among the many variables that affect people in the 1,000 Days, whether these influences are environmental, socioeconomic, biological, or something else.

Also notable for people in the 1,000 Days is recent reporting on the global shortage of midwives, which has worsened since the beginning of the pandemic. A report by the U.N. Population Fund included analysis published in The Lancet and looked at data on the midwife profession in 194 countries. It concluded that the pandemic led to “… the health needs of women and newborns being overshadowed, midwifery services being disrupted, and midwives being deployed to other health services.” The current estimate is that the world needs an additional 900,000 trained midwives, which is about one-third of the total workforce.

I was startled by both the impacts of the midwife shortage and the potential gains from filling this gap by providing midwives with the resources and training they need. If these needs are met, by 2035 two-thirds of maternal deaths, and nearly as many stillbirths and newborn deaths, could be prevented. This could save an estimated 4.3 million lives every year.

One root of both problems— the large number of malnourished pregnant women and the midwife shortage—is an age-old human problem: gender bias. A world that did not devalue women as compared to men would prioritize, simply as a matter of course, the food and nutrition needs of pregnant women. Persistent advocacy for gender equity might not be quite as critical to ending hunger.

But this is not the world we live in. Activists’ work to promote gender equity is more important than ever. We cannot end hunger without ensuring that pregnant women and others of reproductive age have essential life-sustaining nutrients–and to do that, women and men must be treated as equally valuable members of society. We should be sure to use a “gender equity lens” as we advocate to end hunger.

Michele Learner is managing editor with Bread for the World Institute.

The post Gender equity sustains the lives of babies and toddlers appeared first on Bread for the World.

The availability of effective vaccines against COVID-19 is enabling people in the United States to participate more fully in public, economic, and social life than has been possible at any time since the pandemic began. The country must continue an active vaccination campaign since, at the time of writing, only about 36 percent of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated.

Bread members have been supporting efforts to ensure that people in their neighborhoods and local communities have enough to eat. Hunger rates surged in 2020 and are still high in many areas. People continued to fulfill their pre-pandemic responsibilities, some of these under much more difficult circumstances. Some have also been facing grief, illness, financial insecurity, isolation, and/or other impacts of the pandemic, along with far too many other Americans. 

Now that there is a little more time and space for global concerns, anti-hunger advocates are drawing attention to the urgent needs of people, particularly children, with life-threatening hunger and malnutrition.

Bread for the World has written about two essential longer-term areas of focus as the world tries to recover and regain some of the losses of the past year—global vaccine equity, discussed most recently in this blog post, and major improvements in the global food system, the topic of our 2020 Hunger Report, Better Nutrition, Better Tomorrow.

But Bread members have also maintained our steady focus on people in the 1,000 Days, the unique window for human nutrition between pregnancy and age 2. And we must continue to do so. The reason is a simple one: as many Institute Insights readers will recall, malnutrition is a leading cause of preventable death among very young children, and the damage it causes to the development of those who survive is largely irreversible.

When it comes to nutrition, the 1,000 Days are the critical time. Nutrition can’t wait until children are 3 or 4, the ages that may come to mind when people think of early intervention or early education.

The World Food Programme (WFP), in cooperation with several partner organizations including the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), publishes a yearly report on people worldwide who face food crises. Many of these people are in the 1,000 Days—pregnant or younger than 2.

This year’s report, WFP said, finds that the agency’s earlier warnings of rising hunger as a result of the pandemic have been validated and “we are watching the worst-case scenario unfold before our very eyes.”

At least 133,000 people were living in a state of catastrophe or famine, meaning that urgent action is needed “to avert widespread death and a collapse of livelihoods.” These people live in South Sudan, Yemen, and Burkina Faso.

At least another 28 million people in 38 countries/territories were considered “one step away” from famine. The report said that humanitarian assistance has helped prevent conditions in some of these areas from worsening.

Young children are most vulnerable in such acute hunger conditions. Often, those with severe malnutrition have greatly weakened immune systems and cannot fight off illnesses that are rarely dangerous in well-nourished children. In the 55 countries and territories included in the Food Crises report, more than 15 million children under 5 had acute malnutrition, meaning that they were far too thin for their height.

We know all this because humanitarian relief programs generally do not have enough resources to help everyone in need, so analysts must identify those in the most urgent situations.

The permanent damage to children’s growth and development caused by malnutrition during the 1,000 Days is known as stunting. In the 55 food-crisis areas covered by the report, more than 75 million children under 5 were stunted in 2020. Many stunted children live in areas considered to be in catastrophe or famine, or in the next step to it, but others live in areas with somewhat lower but still high rates of food insecurity.

Still others, not included in the report’s 75 million statistic, live in areas that do not meet the criteria that defines a food crisis. But while a region may be relatively food secure overall, this does not mean much to poor and/or marginalized families whose children are still at higher risk of stunting.

The report’s author, the Global Network Against Food Crises, calls on the international community to mobilize urgently against hunger. The Global Network and its member organizations seek to prevent, prepare for, and respond to hunger crises. As we have mentioned in recent months, 2021 includes several major opportunities for the global community to respond to urgent needs, such as the Nutrition for Growth Summit and the U.N. Food Systems Summit.

In March of this year, U.N. Secretary-General Guterres established a High-Level Task Force on Preventing Famine, led by the U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Mark Lowcock, in conjunction with a variety of U.N. agencies and nonprofit partners. The goal of the task force is to “bring coordinated, high-level attention to famine prevention and mobilize support to the most affected countries.”

Michele Learner is managing editor with Bread for the World Institute.

The post Global hunger emergencies in the pandemic era appeared first on Bread for the World.

2021 could see the largest public investment in U.S. infrastructure in more than half a century. We should be glad for that. Much of our nation’s physical infrastructure is badly in need of repair. A significant investment could also create millions of good jobs for people who have been unemployed or underemployed because of the economic fallout of COVID-19.  

I think there’s a natural tendency to think of infrastructure solely in terms of physical objects—highways, bridges, the electric grid, and other structures built with heavy machinery. That’s certainly one kind of infrastructure.

But there’s another sort of infrastructure in which the returns on investment are much higher. Here I’m talking about our nation’s human infrastructure—the skills and ingenuity of the workforce, which in turn depend on the health and education of our population.

The U.S. economist James Heckman won a Nobel Prize in 2000 for his pioneering work showing that investments in people during their early childhood yield lifelong returns: they ultimately are better educated and more productive on the job, and they are less likely to need government safety net programs. Talking about “investment” and “productivity” may sound as though we’re thinking of young children as commodities, but our use of these terms is quite limited; it is strictly in the context of comparing investments in human infrastructure and physical infrastructure.

The primary reason governments spend taxpayer money on infrastructure is to promote sustainable economic growth. In the 1950s, President Eisenhower didn’t call for massive investments in interstate highways so that Americans could appreciate the scenery as they drove by. His goals were to advance interstate commerce and improve national security.

The Biden-Harris administration’s plan for investing in human infrastructure through the American Jobs Act and the American Families Plan presents a unique opportunity to advance an infrastructure package for early childhood development. Let’s call it a 1,000 Days infrastructure plan.

Institute Insights readers probably recognize that I mean a specific 1,000 days—the “1,000 Days” that is the unique human nutrition window open between pregnancy and age 2. Readers may remember from Bread’s advocacy on global nutrition that the 1,000 Days is when good nutrition has greatest potential to improve the course of a person’s entire life. Bread has worked on issues around the 1,000 Days in other countries, but of course the United States also has many people in that window, and in this piece I’m talking specifically about a 1,000 Days infrastructure plan for the United States.

As an anti-hunger organization, Bread pays particular attention to nutrition. The U.S. nutrition program tailored to people in the 1,000 Days—it seems more natural to think of them as pregnant women, babies, and toddlers—is WIC. WIC does a pretty good job of reaching lower-income women and their babies with nutritional support, and it could be even better with a few specific policy changes. But the 1,000 Days infrastructure we need is much broader in scope than WIC.

Major weaknesses in other parts of the 1,000 Days infrastructure are not only causing the United States to miss out on much of the positive impact that could be made during this nutritional window of opportunity, but are also reducing the effectiveness of WIC.

WIC is associated with reduced rates of maternal and infant mortality. But U.S. maternal and infant death rates are higher than those of any other high-income country. Few health indicators speak to the need to center racial equity in the 1,000 Days infrastructure more starkly than those on maternal mortality. Black women are far more likely to die as a result of pregnancy and childbirth: their death rate is more than three times that of whites.

Health care is inseparable from all other parts of a 1,000 Days infrastructure. Without it, the entire edifice is weakened. Most families eligible for WIC are already receiving Medicaid. Better coordination between WIC and Medicaid would improve services in both. For example, both WIC and Medicaid provide support for breastfeeding, and they could coordinate more closely, drawing on WIC’s proven strength in culturally competent peer support.

The United States has much lower rates of breastfeeding than other high-income countries. This is one consequence of the fact that the United States is also the only high-income country that has no national paid leave policy.

Nearly one in four U.S. women return to their jobs within two weeks of giving birth, which makes it difficult or impossible to establish and continue breastfeeding. The Family and Medical Leave Act provides for 12 weeks of unpaid leave, but low-income women can ill afford to take time off without pay. Some employers voluntarily offer paid leave, but this almost always goes to higher-earning professionals rather than women who participate in WIC or Medicaid.

I hope you’re seeing how the pillars of a 1,000 Days infrastructure plan reinforce each other. This piece can only briefly mention a few components of a comprehensive 1,000 Days infrastructure plan. Suffice it to say there are many more.

In a recent blog post, I discussed the temporary expansion of the Child Tax Credit (CTC) in the American Rescue Plan. This expansion is expected to cut child poverty nearly in half. Poverty and food insecurity occur at higher rates in families with young children. Critics of the expansion contend, without evidence, that it will discourage parents, particularly mothers, from working. Low-income parents simply cannot afford not to work. What prevents parents, mostly mothers, from working—more than anything else—is  lack of affordable, accessible child care.

Bread President Rev. Eugene Cho and Blythe Thomas, Director of 1,000 Days, explain what a 1,000 Days infrastructure would accomplish in an op-ed published in The Hill.

WIC, Medicaid, paid leave, child care, and CTC expansion are some of the essential elements of a 1,000 Days infrastructure. Individually, each is vital to positive outcomes during the 1,000 Days; together and aligned, they are a transformational investment in the nation’s human infrastructure—our next generation.

Todd Post is senior researcher, writer, and editor with Bread for the World Institute.

The post The infrastructure plan our country needs appeared first on Bread for the World.

The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan includes a one-year expansion of the Child Tax Credit (CTC), making the credit available to all low-income families with children.

Before the expansion, an estimated 27 million children under age 17 lived in families who did not earn enough to qualify for the full CTC for children because they did not have sufficient taxable income. These are families in which food insecurity and hunger are widespread.

Young children are more vulnerable than any other group to the damaging impacts of hunger even for short periods. At the same time, families with young children are more likely to face hunger than those with older children. This is why additional monthly resources are especially important for young children.

All children stand to benefit from CTC expansion, but children from groups that have disproportionately high hunger rates will benefit most. Poverty among Black children will be cut by an estimated 52 percent, among Latino children by 45 percent, among Native American children by 62 percent, among Asian American and Pacific Islander children by 37 percent, and among white children by 39 percent.

A CTC expansion not only contributes to better life prospects for the most vulnerable children in the country but also offers a good return on investment. In a way, the United States cannot afford not to reduce poverty among children, because every year, it costs the economy between $800 million and $1.1 trillion. The costs come in lower productivity, higher healthcare costs, and the need to spend more on public safety, services for homeless people, incarceration, and care for survivors of child abuse.

Major components of the CTC expansion:

• Increases the benefit from $2,000 per year to $3,600 for children up to age 6 and to $3,000 for children 6-17.
• Delivers monthly installments of $300 per month for each younger child and $250 per month for each older child.
• Equally available to all families starting at $0 income through middle-income status.

CTC expansion is a big deal, and we should feel great it was included in the American Rescue Plan. But we aren’t done yet. Now we must work to make the expansion permanent.

Expanding the CTC would do more to reduce hunger and poverty among our nation’s children than single policy in decades

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2021 is a critical year for global action against malnutrition for two key reasons. As you might expect, one is that the COVID-19 pandemic has caused significant setbacks, and active recovery strategies are essential. The other reason is more proactive: countries are coming together this year for the Nutrition for Growth Year of Action.

This yearlong effort aims to mobilize new commitments and continue to build momentum to make faster progress on malnutrition. Later this year, world leaders will meet for a high-level event on Nutrition for Growth (usually known as N4G), hosted by the Japanese government.

Also, this fall the U.N. Secretary General will host a Food Systems Summit. “Food systems” means simply the various steps involved in producing, transporting, preparing, and consuming food. It is sometimes summed up as “farm to fork.” The goal of the summit is to alert the global community to the need to identify sustainable solutions to the major problems of the global food system and build partnerships to implement them.

In addition to ending hunger and all forms of malnutrition, action areas include shifting to sustainable consumption patterns, advancing equitable livelihoods, and building resilience to shocks. The U.N. is inviting communities everywhere to hold their own independent dialogues and has set up a way for groups to contribute their ideas to the Summit.

The Lancet, a U.K. medical journal, released its 2021 report on maternal/child nutrition on March 8. The report helps lay the groundwork for global leaders and other stakeholders to set priorities for the Year of Action and beyond. The evidence base that supports a list of key effective nutrition actions has been updated and new items added.

The report emphasizes that the knowledge to end childhood malnutrition exists—but it remains for governments to commit to putting this knowledge into practice and respond to the world’s broad and unfinished nutrition agenda.

The last year-end data before the pandemic, i.e., the statistics as of December 31, 2019, indicated that 144  million children were living with stunting due to chronic malnutrition in early childhood, and 47 million were affected by wasting. About 30 percent of the cases of wasting were classified as severe.

According to The Lancet report, globally 149 million children under 5 are affected by stunting, and nearly 50 million (49.5 million) children are affected by wasting, or acute malnutrition.

While the statistics may vary slightly–particularly depending on whether researchers attempted to include the impact of the pandemic, which would mean that those numbers are preliminary–the more important point is that both forms of child malnutrition are dangerous. Nearly half of all preventable deaths of children under 5 are caused by malnutrition.

Children affected by stunting have survived early childhood malnutrition but will likely face lifelong health problems and physical and cognitive delays. Wasting is caused by acute hunger. Children with wasting are far too thin for their height. Severe acute malnutrition, if not treated in time, often leads to death. Nearly 5 percent of children in low-income countries are affected by both stunting and wasting, meaning that they are up to eight times as likely to die as children who are not malnourished.

Bread for the World has been particularly active on nutrition issues since The Lancet published its first report on maternal/child nutrition in 2008. It is hard to overstate the influence that this landmark report has had on the nutrition community, including anti-hunger advocates.

The report established that the most critical time for human nutrition is the “1,000 Days” window between pregnancy and a child’s second birthday. Very young children are far more likely to die of malnutrition than older children or adults. Those who survive are very likely to suffer from the lifelong impacts of stunting.

The Lancet reports synthesize vast amounts of research data to compile a list of the most effective actions to prevent and treat malnutrition during this 1,000 Days period. These cost-effective, relatively straightforward nutrition actions can prevent malnutrition or identify and treat it early on.

Despite a far clearer understanding of what works, progress has been far too slow. Little was accomplished in the several years leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic, and no country is on track to meet all 10 World Health Assembly targets for 2025.

The significant gains of previous decades are now being reversed by the pandemic’s secondary effects. These include, for example, lockdowns to slow the spread of the virus and decisions to divert healthcare resources and providers to treat COVID patients.

Since March 2020, many young children and pregnant women have had only intermittent access, or none at all, to lifesaving health and nutrition services. Children have missed regularly scheduled screenings to identify and treat malnutrition before significant harm is done. Many have also missed key windows for vaccinations against childhood diseases that routinely take the lives of children in many countries.

This is why the Nutrition for Growth Year of Action is so important. Armed with knowledge, the global community needs to mobilize to stop further reversals of nutrition gains and resume moving forward as soon as possible.  

Michele Learner is managing editor with Bread for the World Institute.

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March is Women’s History Month in the United States, and on March 8, the world observed International Women’s Day. First and foremost, gender equity is a critical component of respect for human rights. It is also essential for every country intent on building a more prosperous future, without hunger, malnutrition, or any of humanity’s many other longstanding problems. No community can meet its goals if half its people are blocked from using all their talents to help meet those goals.

It goes without saying that the COVID-19 pandemic has affected nearly all facets of life for women around the globe. But before I say anything more about the pandemic’s global impact, I want to celebrate a significant victory for children in the United States. Please see our recent blog post for the details of a particularly important provision of the recently passed American Rescue Plan—the expansion of the Child Tax Credit (CTC). It may not seem important at first glance, but experts expect that it will cut child poverty nearly in half.

For the past several years, Bread for the World members have been urging Congress to improve two tax provisions with the potential to help many more families living with food insecurity: the CTC and the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). The work of Bread’s grassroots advocates made a difference as a CTC expansion was included in the American Rescue Plan. Thank you and congratulations to all who supported improvements in the CTC and EITC!    

As the pandemic enters its second year, many people have paused to reflect on the enormous damage to virtually every country on Earth in only one year. In addition to the suffering of patients themselves and their families, even larger numbers have been forced to go without necessities as the global economy was brought nearly to a halt. Hundreds of millions of people lost their means of earning a living, whether that had been in a profession or job, or in the so-called “informal sector,” where people work as smallholder farmers, market women, tailors, midwives, and in many other capacities to sustain their communities and feed themselves and their families.

As noted most recently, another major impact of lockdowns and other restrictions imposed for public health reasons is that many people have been unable to access basic health care. This is particularly dangerous for young children, many of whom have missed screenings for malnutrition and immunizations against childhood diseases that remain deadly in many countries.

Recently we have also taken a look at the grim consequences of the pandemic for people living in situations that were already extremely difficult. In regions such as the Sahel, which stretches along the southern edge of Africa’s Sahara Desert, countries such as Burkina Faso and Niger had extremely high rates of child malnutrition during “normal” times, significant armed conflict, and frequent disasters linked to climate change.

In areas around the world that, like the Sahel, are severely affected by conflict and climate change, the pandemic has caused soaring rates of hunger and malnutrition. The number of people in acute hunger emergencies has more than doubled, to an estimated 271.8 million.

Women are facing particular hardships due to pervasive gender discrimination. The World Health Organization reports that in Africa, for example, the pandemic is worsening gender inequality and causing millions of women great physical, mental, and economic distress. The burdens of unpaid, labor-intensive household chores fall mainly on women, as does responsibility for caring for children. In many societies, this includes ensuring that children have food and clothing.

Women with small businesses have been hit hard. Oulimata Sarr, regional director of U.N. Women in West and Central Africa, said that the results of a study in 30 countries of 1,300 female-owned businesses found that, “The message is the same. We have lost the vast majority of our revenue.”

She added that some countries responded by giving women food and some cash transfers instead of capital to keep their businesses afloat, while in several countries, governments have given stimulus checks and packages to a number of well-organized business associations, most run by men. Sarr said that governments in the region need to respond to this gender financing gap.
 
There is much more that could be said about gender equity and hunger in the context of the pandemic, ranging from women’s higher rates of unemployment to persistent reports of significant increases in domestic violence. But as COVID-19 vaccine supplies begin to arrive in lower-income countries, and the people of many countries have become increasingly adept at protecting themselves and their families from being exposed to the virus, I prefer to look ahead to spring in the hope that this year, hundreds of millions of people will be able to take significant steps to a better life.

Michele Learner is managing editor with Bread for the World Institute.

The post A Year Later: Regaining momentum appeared first on Bread for the World.

By Jordan Teague, senior international policy advisor

In just five years, Kenya reduced its child wasting rate by 39 percent. It also made progress on child stunting, with a 35 percent decrease over nine years.

This rapid progress against malnutrition was made possible by improvements in many areas: delivering nutrition services, enacting nutrition governance legislation, strengthening supportive economic policies, developing a healthier food system, and building community resilience. Effective advocacy for nutrition and external support to the Kenyan government were also key ingredients in success. But Kenya faces difficulties in its efforts to further reduce malnutrition.

Two areas of difficulty are wide disparities among the country’s regions, and shortfalls in funding. Kenyans themselves must take the lead in overcoming these obstacles, but the U.S. government can support Kenya, along with other countries working to reduce malnutrition, in three main ways:

• Increase nutrition funding to help fill the funding gap.
• Invest nutrition resources for greater impact by increasing the share of nutrition funding in programs and making nutrition a key objective of agriculture and health programs.
• Target nutrition resources to the communities with the highest burden of malnutrition.

Kenya, with the support of many internal and external stakeholders invested in its success, has taken commendable steps to accelerate its progress on nutrition. These steps include prioritizing governance, increasing human resources capacity in nutrition within the health system, diversifying agriculture and people’s diets, investing in resilience, creating space for advocacy, and leading coordination efforts among all stakeholders.

While there has been progress on reducing stunting and wasting, Kenya still faces difficulties such as funding shortfalls and uneven progress that risks exacerbating nutrition disparities.View full report.

Recognizing that children are the greatest asset of our nation, my government is committed to ending child undernutrition.

— The Honorable Uhuru Kenyatta, President of Kenya

The post Briefing Paper: Accelerated Nutrition Progress in Kenya appeared first on Bread for the World.

By Jordan Teague, senior international policy advisor

There is no silver bullet that will end malnutrition, but this paper presents an agenda of policies and practices that offer a clear way forward when combined with investments in proven, effective nutrition services.

These include, for example, treatment or preventive treatment of children affected by wasting, multiple micronutrient supplementation for pregnant women, adequate breastfeeding/complementary feeding for infants, and Vitamin A supplementation for children.

In order to make significant lasting progress, all stakeholders—including the U.S. government—in all sectors will need to contribute to strategic, cohesive, and coordinated action to:

• Bolster nutrition governance structures and mechanisms
• Align investments with regional and national nutrition strategies, plans, and systems
• Invest in nutrition capacity in health services
• Invest in building both supply and demand for nutritious foods
• Improve equity in policies and practices in order to advance nutrition for people at highest risk
• Strengthen community resilience to protect nutrition gains

While positive gains have been made against malnutrition this century, urgent action is still required to reach good nutrition for all. This agenda of policies and practices, in addition to investment in proven, effective nutrition services—such as treatment or preventive treatment of children
affected by wasting, multiple micronutrient supplementation for pregnant women, adequate breastfeeding/complementary feeding for infants, and Vitamin A supplementation for children—offers a clear way forward. View full report.

“We have a unique opportunity to embrace the scale of the challenge ahead and commit to holistic, systemic changes…”

— Gerda Verburg, Scaling Up Nutrition Movement

The post Briefing Paper: An Agenda to Accelerate Progress on Global Nutrition appeared first on Bread for the World.

By Jordan Teague, senior international policy advisor

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, global levels of child malnutrition—measured by rates of stunting and wasting—had been decreasing.

Yet progress had not been fast enough, because good nutrition is essential to human life, health, and well-being.

This paper examines common elements among low- and middle-income countries that have made more progress on nutrition than many of their peer countries. While they are not necessarily causal factors, these elements contribute to an environment that enables accelerated progress on nutrition:

• Economic growth
• Availability and consumption of nutritious foods
• Women’s empowerment
• Equity and equality
• Water, sanitation, and hygiene
• Funding
• Social protection systems
• Good governance
• Peace and stability

These elements are more likely to spur accelerated progress when they are combined with investments in key nutrition services, such as treatment or preventive treatment for children affected by wasting, multiple micronutrient supplementation for pregnant women, adequate breastfeeding/complementary feeding for infants, and Vitamin A supplementation for children.

While there is no one-size-fits-all approach that will produce good nutrition for everyone, we have seen that countries that are making faster progress have several ingredients in common that support their success. The U.S. government and other key stakeholders should look more deeply at these characteristics that help make faster progress possible and adjust their nutrition investments to support them. View full report.

“Dealing with malnutrition means fixing all the links in the chain—food, health, sanitation, water, and care.”

– Lawrence Haddad, World Food Prize Laureate

The post Briefing Paper: Key Ingredients for Faster Progress on Nutrition appeared first on Bread for the World.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the first line of defense against hunger for people in the United States.

SNAP benefits help low-income people put food on the table. Participants include seniors, children, people living with disabilities, and low-wage workers and their families. Nearly half of the people who receive SNAP are children.

A very important feature of SNAP is that it is designed to respond to changes in need, making it very well suited to respond to crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The federal government can also augment SNAP as needed with programs such as Disaster SNAP (D-SNAP) and Pandemic SNAP (P-SNAP). D-SNAP is historically allocated in response to natural disasters, while P-SNAP would help with the devastating long-term consequences of COVID-19.

The Family First Coronavirus Relief Act includes “response waivers,” exceptions to SNAP rules during the pandemic and post-pandemic period. For example, the legislation allows:

• SNAP flexibility for low-income jobless workers: It suspends work and work training requirements for SNAP during this crisis.
• SNAP flexibilities in a public health emergency: It allows states to request special waivers from the Secretary of Agriculture to provide temporary, emergency Coronavirus SNAP (CR-SNAP) benefits to existing SNAP households up to the maximum monthly allotment, and it gives the Secretary broad discretion to provide much more flexibility for states in managing SNAP caseloads.

Over and above these necessary steps, Bread for the World calls for the following to support the most vulnerable people.

• Increase the maximum monthly SNAP benefit by 15 percent
• Temporarily increase the minimum SNAP benefit from $16 to $30 to encourage higher rates of senior participation
• Give states temporary flexibility to suspend SNAP administrative rules that weaken their response to the crisis

The COVID-19 economic recovery package must build on the Family First Coronavirus Relief Act and include the 15 percent boost in benefits to ensure families have access to adequate resources during the pandemic.

Nearly half of the people who receive SNAP are children

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Nearly half of all child deaths worldwide—that is, nearly 2.5 million preventable deaths of children under the age of 5 every year—are related to malnutrition. Much larger numbers of young children—149 million, or nearly one in every four—are affected by chronic malnutrition.

Malnutrition should not claim young lives and damage children’s health and futures in our time—particularly on such an enormous scale. The persistence of malnutrition is, at its core, an issue of global inequities as the majority of impacted families live in countries in South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and Central America.

But there is good news! We have the knowledge and tools to improve nutrition, and global nutrition programs have worked. Peru, Ghana, and Kenya have rapidly reduced their rates of stunting (a sign that children have survived chronic malnutrition very early in life) since 2000. Perhaps best of all: more than 16 million fewer children under the age of 5 are stunted today than in 2012.

Improved nutrition for women and children will allow countries to improve health overall, put more kids in school, and expand their own economic growth. Bread for the World and its partners are asking Congress to provide $200 million for global nutrition in the fiscal year 2020 budget to jumpstart efforts to make faster progress on global nutrition and help the United States spur action from other partners.

Nearly half of all child deaths worldwide are related to malnutrition

The post Fact Sheet: Why We Need $200 Million for Global Nutrition Programs appeared first on Bread for the World.

Can home be found in a “strange land?” In the case of many black mothers, home has not been defined only by geographic location. Rather, home has been where the songs, teachings and experiences of faith have been lived out and sustained. Despite forced migration and other socio-political ills that have mitigated against them, their resilience and faithfulness have remained. Mother’s Day is a time to celebrate this.

Maudlyne Ihejirika, in her 2015 Chicago Sun Times article, says “Church mothers are the foundation of the black church. They can be found in the front pews and the hierarchy of many churches. They are the glue that has nurtured generations of worshipers.”

African mothers and mothers of African descent have also nurtured the home life of their families. Smokey Fontaine, writing on Black American Web, said: “Mother’s Day is the one holiday that honors not just mothers, but all the ways that the black community creates and builds families…In the African-American community, black children have been raised by mothers, stepmothers, grandmothers, aunts, older sisters, cousins, family friends, foster mothers and adopted formally and informally, and they use Mother’s Day to salute those women as well.”

Still, Mother’s Day also reminds us that the leadership of black mothers in their homes and outside the home has not been easy. For example, putting nurturing food on the table while battling the threat and injury of family separation in many African countries, and in the Americas during and after the enslavement period, has been difficult. The historic policies and vestiges of enslavement and family separations due to the sale of their children or themselves gave rise to this challenge. Today mass incarceration, the legacy of racial discrimination, separation of families at the borders, and sex trafficking still fuel this challenge.

This month, in Bread for the World’s Pan-African devotional guide Lament and Hope, Rev. Dr. Marjorie Lewis reminds us of the link between the scripture and the establishment of the National Housing Act in 1934. The act created the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) which regulates interest rates and mortgage terms following the banking crisis of the 1930s. The FHA began to insure mortgages issued by qualified lenders, thereby providing mortgage lenders with default protection. African Americans, however, were inequitably segregated through mapping of neighborhoods and typically ineligible these loans, making it extremely difficult for African American mothers to provide decent housing for their families.

Still, in all cases the faith of black mothers and their families fueled their resistance and resilience. May Mother’s Day inspire us anew to advocate with black mothers for an equitable world without hunger.

Angelique Walker-Smith is senior associate for Pan African and Orthodox Church Engagement at Bread for the World.

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Worldwide, maternal and child malnutrition causes millions of deaths each year. In some countries, it holds entire generations back from reaching their economic potential.

The United States has been critical to global nutrition efforts for decades. We must continue to be a leader in supporting countries to end malnutrition. Losing U.S. momentum now would stall global progress, putting current and future generations in unnecessary danger of death or lifelong disability.

Key Points

• To end the need for foreign assistance, now is the time to act on ending malnutrition.
• While the trends show progress on maternal and child nutrition, the continuation of progress is vulnerable if the U.S. government steps back.
• Congressional leadership is critical to ensuring that the United States keeps its commitments, supporting country-led efforts to improve nutrition among mothers and their young children.

“Nutrition is the biggest missed opportunity in global health.”

Bill Gates, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

The post The U.S. Contribution to Ending Global Malnutrition appeared first on Bread for the World.

Good nutrition during the 1,000 days from a woman’s pregnancy to her child’s second birthday is crucial to ensuring the child’s health, physical growth, and brain development. Assisting mothers and children with nutrition must be accompanied by good bodily and household care practices, clean environments, and access to health services.

A great deal of progress has been made globally in reducing malnutrition, but there is still a long way to go. We need to accelerate progress on maternal and child nutrition to ensure that all women and children are able to live dignified, healthy lives. Nearly half of all preventable child deaths are linked to malnutrition, and in 2017, 151 million children were physically stunted, a consequence of chronic malnutrition.

Early childhood malnutrition also stunts a child’s future, limiting his or her ability to grow, learn, earn a living, become self-sufficient, and move out of poverty, due to malnutrition’s harmful effects on cognitive growth as well. Children suffering from poor nutrition are more vulnerable to illnesses in their early years and into adulthood. Expectant mothers who are malnourished are at higher risk of bearing malnourished children, perpetuating an intergenerational cycle of malnutrition.

As one of the largest donors to global maternal and child health programs, the U.S. has long led the international community in efforts to improve child survival. Through the 1,000 Days Partnership, the U.S. has helped raise awareness about the devastating impact of malnutrition and mobilized support for the global Scaling Up Nutrition Movement. The Sustainable Development Goals adopted by all nations in September 2015 aim to end hunger, malnutrition, and preventable child deaths by 2030. To
help achieve these ambitious and transformative goals, the U.S. must demonstrate continued leadership in improving global nutrition.

Experts in economics agree that fighting malnutrition should be the top priority for policy makers and philanthropists.

Copenhagen Consensus, 2012

The post Fact Sheet: Fortified for Life. How the U.S. Government Supports Global Nutrition. appeared first on Bread for the World.

Estas causas de migración son a menudo referidas como “factores que empujan a la emigración”, porque muchos migrantes de Centroamérica están siendo “forzados” hacia Estados Unidos por las condiciones en sus hogares, en lugar de “jalados” por las oportunidades. Los factores principales que empujan la emigración son el hambre, la violencia y la pobreza extrema.

La inmigración indocumentada se trata menos de Estados Unidos y más sobre el hambre, la pobreza extrema y el conflicto en tres países del Triángulo Norte de Centroamérica—Guatemala, El Salvador, y Honduras. La guerra y la pobreza extrema han creado situaciones similares en Siria, Nigeria, Yemen y Myanmar. La emigración forzada está en aumento alrededor del mundo.

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From the earliest days of U.S. history, our country has welcomed people who are escaping persecution and poverty. People who make the decision to leave home and come to the United States, in recent years as in the past, generally have few other options. Factors beyond their control have made their circumstances too hungry and violent for them to remain.

These causes of migration are often called “push factors,” because many migrants from Central America are primarily being “pushed” to the United States by conditions at home, rather than “pulled” here by opportunities. The main push factors are hunger, violence, and extreme poverty.

Undocumented immigration is less about the United States and more about hunger, extreme poverty, and conflict in the three countries of Central America’s Northern Triangle—Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. War and extreme poverty have created similar situations from Syria and Nigeria to Yemen and Myanmar. Forced migration is on the rise worldwide.

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Consequently, an additional 56,0001 African Americans are still food insecure compared to 2015 numbers. While this is lower than the 187,000 additional African Americans who fell into hunger in 2016, targeted policies that prioritize racial and gender equity need to be implemented to reduce hunger at faster rates.

The higher rates of poverty and hunger among African Americans are direct results of systemic inequity through racial and gender discrimination. While the United States has an overall poverty rate of 12.3 percent, according to the U.S. Census, within the African American community, the poverty
rate is 21.2 percent. This rate is even higher in African American female-headed households at 30.3 percent.

African American leaders on the local, state, national, and international levels continue to do their part to fight hunger and poverty in their communities.

African Americans are two times as likely as whites to face very low food security

The post Fact Sheet: Hunger and Poverty in the African American Community appeared first on Bread for the World.

Unfortunately, the Trump administration and Congress are proposing dramatic cuts to programs that promote economic opportunity or provide food assistance to some of the poorest families in the United States.

These budget cuts would hit the African-American community particularly hard since African-American households are up to three times more likely to experience hunger and poverty. About 13 million African Americans rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), for example, to put food on the table.

In 2015, SNAP lifted 2.1 million African Americans, including 1 million children, out of poverty

The post The Impacts of Proposed Fiscal Year 2018 Budget Cuts on the African-American Community appeared first on Bread for the World.

Key Facts About SNAP

• SNAP works exactly as it’s supposed to. SNAP was designed to respond quickly and efficiently to increases in need. When poverty and unemployment spiked in 2008, 2009, and 2010, so did SNAP participation.
• SNAP reaches exactly whom it’s supposed to. The average SNAP household has a gross monthly income of $813. This is well below the strict national income limits. Ninety two percent of SNAP benefits go to households with incomes at or below the poverty line.
• SNAP participation increased mainly due to the poor economy. The largest increases in SNAP participation came on the heels of the recession.
• SNAP encourages work. Employment rates among households with children and at least one non-disabled adult rose nearly 10 percent from 2009 to 2015, the Great Recession years.
• SNAP fraud is the exception, not the rule. The USDA tracks two types of SNAP fraud data: trafficking and error rate. The majority of SNAP payment errors are a result of administrative errors, not intentional fraud.
• Charity alone can’t feed everyone. Our federal nutrition programs deliver more than 19 times the amount of food assistance as private charitable sources.

SNAP is a lifeline for millions of Americans. Congress must do its part to end hunger by protecting SNAP.

The post Fact Sheet: Get the Facts About SNAP appeared first on Bread for the World.

Improving nutrition not only alleviates human suffering, but also improves the conditions that create poverty in the first place. For every $1 invested in nutrition, there is a return of $16 in improved productivity and decreased healthcare costs.

Nutritional needs around the world are still immense. 155 million children under 5 — about one in every four — suffer from chronic malnutrition, or stunting. At any given time, approximately 52 million children are acutely malnourished — a condition that leads to death if not promptly treated. At this writing, in the summer of 2017, 1.4 million children are at immediate risk of death from starvation and malnutrition in four countries at imminent risk of famine.

The International Development Association (IDA) is the World Bank’s fund for the poorest countries, those whose per capita gross national income is less than USD $1,215. In 2017, there are 77 eligible nations. IDA plays a key role in boosting nutrition for women and children in these vulnerable countries. By pooling Official Development Assistance contributions from individual donors, IDA provides significant and stable funding for basic services such as health and nutrition. Every $1 contribution from the United States leverages or attracts nearly $13 from other donors and the World Bank. IDA focuses on nutrition in both emergencies and long-term development contexts.

IDA will reach 400 million women and children with health and nutrition services over the next three years

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Las personas indocumentadas que viven y trabajan aquí están entre las personas más vulnerables de nuestra nación. Tienen una mayor probabilidad de vivir en la pobreza y luchar para poder colocar comida en la mesa. La tasa nacional de pobreza es de 14.8 por ciento, mientras que para los inmigrantes como grupo es de 30 por ciento. Es muy posible que la tasa de pobreza para los hogares de indocumentados es más alta todavía. La tasa de inseguridad alimentaria para los inmigrantes indocumentados es el doble que el que la población total de los Estados Unidos.

El Proyecto de ley “Dream Act 2017” fue presentado en el Senado por los Senadores Richard Durbin (D- Ill.) y Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) con la designación S. 1615, y en la Cámara de Representantes por las Representantes: Lucille Roybal Allard (D-Calif.-40) y la Representante Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.-27) con la designación H.R. 3440. 

El Proyecto de ley “Dream Act 2017” ofrecería una vía hacia un estatus legal para millones de jóvenes inmigrantes indocumentados. La aprobación de este Proyecto de ley es decisivo dado el hecho de que el futuro de DACA es incierto. Recientemente 10 procuradores generales le enviaron al Procurador General de Estados Unidos, Jeff Sessions, una carta con la amenaza de demandar al gobierno del presidente Trump si el programa DACA no es eliminado al 5 de septiembre de 2017. 

Exhortamos a todos los miembros del Congreso a que copatrocinen el “Dream Act” de 2017 y que comuniquen un fuerte mensaje que la anulación de DACA tiene consecuencias morales y económicas que el Congreso no puede permitir.

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Famine has been declared in two counties of South Sudan, while other areas of South Sudan, Nigeria, Somalia, and Yemen are experiencing food security emergencies that could soon become famines. 20 million people are at risk of starvation in these countries, including 1.4 million children at “imminent risk of death” from starvation and malnutrition.

The risks associated with malnutrition are intensified by famine. When pregnant women and children younger than 2 live in famine conditions, they are at even greater risk of the short-term consequences (acute malnutrition and death) and the long-term consequences (stunting, disease, and poverty) of early childhood malnutrition than in less dire situations.

The post Fact Sheet: Nutrition During Famine appeared first on Bread for the World.

The McGovern-Dole program’s purpose is to reduce hunger and promote literacy and primary education, especially for girls. It does this by providing school meals and by carrying out other activities that boost the impact of providing these meals. So far, McGovern-Dole has reached 40 million children with food at school. It is currently active in 24 countries.

Over the years, the McGovern-Dole program has led to important improvements in children’s food security and nutritional status and in school enrollment, attendance, and gender parity. It has been proven effective in getting children, particularly girls, into school and helping them stay in school. School meals improve students’ ability to concentrate and learn. They also strengthen food security for the children’s families. In the longer term, educating girls is critical to ending hunger and malnutrition in future generations.

The post The McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program appeared first on Bread for the World.

Relates to the topic of the 2016 Offering of Letters: Survive and Thrive.

The post Fortified for Life: How the U.S. Government Supports Global Nutrition appeared first on Bread for the World.

The birth of a child is amazing. I should know. I have witnessed 11 babies come into the world as a doula.

Doulas are not midwives. We don’t do anything medical. The word doula comes from the ancient Greek meaning “a woman who serves” and is now used to refer to a trained and experienced professional who provides continuous physical, emotional, and informational support to the mother before, during, and just after birth.

Doulas also know that proper nutrition is vital to a woman’s health – before conception and throughout her pregnancy. During pregnancy, women are encouraged to eat a diet of whole grains and nutrient-dense foods like fruits, vegetables, beans, legumes, seeds, nuts, and low-fat dairy products.

Without proper nutrition, diet-related pregnancy complications can occur, such as gestational diabetes, obesity, and pre-term births.

My doula work is a hobby I fell into. But it’s also something that I earnestly feel called to do and realize I have a gift for. In fact, what drew me to the work of Bread for the World was the organization’s unwavering commitment to advocacy around care for women and children – specifically the emphasis on maternal and child nutrition.

Working as a doula is a privilege. I am invited into a very intimate and powerfully charged series of hours in a family’s life.

We journey through active labor together – using rituals like counting or deep-belly breathing to cope and “ride the waves” of each contraction. I assure the mother that she is doing a great job, that many women have come before her and are cheering her on now, and that she is one step closer to her baby with every passing moment.

At one of my births, a woman lost her way and began to panic. “This is so hard. I don’t know if I can do this. I can’t push. I’m too tired …” she said. “You can do it,” I replied. I grabbed her hand and asked her to look into my eyes. “You can do this. You are doing this. What’s your baby’s name?” She spoke his name aloud. Her bravery returned. Minutes later her son was in her arms.

At Bread, we want every mother and child around the world to have a bright future. Just like I’m there for mothers in labor, we are advocating that mothers everywhere receive the assistance they need to become strong and healthy.

We want mothers to be strong, and we advocate for assistance to be there to help them be strong in the same way that I’m there for mothers in labor. That’s why we are asking Congress to increase funding for nutrition in global health programs at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to at least $230 million in fiscal year 2017.

Join me on Lobby Day June 7 to deliver our message directly Capitol Hill. Your members of Congress need to hear from you – and visiting them in person will have the greatest effect.

Kierra Stuvland is a major gifts coordinator/development officer at Bread for the World.

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Ella siempre se ha enfocado en cómo mejorar si futuro y el de su bebé Selby. La vida en este municipio no es nada fácil, prácticamente el 40% de sus habitantes viven en extrema pobreza y el 16% de los bebés y niños enfrentan desnutrición crónica. Sin embargo, los niños en esta zona viven en mejores condiciones que en otros municipios fronterizos del sur donde casi la mitad de los niños padecen enfermedades crónicas, trastornos de aprendizaje y retrasos en el desarrollo como consecuencia de  desnutrición crónica.

Afortunadamente, Lesby tuvo acceso a cuidado prenatal en una clínica de su localidad, tuvo un embarazo sin complicaciones, y al cabo de nueve meses dio a luz a una hermosa y saludable bebé. Lesby recuerda que gracias a la educación que recibió en la clínica pudo balancear su dieta con más frutas, verduras y carne, lo que benefició enormemente a Selby. Pero, ¿cuál fue el precio de un embarazo sin contratiempos y un bebé sano y fuerte? El papa de Selby tuvo que migrar a Estados Unidos en busca de un mejor futuro para su familia. Tener a su pareja lejos dejó a Lesby con emociones encontradas, por un lado está agradecida por las oportunidades económicas que conlleva, y por otro lado, su hija no conoce a su papá. La separación de la familia ha sido lo más complicado.

El papá de Selby es uno de los aproximadamente 3.2 millones de centroamericanos viven y trabajan en Estados Unidos. Gracias a las remesas que Lesby recibe mes con mes desde Estados Unidos, ella pudo tener acceso a alimentos nutritivos durante su embarazo, y más tarde suficiente dinero para participar en un programa de Habitat for Humanity para construir su casa. Un hogar donde ahora Selby podrá jugar, comer, y dormir dentro de un ambiente seguro.

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Ella no sólo nació dentro de una familia sumida en la extrema pobreza, sino que ha tenido que criar a sus cuatro hijos por sí misma &mash; Antonio de 17, Juana de 6 y, sus gemelos, Alexander y Sheili de 17 meses.

Los gemelos fueron recibidos al mundo por una madre fuerte y amorosa, pero el hambre, la desnutrición crónica y las enfermedades también los aguardaban.

Catarina vive de prestado para sobrevivir. La familia vive en una casa que le presta una vecina, donde una habitación hace las veces de cocina, dormitorio y más.

Vivir para sobrevivir

Catarina no posee animales ni tierra que pueda utilizar para cultivar sus propios alimentos. Para proveer a su familia, Catarina lava a mano pilas de ropa sucia, pero el trabajo es escaso en una aldea donde pocas personas pueden pagar ese servicio. 

Sus gemelos nacieron con muy bajo peso y ha sido una batalla dura para vencer el nivel de desnutrición que presentaron durante su primer año de vida. En ese tiempo, Catarina le pedía a Dios “la fuerza para alimentar a mis hijos y mantenerlos saludables”. Ella sintió que sus oraciones fueron respondidas cuando se enteró de un programa de ayuda alimentaria  disponible para niños menores de 2 años de la Agencia Internacional para el Desarrollo de Estados Unidos (USAID). 

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Para reducir la desnutrición crónica de sus gemelos

A través del programa, ella recibió mensualmente una ración de arroz, frijoles, harina de maíz/soya fortificada y aceite además de capacitación para reducir la desnutrición crónica de sus gemelos. Recibir estos productos básicos deja libre parte de su ingreso, que ahora puede utilizar para comprar frutas, vegetales, azúcar, sal, avena y otros productos que suplementan la dieta familiar, una opción que no tenía antes. Más importante aún, ahora puede alimentar a sus hijos tres veces al día, sin lugar a dudas un incremento nutricional para los gemelos, quienes exhibieron los efectos negativos de la mala nutrición que sufrieron a temprana edad.

Catarina pasó de “ver a mis hijos sufrir debido a la escasez de alimentos que experimentábamos” a comenzar su camino para dejar atrás el hambre y alcanzar la seguridad alimentaria. 

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“Bread for the World strongly opposes this bill as it is written,” said Rev. David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World. “The bill would deny untold numbers of eligible children access to the meals they need to learn and grow. These meals serve as a lifeline for vulnerable children because kids are hit especially hard by the effects of hunger and malnutrition.”                                                                                

The bill, which was introduced Wednesday evening by Rep. Todd Rokita (R-Ind.), would make it harder for children to access free school meals. It substantially cuts the number of high-poverty schools that are eligible to implement community eligibility, which reduces administrative work and increases school lunch and breakfast access. The bill also fails to adequately close the summer hunger gap and weakens evidence-based school meal nutrition standards.

One in five children in the U.S. lives at risk of hunger. For every six low-income children who receive a school lunch, only about half also get a school breakfast. Only one also gets a meal during the summer months. As part of its 2015 Offering of Letters campaign, Bread for the World members wrote over 220,000 personal letters and emails, and made thousands of phone calls, urging Congress to pass a child nutrition reauthorization bill that improves and strengthens child nutrition programs.

“As this legislation moves forward, we urge lawmakers to make significant improvements so that no eligible children are denied access to the healthy meals they need to thrive,” added Beckmann. 

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Bread for the World’s annual Offering of Letters campaign engages congregations and other faith communities in writing letters to Congress. There are as many ways to hold an Offering of Letters as there are groups that undertake the activity. 

Jon Gromek, a Bread regional organizer, is a lifelong member of the Greek Orthodox Church but calls himself an “honorary Catholic.” After all, his wife is a member of the Catholic Church. Gromek worked with the Archdiocese of Cincinnati to spearhead an advocacy campaign with the Offering of Letters as its vehicle. 

The archdiocese invited all of its parishes, schools, and institutions to pen letters urging Congress to renew funding for U.S. child nutrition programs. Letters were then collected at the archdiocese to be blessed.

In September, more than 12,000 letters arrived on Capitol Hill. “We had delegations visiting every member of Congress, personally delivering the letters,” Gromek said. The archdiocese saw this collective effort as an especially powerful way to mark Pope Francis’s address to the U.S. Congress.

Social Media Encourages Letters

Rev. Dave Buerstetta serves as Koinonia pastor for Woodridge United Methodist Church in Woodridge, Ill. He has integrated the Offering of Letters into the life of Woodridge. He uses the power of social media to raise awareness. Buerstetta also writes a personal blog.

Robin Stephenson, Bread’s social media manager, said, “I use Pastor Dave as an example in my Social Media for Pastors training. He uses social media so effectively as part of his ministry.” 

Buerstetta praises Bread for the support provided to churches that are planning Offerings of Letters. “Bread develops terrific, detailed information on the issues and how we can help,” he said.

The letters from Cincinnati and from Woodbridge Church were among the more than 200,000 letters sent to Congress in 2015. In January of this year, the Senate Agriculture Committee passed the Improving Child Nutrition Integrity and Access Act of 2016. This bill would reauthorize child nutrition programs and expand summer and after-school meal programs. The full Senate must now act, but the bipartisan cooperation is a positive sign. 

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Spanish-Speaking Evangelical Churches

In Southern California, David Gist, another of Bread’s regional organizers, has helped forge an exciting pilot program with four pastors who lead Spanish-speaking evangelical churches. The program’s goal is to launch advocacy ministries in all four churches — including a monthly Offering of Letters.

“These congregations come from conservative backgrounds,” Gist explained. “These four pastors are taking on a new and prophetic voice to honor God and help end hunger.”

Participating churches are Centro de Restauración Familiar (Garden Grove), Primera Asamblea del Condado de Orange (Costa Mesa), Primera Asamblea del Condado de Orange (Santa Ana), and Latino-americana Christian Reformed Church (Anaheim).

Rev. Fernando Tamara of Primera Asamblea, Santa Ana, explained, “The reason we started this strategy was the need for leadership in topics such as hunger, injustice, poverty, humanitarian need, and immigration.” During February, Tamara visited two of the partner churches, taking the pulpit to introduce Bread to the congregants. 

Tamara, who is also a professor for the Latin American Theological Seminary, is passionate about Spanish-speaking churches joining the chorus of voices: “Our desire is to ‘awake’ these churches and show them that they have a voice and vote. They need to know that they can change laws and regulate the legislative system.”

Tamara reported that the churches are inviting pastors and ministers to a forum on hunger and poverty, to which they will invite candidates for the California State Senate. The churches will also send 10 people to participate in Bread’s annual Lobby Day on June 7.

These pastors are taking on a new, prophetic voice to honor God and end hunger.

David Gist, Bread for the World Regional Organizer

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It’s not surprising that ending hunger is focused on results: Did this effort improve life for hungry people, and if so, how fast can we scale it up? Low-cost, high-impact, and evidence-based are the watchwords. 

What if you found out about something that meets all those criteria? It’s universally available and very low-cost. It could save the lives of at least 820,000 children a year and add hundreds of billions of dollars to the global economy. Wouldn’t you agree that the inventor of this strategy deserves the Nobel Prize for Medicine and the Nobel Prize for Economics? And maybe even the Nobel Peace Prize?

The truth is that this intervention already exists: breastfeeding. The Lancet, a respected British medical journal, recently launched a new series focused on the health and economic benefits of breastfeeding. The series highlights the significant role of breastfeeding in improving nutrition, education, and maternal and child health and survival in both high-income and low-income countries. The authors also take a look at what it will take to improve breastfeeding practices around the world.

Obviously breastfeeding itself is not new, but only in recent years has conclusive evidence of many of its benefits become available. Its impact is frankly astounding. First, and most obviously, it raises a child’s chances of celebrating a fifth birthday. The authors of the Lancet series found that improved breastfeeding practices could save more than 820,000 lives a year – many of them the lives of infants. Breastfeeding is critical in low- and middle-income countries where illnesses such as pneumonia and diarrhea are common and often fatal. Increased rates of breastfeeding could prevent one-third of all respiratory infections and nearly half of all diarrhea episodes. Second, the Lancet series notes the growing evidence that breastfeeding reduces a person’s risk of obesity and diabetes later in life.

Less vulnerability to health problems as adults is not the only extended benefit of breastfeeding. The evidence shows that breastfeeding contributes to the cognitive development of children and adolescents – and thus to better academic performance, more years of schooling completed, and ultimately increased earnings and productivity. Less than optimal breastfeeding practices cause an estimated loss of $300 billion a year, because of the impact on children’s ability to learn and later make a living.

There is lots of room for improvement in global breastfeeding. We know that the best practice is exclusive breastfeeding (no other food or water) until a baby is 6 months old. But only 37 percent of all infants who are currently younger than 6 months are exclusively breastfed. The world has agreed to a global target of increasing this rate to at least 50 percent by 2025. And rapid progress is possible through a combination of actions, policies, and programs to protect, promote, and support breastfeeding. These include:

• sharing accurate information with parents and communities
• fostering positive social attitudes toward breastfeeding
• building the political will to support breastfeeding with legislation and policies
• regulating the breastmilk substitute industry
• scaling up and monitoring interventions that explore how to improve breastfeeding practices
• adopting policies that encourage breastfeeding-friendly workplaces and health centers

Since breastfeeding is a key factor in improving the nutrition, health, and well-being of mothers and children around the world, Bread for the World Institute and our partners have been strongly advocating for a breastfeeding indicator in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). While a global target of 50 percent has been established by the World Health Assembly, the Sustainable Development Goals do not include a target for exclusive breastfeeding. Including exclusive breastfeeding in the SDGs would be a powerful statement of the world’s recognition that action must be taken to increase breastfeeding rates, and it will hold governments accountable for this critical component of their commitment to ending all forms of malnutrition by 2030.

Jordan Teague is the international policy analyst for food security and nutrition at Bread for the World Institute.

Photo: Taken in Zambia by Joseph Molieri/Bread for the World

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“El presupuesto del presidente haría importantes inversiones para ayudar a niños que padecen hambre, y aseguraría que puedan realizar su potencial”, dijo el reverendo David Beckmann, presidente de Pan para el Mundo. “Pan para el Mundo aplaude el liderazgo continuo del presidente en la lucha contra el hambre infantil, y espera que el Congreso apruebe leyes este año para fortalecer los programas de nutrición infantil.

El presupuesto de 4.1 billones de dólares del presidente propone nuevas iniciativas para combatir el hambre infantil en los Estados Unidos, incluyendo mejoras permanentes a los programas que ponen al alcance de los niños las comidas escolares durante el verano. El presupuesto también aumenta la financiación para el programa de Asistencia Temporal para Familias Necesitadas (TANF por sus siglas en inglés), e incluye financiación sólida para programas de asistencia alimentaria como el Programa de Asistencia Nutricional Suplementaria (SNAP por sus siglas en inglés) y el programa WIC, que provee asistencia nutricional a madres embarazadas y niños pequeños.

Además de fortalecer la asistencia social, el presupuesto expande acceso a Head Start, educación temprana, y programas de capacitación laboral, y fortalece el crédito tributario por ingresos del trabajo (EITC por sus siglas en inglés) para adultos sin hijos.

La solicitud para el presupuesto también representa una continuación del compromiso del actual Gobierno a acabar con muertes prevenibles por el mundo, pero no aborda suficientemente la desnutrición. La solicitud incluye un recorte de 16.5 millones de dólares a programas de nutrición globales. El Congreso debe revertir este recorte y aumentar financiación para programas de nutrición que son esenciales en la lucha contra las muertes infantiles prevenibles.

El presupuesto incluye 15 millones de dólares para el Programa Local y Regional de Adquisición del Departamento de Agricultura de los Estados Unidos (USDA por sus siglas en inglés), mismo que fue autorizado en la ley agrícola del 2014. Pan para el Mundo exhorta al Congreso a que asegure la mayor flexibilidad posible para los cupones y las compras locales de alimentos para que madres e hijos en el extranjero reciban asistencia alimentaria nutricional rápidamente e eficazmente.

“Pan para el Mundo exhorta al Congreso a que financie estas propuestas en las próximas negociaciones por el presupuesto”, dijo Beckmann. “Los legisladores deben continuar el liderazgo de los Estados Unidos en la nutrición global, y aumentar financiación para estos programas que permiten que madres e hijos por todo el mundo sobrevivan y sobresalgan”. 

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“The president’s budget would make important investments to help hungry children and ensure they are able to reach their full potential,” said Rev. David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World. “Bread for the World applauds the president’s continued leadership in addressing child hunger and hopes that Congress will pass legislation this year to strengthen child nutrition programs.”

The president’s $4.1 trillion budget request proposes new initiatives to combat child hunger in the U.S., including permanent improvements to programs that connect hungry children with meals during the summer months. The budget also increases funding for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and includes strong funding for food assistance programs such as SNAP (formerly food stamps) and the WIC program, which provides nutrition assistance to pregnant mothers and young children.

In addition to strengthening the safety net, the budget expands access to Head Start, early education, and job training programs, and strengthens the earned income tax credit (EITC) for working adults without children.

The budget request also represents a continuation of the administration’s commitment to ending preventable deaths worldwide, but comes up short when addressing malnutrition. The request includes a $16.5 million cut to global nutrition programs. Congress must reverse this cut and increase funding for nutrition programs that are critical to ending preventable child deaths.

The budget includes $15 million for the USDA Local and Regional Procurement Program, which was authorized in the 2014 farm bill. Bread for the World encourages Congress to ensure as much flexibility as possible for vouchers and local purchases of food so that mothers and children overseas receive nutritionally appropriate food aid quickly and efficiently.

“Bread for the World calls on Congress to fund these proposals in upcoming budget negotiations,” added Beckmann. “Lawmakers should continue to build upon U.S. leadership in global nutrition, and increase funding for programs that enable mothers and children around the world to survive and thrive.” 

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Since then, the Zambian and U.S. governments, health institutions, and other organizations have worked together to gain some control over the disease.

However, HIV cases are still high in Zambia — 12.4 percent of adults (over age 15) were HIV-positive in 2014, according to the United Nations AIDS program. And in November 2015, UNICEF reported that AIDS is now the leading cause of death for African teenagers, which means that many teens dying of AIDS were most likely HIV positive as younger children. Zambia has its share.

Making progress on malnutrition and health is key to ending hunger.

Connecting Nutrition and Health

The connections between nutrition and health are becoming more understood in both developed countries like the U.S. and developing nations like Zambia. At St. Francis, a church-supported mission hospital in eastern Zambia, nutrition and treatment for HIV already go hand-in-hand.

By 7:30 every morning, one wing of the hospital is full of adults and children. They sit on ledges in the outdoor corridors, which serve as waiting areas for patients. A hospital staff person leads an informal workshop on eating well at home for the group that arrives first in the morning. In this way, the hospital provides extra nutrition education to patients with HIV and their caregivers while they are waiting to be seen by the staff.

Among those lined up one morning are Colins Mwale, a 6-year-old boy, and his mother, Felistas Miti Mwale. Colins is HIV-positive and has come to St. Francis’ out-patient clinic for a regular check-up and monthly supply of antiretroviral drugs. 

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Mothers and Children Surviving and Thriving

Colins and the other patients — the hospital sees as many as 150 daily — will have a series of visits to offices along the corridor where their medical history and current health status will be checked. Staff also speak to patients — Colins’ mother in this case — about what they eat at home during these check-ups. 

In one office, after asking about Colins’ diet, the nurse asks his mother what time he takes his medication every day. The nurse checks Colins’ height and weight and then asks Felistas about Colins’ mental development. “How is his speech? Does he play with his friends?” The nurse notes that Colins is underweight for his height. She advises his mother to give him foods high in protein, like peanuts, which are readily available to many rural Zambians, as a snack. 

For HIV-positive patients like Colins, the hospital is receiving assistance from the Thrive program of PATH, a U.S.-based nonprofit that specializes in health in developing countries. Thrive is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), a major way our federal government carries out its response to hunger and poverty overseas. 

The last stop for Colins and his mother on their visit is the pharmacy at the end of the corridor. The HIV drugs are supplied by the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, started in 2008, and another way the U.S. government provides assistance overseas. Some patients also receive high-protein dietary supplements, supplied by USAID, if they are determined to be malnourished during their visits. 

With the medicine and food Colins and his mother receive, the nurse believes he can have a good quality of life and live to be 45 or 50 years old. While no one can see that far into the future, he is being given a chance at surviving and thriving today.

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831,500 HIV-positive pregnant women received antiretroviral medications in 2015, resulting in 267,000 babies born HIV-free. Source: PEPFAR World Aids Day update

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It’s around 10:00 on a morning in October, and already the African sun is beating down, hinting at another hot and still day. In the shade in a clearing in the village of Chimudomba in eastern Zambia, a group of ten mothers and their babies and toddlers sit on mats. 

Margret Zimba is beginning her lesson with the women. As a warm-up and review of previous lessons, she started by singing a song with the women in their native language. “How many times should a child eat per day?” the song simultaneously asks and teaches. The women clap and dance while singing. It’s an easy way to get a simple but important message across to the mothers.

Zimba lives in the village and received training to be a volunteer nutrition leader from the Mawa program, run by U.S.-based Catholic Relief Services. Mawa operates with funds from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), a major way our federal government carries out its response to hunger and poverty overseas. 

If a mother eats well, it’s easier to deliver her child … you find a difference even in the children

Margaret Zimba speaking in the village of Chimudomba in eastern Zambia

Mothers and Children Surviving and Thriving

With the help of leaders like Zimba, women are learning about good nutrition for their children from pregnancy until age 2. They are learning the importance of good nutrition in a child’s first 1,000 days.

Giving children enough food and nutrients early in life is a proven way to prevent problems such as stunted growth, learning problems, and poor health, which can affect people for a lifetime. 

Good nutrition is also important for pregnant mothers. Every year, thousands of women in developing countries die during childbirth. “If a mother eats well, it is easier to deliver a child, and they are not going to lose a lot of blood during delivery,” Zimba explains. “You find a difference even in the children when the mother eats well during her pregnancy.”

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Keeping People Alive and Healthy

What Mawa teaches is the business of keeping people alive and healthy. It’s critical in places like this village, where most families are subsistence farmers. During the “hunger season” in February and March — before new crops are harvested but after the previous year’s crops have run out — these families sometimes experience severe malnutrtion.

On this day, Zimba is giving the fifth lesson in a series of 12 in the village. Today’s lesson will include a cooking demonstration. She teaches that just as adults in the village usually eat a variety of foods, young children’s rapidly growing bodies need as balanced diet as well, but a baby can’t chew foods like peanuts, which are high in protein. Zimba demonstrates how to grind up peanuts and black-eyed peas to add to the corn-based porridge normally given to children so they can get nutrients from different types of food. Zimba will return with the mothers to the mats later as they feed the new porridge mixture to their children in amounts based on their age.

Through this hands-on learning, mothers and babies are on the road to a better, healthier life.

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“Pan para el Mundo aplaude el liderazgo continuo de la Casa Blanca en abordar el hambre infantil”, dijo el reverendo David Beckmann, presidente de Pan para el Mundo. “Las propuestas anunciadas ayer ayudarían a más niños hambrientos a acceder a los alimentos que necesitan a lo largo del año”.

El programa piloto tiene como objetivo hacer más eficiente el proceso de solicitar comidas escolares, reduciendo el papeleo con el uso de Medicaid para certificar a los niños para comidas escolares gratuitas y rebajadas.

La solicitud del presidente para el presupuesto de 2017 propondrá una expansión permanente al programa EBT de verano. Dicho programa provee tarjetas EBT a familias en zonas aisladas para darles acceso a alimentos durante el verano si sus hijos reciben comidas escolares gratuitas o rebajadas.  

Programas piloto de EBT de verano han reducido las formas más severas de inseguridad alimentaria infantil por casi un tercio.

Las propuestas se anunciaron oficialmente en la “Conversación Sobre el Hambre Infantil en Estados Unidos de la Casa Blanca”. La cumbre reunió a oficiales del Gobierno, académicos, líderes de fe, y beneficiarios de asistencia alimentaria para analizar maneras de reducir el hambre y la pobreza.

En los Estados Unidos, uno de cada cinco niños vive en riesgo de hambre. De cada seis niños que reciben almuerzos escolares, sólo la mitad reciben también un desayuno escolar. Sólo uno recibe comidas durante el verano.

La ley bipartita para la reautorización de nutrición infantil, aprobada por el Comité de Agricultura del Senado la semana pasada, tomaría medidas clave para hacer permanente el acceso a EBT de verano en algunas áreas. Las propuestas de ayer dan seguimiento a esas mejoras, y dirigen más fondos para una expansión nacional del programa de EBT de verano en los próximos diez años.

“Pan para el Mundo exhorta al Congreso a que financie estas propuestas en las próximas negociaciones por el presupuesto, y que apruebe una ley de reautorización que fortalezca los programas de nutrición infantil”, dijo Beckmann.

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“Bread for the World applauds the White House’s continued leadership in addressing child hunger,” said Rev. David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World. “The proposals announced yesterday would help connect more hungry children with the healthy meals they need year-round.”

The pilot program is intended to make the school meal application process more efficient and reduce paperwork by using Medicaid data to certify children for free and reduced-price school meals.

The president’s budget request for 2017 will propose a permanent expansion of the summer EBT program. This program provides an EBT card to families in hard-to-reach areas to purchase groceries during summer months if their children receive free or reduced-price school meals.                                                                           

Summer EBT pilot projects have reduced the most severe forms of child food insecurity by up to one-third.

The proposals were officially announced at “A White House Conversation on Child Hunger in America.” The summit brought together government officials, scholars, faith leaders, and recipients of food assistance to discuss ways to reduce hunger and poverty.

In the U.S., one in five children lives at risk of hunger. For every six low-income children who receive a school lunch, only about half also get a school breakfast. Only one also gets a meal during the summer months.

The bipartisan child nutrition reauthorization bill, passed by the Senate Agriculture Committee last week, would take key steps to make summer EBT permanently available in some areas. Yesterday’s proposals build on those improvements and direct additional funds to allow nationwide expansion of summer EBT over the next ten years.

“Bread for the World calls on Congress to fund these proposals in upcoming budget negotiations, and to pass a reauthorization bill that strengthens child nutrition programs,” added Beckmann.

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“Pan para el Mundo aplaude la adopción por el comité de agricultura de esta ley importante y bipartita”, dijo el reverendo David Beckmann, presidente de Pan para el Mundo. “Esta legislación incluye varios cambios legislativos clave que mejorarían los programas de nutrición infantil. Ahora que la lay avanza a la asamblea general del Senado, exhortamos a los senadores a que la aprueben”.

La ley para mejorar la integridad y acceso de la nutrición infantil de 2016 reestructuraría los programas de alimentos de verano y escolares, para facilitar la provisión de éstos durante todo el año. La ley permite que algunos gobiernos estatales proporcionen tarjetas de transferencias electrónicas de prestaciones (conocidas como EBT, por sus siglas en inglés) a familias en zonas aisladas para darles acceso a alimentos básicos. También permitiría que algunos estados utilicen métodos alternativos para alcanzar a los niños quienes enfrentan dificultades para llegar a los sitios en los que se proveen dichos alimentos.

Cabe destacar que la financiación para la ley no requerirá hacer recortes al Programa de Asistencia Nutricional Suplementaria (SNAP por sus siglas en inglés) ni a los demás programas de asistencia pública.

Uno de cada cinco niños en Estados Unidos vive en riesgo de pobreza. De cada seis niños que reciben almuerzos escolares, sólo la mitad también reciben desayuno en sus escuelas, y sólo uno de los seis recibe alimentos durante el verano.

Durante la Ofrenda de Cartas del 2015, 220,000 miembros de Pan para el Mundo escribieron cartas y correos electrónicos, e hicieron miles de llamadas telefónicas, exhortando al Congreso a aprobar una ley para la reautorización de los programas de nutrición infantil.

“Ahora que avanza el proceso de reautorización de la nutrición infantil, exhortamos al Congreso a que apruebe una ley que mejora y fortalece los programas de nutrición infantil”, dijo Beckmann.

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“Bread for the World applauds the agriculture committee’s passage of this important, bipartisan bill,” said Rev. David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World. “While this legislation is not perfect, it takes important steps to connect more children at risk of hunger with the meals they need to learn and grow.”

The Improving Child Nutrition Integrity and Access Act of 2016 would streamline summer and after-school meal programs to make it easier to serve meals to kids year-round. The bill allows some states to provide summer EBT (electronic benefit transfer) cards to families in hard-to-reach areas to purchase groceries. It also allows some states to use alternative methods of reaching kids when they are unable to make it to meal sites.

Importantly, the bill does not make cuts to SNAP (formerly known as food stamps) or other anti-poverty programs to pay for these changes.

One in five children in the U.S. lives at risk of hunger. For every six low-income children who receive a school lunch, only about half also get a school breakfast. Only one also gets a meal during the summer months.

As part of its 2015 Offering of Letters campaign, Bread for the World members wrote over 220,000 personal letters and emails, and made thousands of phone calls, urging Congress to pass a child nutrition reauthorization bill.

“As the child nutrition reauthorization process moves forward, we urge Congress to pass a bill that improves and strengthens child nutrition programs,” added Beckmann.

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“Estamos muy alentados por los acuerdos realizados anoche por las leyes ómnibus y sobre impuestos para el año fiscal 2016”, dijo David Beckmann, presidente de Pan para el Mundo. “Estas leyes ayudarán a millones de estadounidenses a evitar la pobreza, y asegurarán que los más necesitados tengan los recursos para alimentarse y sustentar a sus hijos. Exhorto a los legisladores a que aprueben ambas leyes cuanto antes”.

La ley sobre impuestos hará permanentes las mejoras clave al crédito tributario por ingresos del trabajo (EITC por sus siglas en inglés) y por menores (CTC por sus siglas en inglés). Los EITC y CTC en conjunto sacan a más de personas de la pobreza que cualquier otro programa de los Estados Unidos aparte del Seguro Social. El hecho de hacer estas cláusulas EITC y CTC permanentes prevendrá que 16 millones de personas entren en la pobreza o en una pobreza más profunda. Pan para el Mundo ha estado luchando para que estas mejoras sean permanentes desde el 2010, y esta ley representa una gran victoria para las familias trabajadoras y de bajos recursos.

La ley ómnibus aumenta la financiación de programas infantiles como Head Start, y proporciona acceso alternativo a alimentos durante los meses del verano cuando no hay clases. La ley también aumenta los fondos para la asistencia alimentaria extranjera, y para la salud y nutrición materno-infantil, y fondos continuos para fomentar sostenibilidad agrícola a largo plazo. En particular, la ley no incluye una cláusula para aumentar los subsidios para las grandes empresas de flete para enviar asistencia alimentaria. La cláusula podría haber causado que 2 millones de personas perdieran asistencia alimentaria esencial de los Estados Unidos, mientras que a la vez aumentando los costos a los tributarios por unos 75 millones de dólares.

“Estas leyes comprueban que el Congreso sí puede superar la política parcial y aprobar legislación que marcará una verdadera diferencia para los que batallan para conseguir alimentos y sustentar a sus familias”, dijo Beckmann. “Espero que los legisladores aprueben ambas leyes esta semana, y que en el próximo año trabajen juntos por el bien de todos”.

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“We are greatly encouraged by the agreements made last night on the FY 2016 omnibus spending bill and the tax bill,” said David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World. “These bills will keep millions of Americans out of poverty, and ensure that those in most need have the resources to put food on the table and provide for their children. I urge lawmakers to pass both bills posthaste.”  

The tax bill makes permanent key improvements to the earned income tax credit (EITC) and the child tax credit (CTC). The EITC and CTC together lift more people out of poverty than any other program in the U.S. besides Social Security. Making these EITC and CTC provisions permanent will prevent 16 million people from falling into or deeper into poverty. Bread for the World has been working to make these improvements permanent since 2010, and this bill represents a major victory for low-income working families.

The omnibus bill increases funding for children’s programs like Head Start, and provides alternative access to food during the summer months when school is not in session. The bill also increases funding for international food aid and maternal and child health and nutrition, and continued funding to build long-term agriculture sustainability. Notably, the bill does not include a provision to increase subsidies to the world’s largest shipping companies to ship food aid. The provision could have resulted in up to 2 million people losing life-saving U.S. food aid while increasing transportation costs to taxpayers by $75 million.    

“These bills prove that Congress can overcome brinksmanship and pass legislation that will make a real difference for people struggling to put food on the table and provide for their families,” added Beckmann. “I hope that lawmakers pass both bills this week, and in the coming year continue to work together for the common good.”  

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On a recent Wednesday morning, roughly 100 clients gathered at Catholic Charities’ Lt. Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Community Center in Harlem to pick up their weekly bag of groceries from the food pantry.

But before the food pantry opened, Lizaura “Lizzie” German, a program manager at Catholic Charities, conducted an Offering of Letters.

Bread’s 2015 Offering of Letters: Feed Our Children is focused on ensuring Congress reauthorizes the child nutrition bill. The legislation is set to expire in the fall.

“In the U.S., 1 in 5 children struggles with hunger, and in New York City, it’s even worse at 1 in 4 children. We can write letters to Congress on their behalf,” German said. German is a Bread for the World Hunger Justice Leader. HJLs, as they are affectionately referred to at Bread, are young faith leaders and clergy who come together to form intentional partnerships and community with Bread to advance the work of ending hunger in our world.

As an HJL, German is determined to help Catholic Charities clients find their voices.  She definitely made an impression on Susan La-Rose. La Rose was so moved by German’s plea that she leapt up to address everyone in the room.

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It’s a fact you’ve probably heard before, but the scandal of it still rings loudly: 17,000 children die each day from causes that are entirely preventable and treatable – conditions such as pneumonia, diarrhea, and malaria. What’s more, malnutrition – something we can also prevent with a solid diet – accounts for almost half – 45 percent – of deaths among children under the age of 5. This equals three million children’s lives lost each year.

As much as we at Bread for the World ask activists to urge Congress to take action against hunger, recently Congress has taken a first step toward preventing these child deaths, and Bread applauds this move. On July 30, the Reach Every Mother and Child Act (S. 1911) was introduced. It is bipartisan legislation that will help to end preventable maternal, newborn, and child deaths. The act was introduced by Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Chris Coons (D-Del.). If passed, it will provide low-cost, high-impact measures that have been proven to prevent the deaths of mothers and children in the most vulnerable, poorest countries.

The act would enable the U.S. government and its partners to save the lives of an additional 15 million children and 600,000 women by 2020. We’ve proven already that we can do it. Since 1990, nearly 100 million children around the world have been saved, and the deaths of mothers worldwide have been nearly cut in half. These accomplishments are some of the best success stories in international development. But we can actually get the number of preventable maternal and child deaths down to zero.

In 2012, together with 175 countries and 400 nonprofit organizations, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) announced a bold new goal to end preventable child and maternal deaths by 2035. But to reach this goal, Congress must pass the Reach Every Mother and Child Act.

Specifically, this act would:

• Coordinate a U.S. government strategy to end preventable maternal, newborn, and child deaths by 2035
• Require ambitious targets to be set, tracked, and annually reported on
• Focus on the poorest and most vulnerable populations, recognizing the unique needs within different countries and communities
• Improve coordination among the U.S. government agencies and relevant foreign governments, international organizations, and civil society
• Complement strong U.S. bilateral investments with innovative, public-private financing mechanisms
• Accelerate partner countries’ progress toward self-sustainability for maternal, newborn, and child health.

This legislation would also ensure fewer children experience the harmful and life-threatening effects of malnutrition, especially during the critical 1,000-day window from pregnancy to age 2.

Bread for the World is committed to ending hunger by 2030, and this act would be one step toward that goal.

Beth Ann Saracco is a senior international policy analyst at Bread for the World.

Photo: Underinvesting in the health of girls and women contributes to child mortality and intergenerational cycles of poor health and poverty. Laura Elizabeth Pohl/Bread for World

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Nearly two hours. The Senate Finance Committee on July 21 spent nearly two hours talking about expired tax benefits. Many items came up during those two hours: biodiesel, conservation easements, stationary fuel cells, bonus depreciation, how much extending tax credits retroactively actually incentivizes behavior, and the need to make many of these tax credits permanent.

What didn’t come up? The two tax credits that prevent more people from falling into poverty than any other program in the United States, outside of Social Security. The only two tax credits that specifically benefit low-income working families. The two tax credits that have been proven to get more parents into the workforce, improve test scores among children, and help families move into the middle class.

What tax credits didn’t come up in those two hours? The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Child Tax Credit (CTC).

Just like the other tax breaks discussed during the committee’s markup of a bill to extend certain expired tax provisions, Congress must act to prevent key provisions of the EITC and CTC from expiring. Just like some of the other tax breaks discussed during the markup, these credits — with their recent improvements — should be made permanent.

True, these improvements don’t expire until 2017, but senators repeatedly spoke up about how certain credits should become permanent. They talked eloquently about how businesses need certainty. But no one said a peep about making the current EITC and CTC benefits permanent. No one talked about certainty for low-income working families, struggling to put food on the table and making ends meet.

Unlike the other tax credits that were discussed, the EITC and CTC don’t affect foreign pensions. They don’t affect fisheries in the American Samoa. And they don’t reward companies for capital investment.

Many of the tax benefits in the markup bill are good.  But this is about priorities. And as long as we’re talking about prioritizing bonus depreciation for capital investment, then we also should prioritize preventing 16.4 million people, including 7.7 million children, from falling into or deeper into poverty. We should prioritize preventing 50 million Americans from losing some or all of their EITC or CTC. This is what will happen if Congress fails to continue the EITC and CTC improvements.

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), a real EITC and CTC champion (and Bread for the World Lobby Day award recipient), got called away during the bill’s markup. He planned to introduce an amendment to make the 2009 EITC and CTC improvements permanent. But with his absence, no other senator raised the subject.

Are you outraged over the silence around the EITC and CTC? Then take a moment to email your senators.

Take Action on this Issue      Learn more

Amelia Kegan is deputy director of government relations at Bread for the World.

Photo: Heather Rude-Turner, reading to her son Isaac, depends on the Earned Income Tax Credit to help support her family. Laura Elizabeth Pohl/Bread for the World.

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School’s out for summer, but Bread for the World wants to keep you in the know on our 2015 Offering of Letters: Feed Our Children. Every five years, Congress must reauthorize domestic child nutrition programs, which includes school lunch and breakfast; afterschool, daycare, and summer meal programs; and nutrition assistance to pregnant mothers and children up to age 5. The current legislation, reauthorized in 2010, will expire September 30, 2015. 

So what is Congress doing as the expiration date nears? 

Members of Congress have introduced a series of “marker bills” – bills introduced to lay out specific priorities or suggested changes before broader legislation is drafted. The goal of a marker bill is not necessarily to become law as is, but to build support for the policy changes in the bills so they can be included in final legislation. 

Below is an update on some marker bills introduced this year that aim to increase access to nutritious food for children at risk of hunger: *

• The Summer Meals Act of 2015 (S. 613/H.R. 1728) was introduced in the Senate by U.S. Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), and in the House of Representatives by U.S. Reps. Don Young (R-Alaska) and Rick Larsen (D-Wash.). The bill would make it easier for current summer meal sites to serve kids by streamlining requirements and paperwork, allowing a third meal or snack for children in all-day programs, and providing transportation grants to help children in rural and underserved areas access summer meal sites.
• The Stop Child Summer Hunger Act of 2015 (S. 1539/H.R. 2715) was introduced in the Senate by U.S. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and in the House of Representatives by U.S. Rep. Susan Davis (D-Calif.). This bill would help children who have difficulty accessing summer meal sites receive food at home. It provides Summer EBT (electronic benefit transfer) cards, similar to pre-loaded debit cards, to low-income families that have one or more children eligible for free- or reduced-price meals during the school year.
• The Access to Healthy Food for Young Children Act (S. 1833) was introduced by U.S. Sen. Robert Casey (D-Pa.). There is currently no companion bill in the House. This legislation would reduce the red tape for afterschool and daycare meal providers, allow a snack or third meal to be served to children in all-day programs, and increase the rate at which the government reimburses meals to allow for more fresh and nutritious food options.
• The Wise Investment in our Children (WIC) Act (S. 1796/H.R. 2660) was introduced in the Senate by U.S. Sen. Robert Casey (D-Pa.) and in the House by Representatives by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.). The WIC Act raises the eligibility age for the WIC program from 5 to 6 years old. This would close the gap for five-year-olds not yet in school because their birthday is after the official state or district cut-off date.

On September 17, the Senate Agriculture Committee will release and discuss its child nutrition bill. As members of Congress return to their districts for August recess, remind them that feeding our children is a top priority. You can email your member individually or contact your regional organizer about meetings or events happening in your area. Urge your members of Congress to make sure children at risk of hunger receive the healthy meals they need to learn and grow!

Alyssa Casey is the government relations coordinator at Bread for the World.

Take action on this issue

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Last month, I joined Christina Hite and hundreds of other Bread members in Washington, D.C., to ask our elected leaders to end childhood hunger.

Christina works with her church, Imago Dei in Peoria, Ill., to serve hot meals through the Summer Food Service Program, a federally funded summer meals program that is implemented by local nonprofits, schools, and churches. Peoria has one of the largest summer meal gaps — discrepancies between the number of kids who receive a free or reduced-price meal during the school year and those who receive one in the summer — in the country.

Christina has witnessed both the important impact this summer meal program has and its limitations in reaching all who need it. That’s why Christina came to D.C. in June to talk with elected officials. And that’s why she’s working hard to set up an in-district meeting with Rep. Cheri Bustos, her representative in Congress. Ending child hunger is part of her summer plans. Will it be a part of yours?

August is a perfect time to be in conversation with our elected leaders. As senators and representatives are home for the month of August, they host town hall meetings and are available for in-district meetings at their offices. While personalized letters and emails are an effective advocacy tool, in-person conversations with your member of Congress can have an even bigger impact. Check out these advocacy tools and contact your regional organizer for any additional help.

This August, be a part of an end to child hunger. Plan to attend a town hall meeting or set up a meeting with your member of Congress in their district office. Thank you for your advocacy. Together we can close the child hunger gap and ensure that all are fed during the summer and all year long.

Matt Gross is the deputy director of organizing and grassroots capacity building at Bread for the World.
 

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A year ago, Lane Riley took a leap of faith. She moved from her home in South Carolina to operate a summer meals site for children in rural Shaw, Miss.

One pastor helped secure a community center to serve as the site and she recruited another pastor to be the cook. She and that pastor worked together to make lunches for the children.

Last summer, roughly 30 children were fed lunch twice a week. This summer, Riley expanded the program, which is serving a lunch and snack daily to approximately 100 children. Children also participate in various activities at the site, including reading, Bible study, art, and recreation.

Because the site now serves almost three times the number of children compared to last summer, Riley needed help. So, she trained 12 high school students to be leaders for the different age groups.

“Teenagers in Shaw aren’t given a lot of opportunities for leadership development, and this is an amazing way of creating leadership skills and mentoring older kids,” Riley said.

Riley is a program director at Delta Hands for Hope, which runs the summer feeding site. The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of Mississippi (CBFMS) is the financial sponsor of the Summer Food Service program in Mississippi.

This summer there are now five additional summer feeding sites in Mississippi run by Delta Hands for Hope. The CBFMS uses reimbursement funds it receives from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to support the feeding sites. The six sites are projected to serve about 10,000 meals this summer, Riley said.

Summer feeding sites are crucial to the health of children, especially those who come from low-income families. During the academic year, those same kids receive either a free- or reduced-price lunch at school. But the summer is different.

Accessing meals during summertime can be hard for children, especially for those living in rural areas. Lack of transportation and long distances make it difficult for them to get the meals they need to grow into healthy adults.

The need for a summer feeding site in Shaw is great. The city is located in the Mississippi Delta, where poverty is high. In fact, about half of the adult population in Shaw lives below the poverty line ($23,624 for a family of four with two children).

And roughly 70 percent of Shaw’s children live below the poverty line, according to the U.S. Census.

“Having this feeding program takes the stress off parents,” said Riley, who studied sociology and Spanish at Lander University in South Carolina. “They’ll know that their kids will be getting a meal in the summer.”

Riley first visited Shaw several years ago as part of a volunteer trip with Wilton Baptist Church in Wilton, Conn. The church’s pastor, the Rev. Dr. K. Jason Coker, is originally from Shaw and would take teams of volunteers to the city during the summer to work with children.

Riley began to visit the church after moving from South Carolina to Connecticut to work as a nanny. When the idea to start a summer feeding site in his hometown of Shaw surfaced, Coker thought Riley would be a good candidate to spearhead the project.

“There are a lot of people who are needed to create generational and systemic change, and the people of Shaw are only a small handful of people who are trying to combat hunger and poverty,” Riley said. “But by working in Shaw, with CBFMS, and many other churches and organizations, we are noticing a difference, and creating a positive environment for the kids of Shaw.”

The United States is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, but nearly 16 million children are food-insecure. Act now! Call (800/826-3688) or email your U.S. representative and your U.S. senators to close the hunger gap today.

Jennifer Gonzalez is the associate online editor at Bread for the World.

Photo: Lane Riley, left, with cook and pastor, Joe Jackson. Lane Riley for Bread for the World.

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“Today, we are advocating for legislation that will help us reach our goal of ending hunger by 2030,” said Eric Mitchell, director of government relations at Bread for the World. “You cannot end hunger as long as there are millions of children who are living in households that are struggling to put food on the table, and there are farmers in need of resources to grow food in their communities.”

In the U.S., only one out of every seven low-income children getting free lunch at school also receives meals during the summer. The Summer Meals Act would strengthen and expand access to nutritious meals for children during the summer months.

Feed the Future, which was created as a response to the 2008 food crisis, helps more than 7 million small-scale farmers increase crop production, and provides nutritious food to more than 12.5 million children around the world.

“Congress has an opportunity, this year, to pass legislation which directly impacts millions of children in the U.S. and abroad,” said Rev. David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World. “We thank all of the congressional leaders who are working tirelessly to ensure that ending hunger is a top priority. We know that you have a difficult task, but the faith community is behind you.”

Later this evening, Bread for the World will honor Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.), Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Calif.), Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.), and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) for their continued leadership on issues impacting hungry and poor people in the United States and around the world.

The post Bread for the World Activists Visit Capitol Hill to Advocate for Domestic and International Nutrition Programs appeared first on Bread for the World.

At precisely 11:20 a.m. on a cold, late-fall morning, the bell rings at Anne Frank Elementary School in Philadelphia, Pa. A minute later, the morning stillness in the cafeteria is disrupted by the conversations and shouts of more than 200 second graders. They file into the room by classroom and go through the line to pick up their lunches. For the next couple of hours, the large room is filled with noise and energy.

Among the first group of students eating a school-provided lunch daily is Aidan, the 7-year-old son of Barbie Izquierdo. His sister, Leylanie, age 9, will eat lunch during her grade’s appointed time 40 minutes later.

This lunchtime routine plays out every weekday at the school and in schools across the United States. Whether it’s breakfast in the morning before classes or lunch at midday, the food provided to school children under national nutrition programs gives them the energy they need for the next few hours of learning. Meals provided after school or at day-care centers are also important parts of the national nutrition program.

While these children don’t think about it, the food that is subsidized by the federal government is quietly nourishing their bodies and brains so they can learn and grow. As Mickey Komins, the principal at Anne Frank Elementary—and probably any educator—will tell you, “We’re teaching for a lifetime — not just for that day.”

Teaching today and laying the foundation for students’ futures entail not just classroom instruction but making sure students have full stomachs so their minds can be fed. Feeding students involves staff at all levels in every school that carries out any of the government’s child nutrition programs, from administrators down through teachers and cafeteria workers.

One cafeteria worker who sits at a cash register at the end of the food line at the Philadelphia school tells a student, “Go back and get a fruit cup.” Workers know the students they see every day and make sure they are following the government’s nutrition guidelines by eating something from each of the major food groups — protein, grains, and fruits and vegetables. Cafeteria managers sometimes use students to test new menu items or encourage students to try a new vegetable. In these ways, students are also being educated on eating well and developing healthy habits for a lifetime.

There’s such a thing as a free lunch

All Philadelphia public schools provide every student with a free lunch regardless of their family income, a practice at many schools across the country where a high percentage of students would qualify for free meals. At many other schools, family income determines whether a student pays the full price, reduced price, or gets a meal completely free.

At the end of the school day, Barbie comes to the school to pick up Aidan and Leylanie. Leylanie does her assigned chore of washing the dishes while Barbie sits with Aidan and helps him with his homework. Barbie asks her children every day what they had for lunch. She is reassured that they receive a solid, nutritious meal during their school day. One day a week, Aidan and Leylanie eat a free breakfast at school with their classmates, but they choose to eat breakfast at home on the other days.

“If school couldn’t provide lunch for children, there would be a lot of children going home with probably nothing to eat at all,” says Barbie. This isn’t the case for her children now, but it used to be. “There were times when I had to send my kids to bed because I didn’t have enough food for them to eat. So had they not received any type of food in school, then they would have had nothing.” The single mother was on SNAP (formerly known as food stamps) just a couple of years ago after losing her job.

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Just like everybody else

Barbie moves to the kitchen to begin preparing dinner, a dish of noodles with broccoli. When dinner is ready, the family eats together at the dining room table. “People always think that we’re asking for a handout because we’re on welfare or public assistance,” explains Barbie. “And what we’re really asking for is the opportunity to show them that we’re just like you. We’re smart, we have wants, we have needs, we have dreams. We want the best for our kids just as they want the best for their kids. We just grew up in different circumstances.”

Barbie is currently taking classes toward her associate degree. She is interested in working in the field of criminal justice. “If I can build my life to a place where they don’t have to worry about their home being taken from them and they don’t have to worry about opening the fridge and nothing being in there, then I’ve accomplished everything.”

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What Do We Want Congress to Do?

Bread for the World is urging Congress to pass a child nutrition bill that protects nutrition programs and gives more hungry children access to the meals they need to thrive.

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“One in five children in the United States lives at risk of hunger,” said Christine Melendez Ashley, senior domestic policy analyst at Bread for the World. “Child nutrition programs are vital because they ensure that our children get nutritious meals and have the energy to grow and learn.”

The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 funds and sets policy for national child nutrition programs and must be reauthorized every five years. It includes school lunch and breakfast programs, summer feeding programs, after-school and child care feeding programs, and The Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). Together these programs serve about 29 million low-income children annually.

Bread wants Congress to continue the strong investments in national child nutrition programs and to improve children’s access to feeding programs. For every seven low-income children getting a lunch at school, only four get breakfast, and only one receives meals during the summer, a time when children are most at risk of hunger. Improvements to these programs should not be paid for by cuts to other vital safety net programs.

“Both sides of the aisle agree that hungry children, especially in a wealthy country like ours, is unacceptable. The various child nutrition programs are testament to the bipartisan support that is still found in Congress, support that will hopefully continue to ensure that nutritious food for children is not a privilege,” said Ashley.

Thousands of churches representing nearly 50 diverse Christian denominations throughout the United States will participate in Bread for the World’s 2015 Offering of Letters campaign. As part of a worship service or mass, people of faith will write letters to their members of Congress urging the reauthorization of national child nutrition programs. They then offer these letters to God before they are delivered to their members of Congress.

For more than 40 years, Bread for the World members have written hundreds of thousands of letters to Congress every year. This annual campaign has consistently won lasting victories for children, men, and women who struggle to put food on their tables.

Bread for the World’s Offering of Letters materials are available here.

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“The president’s focus on helping families feel secure in a time of change, and in ensuring everyone has an opportunity for success are keys to ending hunger,” said Rev. David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World. “President Obama said it best that childcare is ‘not a woman’s issue but an economic priority for all of us’.”

The 2015 state of the union address comes at a time when 49 million Americans are at risk of hunger. Communities of color continue to suffer disproportionately with 27.1 percent of African-Americans and 25.6 percent of Hispanics living in poverty.

“With 16 million children not knowing if they will go to bed hungry, our top priority with this new Congress is to ensure that our nation’s child nutrition programs are reauthorized,” said Beckmann. “Improvements to the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Child Tax Credit (CTC) need to be made permanent. They reward work and supplement wages, and the 2009 improvements alone are preventing 8 million kids from falling into or deeper into poverty.”

Internationally, poverty-focused development assistance (PFDA) is going to be funded at a slightly higher level than in the FY 2015 budget, largely in part due to emergency funds to fight Ebola in West Africa. During this speech, President Obama stated that rolling back Ebola in West Africa is an opportunity to invest in development and eradicate extreme poverty.

“We know we can work together with the president and the new Congress to eliminate the gender gap, invest in our children, and ensure U.S. foreign assistance helps our brothers and sisters around the world,” said Beckmann. “We must take this opportunity of a new Congress and the improved state of the union to make ending hunger a national priority.”

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Many children suffer from nutritional deficiencies, sometimes referred to as “hidden hunger” since they can cause serious health problems in children who don’t “look hungry.” Nutrition affects mental health and academic achievement as well as physical health. But the damage caused by food insecurity is unnecessary and preventable. Federal nutrition programs help millions of children eat well; these programs must be maintained and strengthened to provide more eligible children with healthier food.

When Congress reauthorizes child nutrition programs in 2015, the emphasis must be on enabling programs to serve all eligible children well — from WIC for infants, to meals at daycare for preschoolers, to school lunch, breakfast, and summer food for elementary and secondary students. The United States simply cannot afford the consequences of allowing children to go without the nutritious food they need. Strong child nutrition programs must be a top national priority.

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Bread for the World president, Rev. David Beckmann, issued the following statement in response:

“We are disappointed that the House found it acceptable to cut one of the most effective anti-poverty programs in our country while granting a larger benefit for higher-income households.

“Congress must continue the 2009 revisions in any final child tax credit bill. Because of those improvements, millions of parents are better able to put food on the table and raise their children. But with the House bill, these six million children will suffer while a family earning between $100,000 and $200,000 per year gets an extra $550 more.

“It is unacceptable that we are one of the wealthiest countries in the world and have one of the highest child poverty rates among developed countries. Our policies should help lower-income working families climb out of poverty – not push them deeper into it.

“As a Christian, I find this outrageous. Our faith calls us to clothe and feed struggling families, not take their clothes and meals away. Our faith also calls us to treat well those who sojourn in our lands—not rob them of their food because they lack a Social Security card.

“We will continue to urge our leaders not to institute these reverse Robin Hood-style policies but instead to focus on eradicating hunger and poverty. We will be vigilant as Congress takes up other tax-extender legislation during this lame-duck session.” 

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“The child tax credit is one of our country’s key anti-poverty programs,” said Amelia Kegan, deputy director of government relations at Bread for the World. “Lower-income working families struggle enough and should not be pushed deeper into poverty by this bill.”

In 2009, Congress made the CTC available to low-income working families, enabling them to begin to receive part of the credit once earnings reached $3,000. Under this bill, a single mother with two children who works full time at the minimum wage (about $14,500 a year) would completely lose her CTC of $1,725. The bill ends the credit for many low-income working families and reduces it for many more by failing to extend the 2009 improvements. By not extending the CTC improvement, 12 million people, including 6 million children, would be pushed into poverty or deeper poverty.

The bill also requires parents to use a Social Security number rather than an individual taxpayer identification number to claim the credit. This will prevent 2 million families with a working immigrant parent from claiming the credit, hurting as many as 5.5 million children—4.5 million of whom are U.S. citizens. The average income in these families is about $21,000 per year.

At the same time, the bill allows those with higher incomes to get the credit, meaning those earning between $150,000 and $250,000 can now claim it. On average, families with kids earning between $100,000 and $200,000 per year would receive $550 more.

This vote comes on the heels of the release of the annual KIDS COUNT Data Book by the Anne E. Casey Foundation. The report revealed that, in 2012, 23 percent of U.S. children lived in poor families. The United States ranks 34th for child poverty among 35 wealthy countries surveyed. 

“Tax credits help working families make ends meet so they can provide for their families,” Kegan added. “This reverse Robin Hood-style policy stands to send more than six million children into poverty or deeper into poverty while those with more resources claim additional benefits.”

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Thanks to a large evidence base, nutrition-specific interventions are well-defined. They include treating acute malnutrition, increasing micronutrient intake, and promoting exclusive breastfeeding, addressing the immediate causes of undernutrition.

Nutrition-sensitive development addresses the underlying factors that contribute to malnutrition — including hunger, poverty, gender inequality, and poor access to safe water and health services — by integrating nutrition actions into other sectors. Unlike nutrition-specific interventions, nutrition-sensitive development lacks a common definition, which is needed for aligning efforts and measuring impact. More research and documentation of proven approaches to integrating nutrition-sensitive actions into multisectoral programs will build the evidence base.

This policy brief seeks to contribute to a wider conversation that we hope will lead to some consensus.

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Now is the time to strengthen U.S. leadership by systematizing nutrition within development assistance. The existing operational structure is fragmented and complex, while funding to scale up nutrition remains inadequate. Action on five fronts is needed: an overarching nutrition strategy with a transparent budget; a high-level nutrition focal point; increased capacity in Washington and the field; harmonized nutrition guidance; and strengthened monitoring.

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Produced by Bread for the World Institute

No. 219

March-April 2012

In the last few years, there has been an unprecedented global effort to improve maternal and child nutrition. The effort is driven by the growing recognition that malnutrition during the period from pregnancy to a child’s second birthday causes devastating and largely irreversible damage. Young children are simply much more vulnerable to malnutrition than older kids or adults. But the flip side is that pregnancy to age 2 is truly a “window of opportunity.” Ensuring that young children are well nourished has a dramatic impact on their whole lives — better
health, greater achievement in school, and higher lifetime earnings.

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The status of women is a key determinant of maternal and child feeding practices as well as decisions about how food is distributed and consumed within the household. The end result is higher levels of malnutrition among women and girls than among males. Gender roles and inequities are a critical consideration in lanning and implementing programs to improve nutrition among pregnant and lactating women and children younger than 2.

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Nutrition has been an issue neglected for far too long, so the recent attention to maternal and child nutrition creates a unique opportunity to make progress. Scaling up and making meaningful, measurable progress against malnutrition will require both additional resources and new ways of working. It will mean supporting national nutrition strategies that are country-owned and -driven, ensuring coordination across sectors to improve nutrition outcomes, and investing in human and institutional capacity to scale up at the global and country levels. Leveraging linkages among nutrition, health, and agriculture sectors can signifi cantly increase the benefi ts of nutrition investments.

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More than 100 country governments and civil society organizations have signed on to the Scaling Up Nutrition Movement, which supports efforts to expand effective nutrition programs to undernourished pregnant women and young children. Reducing maternal and child malnutrition is a key priority of the U.S. government’s Feed the Future and Global Health initiatives.

There are opportunities to reform food aid to better align it with the objectives of these two programs. The U.S. Government Accountability Office has reported on inefficiencies in U.S. food aid procurement and distribution, while Tufts University has released an important study of ways to improve the nutritional quality of food aid. With debate on the next farm bill beginning, now is the time to improve this essential program.

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The Obama administration’s initiative to fight hunger offers an opportunity to improve nutrition of mothers and children around the world. In addition to the focus on increasing agricultural productivity and raising rural incomes, the administration should scale up nutrition interventions and integrate nutrition into its development programming. It should use improvements in maternal and child nutrition as a key indicator of success. It should support country-led strategies, coordinate with other donors and ensure that U.S. actions and policies do not undermine nutrition objectives.

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Developing nations face many barriers to achieving the MDGs, some unique and country-specific, others broadly shared. Common problems faced by fragile nations can be grouped into four areas: poor starting conditions; weak governance and institutions; conflict and instability; and environmental degradation.

To meet the MDGs and create a sustainable path to development, countries must adopt policies and programs to overcome these problems. Developed countries have a role to play in overcoming these barriers. Aid donors, particularly the United States, must ensure that development assistance is flexible enough to help countries address these challenges and meet the MDGs.

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