How to End Hunger by 2015 – Susan Bateson Outlines Recommendations the Administration and Congress Can Take

November 16th, 2009

Picture a nation where all children have enough nutritious food to eat and never worry where they’ll find their next meal. They eat three solid, healthy meals a day, have a couple of snacks, and go to bed without fearing hunger. According to President Obama, who made a campaign pledge to end childhood hunger in the United States by 2015, this is the world he wants to see by six years from now.

The Obama Administration is beginning to put some effort behind this pledge. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is holding a series of listening sessions around the country on ways to achieve the 2015 goal. One of those sessions was recently held here in Oakland, Calif.

Groups and individuals from various sectors, including state agencies, industry and advocacy groups, and service providers showed up and shared ideas on how to end childhood hunger over the next six years. We at the Alameda County Community Food Bank were there to represent the hundreds of thousands of county residents who live with hunger – numbers that are escalating on a monthly basis.

We’ve laid out a number of  that will lead our country down the right path toward ending hunger. The administration and Congress can take a number of steps:

Click here for more on the Calitics Web site.

Posted in General | No Comments »

2015 in the Big Apple: Report from New York Listening Session

October 22nd, 2009

Kimberley Chin (KC), director of Maryland Hunger Solutions, and Alexandra Ashbrook (AA), director of D.C. Hunger Solutions, both of which are FRAC initiatives, attended the 2015 Listening Session held in New York City on October 7. Here are their thoughts:

AA: It was a good crowd, about 60 people in the room and 23 giving testimony. Most of them were delighted that President Obama set a goal of ending childhood hunger by 2015.

KC: And, a lot of people had worked through the FRAC 2015 proposal and mentioned it during their testimony.

AA: And many of them focused on the federal nutrition programs, how important they are to achieving the 2015 goal. For me, it drove home the point that the 2015 goal is achievable, and, together, we can make this happen.

KC: People also expressed some real concerns about the federal nutrition programs – that they need to be strengthened.

AA: That’s definitely true. The programs need to be strengthened so they reach more low-income people. That could be by serving breakfast in the classroom so more low-income children can participate or expanding afterschool meals to all states. Access needs to be front and center.

KC: And, it was important that the session included people who had actually participated in SNAP and other programs.

AA: Mariana Chilton – she’s responsible for the Witnesses to Hunger project – brought Tangela Federick to the hearing. Tangela’s a Witness to Hunger participant and said that we need to remember that there are human faces behind the numbers and that the strategies we’re discussing impact real people.

KC: I agree with Tangela that we shouldn’t forget the faces behind the statistics. Right now, USDA reports 12.4 million children living in households that struggle against hunger. John Cook pointed out that there are an additional 8.8 million children that are in households with “marginal food security,” and they are facing the same health consequences that food insecure children face.

AA: A lot of the discussion did focus on the implications of hunger on children’s health. And, the session raised interactions in another way also: a number of people said we need to look beyond the federal nutrition programs to truly end hunger. We need to look at things like better wages, affordable health insurance, refundable tax credits, and other ways to address poverty. There was definitely recognition among the speakers that achieving President Obama’s goal is not just in the hands of USDA, but other agencies too. Kimberley shared a great analogy about Duncan and Sebelius.

KC: Just look at H1N1 – Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Health and Human Service Secretary Kathleen Sebelius are out there together talking about the virus and how to prevent it. Federal agencies can work together. Ending hunger should rise to this level.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in General | No Comments »

Utah 2015 Listening Session Participants Urge Administration to Address Root Causes of Hunger

October 20th, 2009

Anne Bellows, FRAC’s SNAP/Food Stamp Policy and Outreach Fellow, attended the Utah session. Here’s her report…

More than 100 people attended the Utah “End Child Hunger by 2015” listening session, which was held on September 29 in Salt Lake City.

The Utah listening session was part of “The Face of Hunger in Utah” conference, which was sponsored by Utah Food Bank Services and Utahns Against Hunger. Pamela Atkinson, a longtime community advocate in the state, was the opening keynote speaker; she highlighted the President’s commitment to ending childhood hunger and endorsed FRAC’s seven strategies.

In her comments during the listening session, Gina Cornia with Utahns Against Hunger pointed out that “to reduce hunger you have to reduce poverty – they are intertwined. The whole U.S. government must be engaged – income supports, EITC, afterschool program funding should all be a part of the solution.”

“Let’s roll up our sleeves and get to work, now,” was the message from Matt Anderson of the Utah State Office on Education. He suggested that Utah form a Hunger Task Force – like the one in Oregon – so that the anti-hunger community in the state could strengthen existing partnerships and find new ways to collaborate and problem-solve together. He also spoke about the challenges facing summer programs, especially those in rural communities, and mentioned that he’d like to see the rural transportation grants come back.

Other ideas at the listening session included:

  • Strengthening income supports and expanding the earned income tax credit for low-income working families;
  • Raising the minimum wage to reflect the cost of living;
  • Providing affordable health insurance for low-income Americans;
  • Continuing the improvements made by the economic recovery act which temporarily boosted SNAP/Food Stamp benefits and eliminated SNAP time limits imposed on able-bodied adults without dependents; and
  • Increasing nutrition program funding.

Other session attendees included Mountain Plains Regional Administrator Darlene Barnes, representatives from Senator Hatch’s office, Senator Bennett’s office, the Utah State Office on Education, the Utah Department of Health, and the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food.

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in General | No Comments »

Chicago Listening Session Participants Contribute Range of Ideas

October 16th, 2009

by Madeleine Levin, Senior Policy Analyst, School Breakfast and Lunch Program, Food Research and Action Center.

One of the first USDA Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) regional listening sessions to solicit feedback on ways to achieve President Barack Obama’s goal of ending childhood hunger in the U.S. by 2015 was held September 29th in Chicago. Julie Paradis, FNS Administrator, opened the session. She asked participants for proposals to address ways to end child hunger among all food insecure children, who number more than 12 million.

Participants at the session included Diane Doherty with the Illinois Hunger Coalition, Frank Kubik with Focus Hope of Michigan, Jon Janowski with the Milwaukee Hunger Task Force, Mora Nees with the Ohio Association of Second Harvest Food Banks, and Mary Lou Langenhop with the Children’s Hunger Alliance of Ohio.

Participants discussed a range of ideas, including:

  • Making additional investments in child nutrition programs;
  • Increasing the minimum wage;
  • Improving refundable tax credits for working families;
  • Retaining and building on recent economic stimulus improvements;
  • Simplifying paperwork for the federal nutrition programs, perhaps with a single application;
  • Convening a White House Conference on Hunger and Nutrition;
  • Increasing funding for afterschool suppers, school breakfast expansion, and summer program outreach and expansion (which can be accomplished through the upcoming Congressional reauthorization); and
  • Involving multiple federal agencies in the 2015 effort – especially the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services as well as USDA.

People who were unable to attend any of the listening sessions can submit written comments to USDA at ech2015@fns.usda.gov.

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in General | No Comments »

Julie Paradis, FNS/USDA, Invites “As Many As Possible” to Participate in USDA’s 2015 Listening Sessions

October 9th, 2009

One of the most exciting parts of the job for me and others among both the President’s appointees and the career staff here at USDA is figuring how best and most effectively to reach the President’s goal of ending childhood hunger by 2015. At the Food and Nutrition Service we have been holding a series of listening sessions around the country – I was at one of the very first, in Chicago, and found it incredibly helpful. I want to invite as many people as possible to participate in this process – give us your ideas, experience and knowledge of our programs and the needs of your communities.

There are more than 12 million children in our country in families struggling with hunger, and we need an ambitious set of strategies to help them. Many of those strategies involve the federal nutrition programs, but we need to think beyond the nutrition programs as well. As Melody Barnes, director of the President’s Domestic Policy Council, has said, we need to tackle hunger “from many different directions.” The President’s initial position paper on the 2015 goal mentioned SNAP, school meals, summer food and WIC, but also food banks and tackling poverty through tax relief, raising the minimum wage and providing affordable, accessible health insurance.

That’s why this effort will involve not only USDA, but the Treasury Department, Department of Education, Department of Health and Human Services, and others. And it will involve nonprofits, cities and states, and other stakeholders, as well as the federal government.

If you have thoughts about how we should go about ending childhood hunger in this country, I encourage you to send them to the e-mail address we have set up for this: ECH2015@fns.usda.gov.

Together we can reach this goal.

Julie Paradis is Administrator for the Food and Nutrition Service at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in General | No Comments »

Domestic Policy Council Chief Highlights President’s Commitment to 2015 Goal

October 2nd, 2009

In a recent column, The Oregonian’s David Sarasohn had the following quote from Melody Barnes:

“The president’s commitment to ending childhood hunger,” said Melody Barnes, director of the Domestic Policy Council, “is reflected in both the Recovery Act and his budget, which increased food stamps, provided resources to over-stretched food banks and invested in expanding access to child nutrition programs. The president also recognizes that we need to tackle hunger from many different angles, including such strategies as refundable tax credits that boost the incomes of struggling working families.”

Barnes is the latest Administration official to echo the President’s pledge. Since being appointed, U.S. Department of Agriculture Tom Vilsack has mentioned the President’s goal several times, most recently at last week’s Healthy Futures, Healthy Children conference. Both Martha Coven, also with the Domestic Policy Council and head of the Office of Mobility and Opportunity, and Kevin Concannon, Under Secretary for Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services, echoed this commitment at the same conference.

The 2015 goal also popped up in a recent story in The Nation about the pending reauthorization of the child nutrition programs.

Are people talking about the 2015 goal in your community? Let us know by posting in the comments below.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in General | No Comments »

Welcome to 2015

September 21st, 2009

FRAC is excited that the President has set a goal of ending childhood hunger by 2015, and to launch our new blog focused on achieving that goal.

We are an extraordinarily affluent nation – even today, as we reach what we all hope is the bottom of the recession, but we are a nation that for too long has had too much hunger and food insecurity in the midst of our affluence. Even before the recession began more than 12 million American children were living in households that suffer from hunger or food insecurity. That’s more than 17 percent of all U.S. children.

During the presidential campaign, President Obama pledged to make it a priority to end childhood hunger by 2015. Since being elected, he has signaled his continued support for this goal and his Administration has begun to take important steps to attack poverty and reduce hunger, even as this terrible recession has made the job harder, at least in the short term. We still have a long way to go.

I believe it is realistic to imagine that six years from now, every American child will begin each day secure that she will have enough nutritious food. Six years from now, every family should know where it can turn if it has hit a rough patch and can’t afford that nutritious food.

FRAC has developed a seven-pronged strategy to accomplish this goal.  We think it’s a strong starting point, and we must start now. We invite you to keep a close watch on 2015. In the coming weeks and months, we will post frequently here and have guest postings from other people and groups committed to achieving the 2015 goal. We’ll keep tabs on Capitol Hill and on USDA and other government agencies and blog about critical legislation and administrative steps, including the upcoming reauthorization of the child nutrition programs. We’ll follow 2015 press coverage and share it with you.

This is an important time in our nation and the policy decisions we make now will impact generations of children and families. 2015 will foster conversation and spur ideas on how best to achieve the goal by 2015. Take a look at the summary of FRAC’s 2015 strategy below or read the full paper. I look forward to hearing your comments and working together to end childhood hunger by 2015.

Jim Weill
President of the Food Research and Action Center

Summary of 2015 paper
FRAC’s “Ending Childhood Hunger by 2015: The Essential Strategies for Achieving the President’s Goal” sets out seven essential strategies to achieving that goal. They focus both on improving and expanding the nation’s nutrition programs, and bolstering the economy and strengthening supports for low-income families in order to move more out of poverty, the root cause of hunger in this country.
In brief, the seven strategies are:

  • Restore economic growth and create jobs with better wages for lower-income workers.
  • Raise the incomes of the lowest-income families.
  • Strengthen the SNAP/Food Stamp Program.
  • Strengthen Child Nutrition Programs.
  • Engage the entire federal government in ending childhood hunger.
  • Work with states, localities and nonprofits to expand and improve participation in federal nutrition programs.
  • Make sure all families have convenient access to reasonably priced, healthy food.

For the full paper, visit www.endingchildhunger2015.org.

Posted in General | No Comments »

Welcome to Our New Blog

August 20th, 2009

Welcome to the Food Research and Action Center’s new blog on Ending Childhood Hunger by 2015.  We will be launching soon!

Tags: ,
Posted in General | No Comments »