March 6,1957 was also the date Ghana became the first African Sub-Saharan country to obtain independence from European colonial rule. By 1961 another woman of African heritage and faith became the country’s first woman judge appointed by Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah – who later became president. During her tenure, she was appointed to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. It was this appointment that supported her drafting a working document which later became the Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women. The declaration was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1967. 

The International Women’s Year of 1975 gave additional impetus to proposals to develop the declaration into a binding international convention. Work proceeded through the first few years of the United Nations Decade for Women. In 1979, the United Nations General Assembly approved the Convention of the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Ghana, along with 63 other countries from all around the world, signed the CEDAW in July 1980, at the Copenhagen Conference that marked the mid-way point of the UN Decade for Women.

On this the, 30^th anniversary of the historic Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China, we are reminded that these women like Judge Jiagge played key leadership roles that led to this Conference. Indeed, the UN conference in Beijing featured over 30,000 women from around the world who brought stories of lament and hope, like the stories of Ms. Eckford and Judge Jiagge. At the same time, they brought concrete policy recommendations that affirmed women’s rights as human rights. This foundational lens for advocacy is still informing our women’s empowerment work today. This included the 2015 the Bread for the World Hunger Report entitled, When Women Flourish…We Can End Hunger. It too identified stories of women and girls with the important news that their empowerment is essential in ending hunger, extreme poverty, and malnutrition around the world. 

During the launch of the Nourish Our Future campaign on Capitol Hill, with over 1100 online and 100 in the room, Bread for the World President and CEO Eugene Cho and four women speakers affirmed women’s empowerment. He said “Nourish Our Future” is a two-year campaign that partly comprises expanding the Child Tax Credit, fully funding and strengthening the Special Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), and robustly funding global nutrition. Learn more and be a part of this historic moment and movement. 

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

The post Beijing at 30 Years: Empowering Women to Thrive Can End Hunger appeared first on Bread for the World.

Climate financing is a particularly dire need for women smallholder farmers struggling with droughts, floods, and other extreme weather events that pose a threat to their livelihoods and economic empowerment. Take Africa for example, a continent that is projected to enjoy a population boom in 2050 from its current 1.5 billion to 2.5 billion, with women and girls making up half this population, but only accounting for 33 percent of its GDP, putting into peril the economic wellbeing of the continent. 

Additionally, this demographic faces some of the most adverse impacts of extreme weather conditions due to lack of access to the resources to address the conditions that impact the integrity of their soil, the micronutrients of their crops, and the resilience of their yields – all stumbling blocks to scaling their agricultural production to market and stimulating their local economy. 

With girls, extreme weather impacts their ability to go to school because of dangerous access issues created by droughts, floods, hurricanes, and extreme heat, making it difficult for them to learn, not to mention the impact on their health. 

The outcomes for COP 29 were clear: tripling finance to developing countries from $100 billion to $300 billion by 2035; scaling up annual finance from public and private sources to $1.3 trillion by 2035; presenting national climate action plans; and establishing transparency reporting and review tools. 

Indeed, all these COP 29 outcomes could have encapsulated robust assessments of what it would cost to invest in women impacted by climate, for example in the agricultural sector and the resources needed to be appropriated to achieve the investment case. Specifically, national climate action plans can be a space to achieve “womanizing” climate finance objectives, country by country for instance. This is a direct way of improving the lives of smallholder farmers, especially since when a climate disaster strikes, four out of five people forced to leave their homes are women. Heartbreakingly, less than a third of the countries that have in place National Adaptation Plans explicitly mainstream gender.

A document entitled “COP agenda item 14 Gender and climate change,” also highlights where gender fared in the COP discussions. While item 14 referenced the Lima Work Programme on Gender (LWPG), most of its language was aspirational, rather than concrete on the amount of climate financing required to address the needs of women and girls, notwithstanding undisputed evidence of how climate is impacting the livelihood and food security of women and girls.

The LWPG was established in 2014 to advance gender balance and integrate gender consideration into the work of the Conference of Parties in implementing the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement so as to achieve gender responsive climate policy and action. Given the encouraging articulation of the objective of the LWPG, it makes logical sense that climate finance should also be gender mainstreamed.

Although the enhanced gender action plan of the LWPG sets out objectives and activities that aim to advance knowledge and understanding of gender-responsive climate action and its coherent mainstreaming in the implementation of the UNFCCC and the work of Parties, United Nations entities, and all stakeholders at all levels, it falls short of articulating the financing amounts to achieve these objectives.

Without clear financing objectives such as were the case with COP 29 for other priorities, $300 billion, 1.3 trillion, etc., gender mainstreaming around, for example, climate adaptation measures in the agricultural sector, which disproportionately impacts women and girls, continue to be a policy objective without teeth. 

But there is hope.

Indeed, many other global moments approach the world in 2025. It will be important for leaders seeking to womanize the climate finance space to pursue clear and pragmatic financial objectives that provide and leverage the resources needed to move the needle. These resources should also reflect an all-of-society effort, from women’s groups at the forefront, to the public and the private sector and inclusive of civil society and faith based organizations. 

A seminal moment, for example, will be the thirtieth anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women and adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the sixty-ninth session of the Commission on the Status of Women happening in March of 2025. This convening can be a crucial platform for identifying specific amounts of climate finance that enables sustainable food systems for women small holder farmers across the continent of Africa and the globe where women continue to struggle with the challenges of food insecurity due to weather shocks. 

A hopeful effort at the Commission on the Status of Women convening could be factoring a thorough assessment of climate finance challenges and how this affects women and girls’ access to food security, which is key to other empowerment measures, the achievement of gender equality, and how all these put together are important towards the full realizations of the UN sustainable development goals 2, 5, and 13.

In other words, leaders working towards womanizing climate financing for food security should not wait till other global moments such as COP 30 in Brazil and other future COPs, but rather consider identifying concrete financing policy packages during other key moments – moments that are key because of the congregation of subject matter experts.

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

The post “Womanizing” Climate Financing for Food Security appeared first on Bread for the World.

We know that gender pay equity is extremely important in preventing food insecurity among women and their children, but it is not the only factor. In the most recent piece in this series, we discussed how a policy such as the expanded Child Tax Credit, which enables families to better care for their children, can help mitigate the impacts of pay inequities. In this piece, we talk about an aggravating factor. 

The first requirement for a woman to have a job with equitable pay is to have a job in the first place—and to be able to keep that job. Unemployment does not have one straightforward cause that applies to everyone. Racism has a significant impact on job offers and pay for both men and women. The COVID-19 pandemic affected women more than men, particularly women with children at home. 

The national unemployment rate has fallen precipitously in the past two years. But it remains to be seen whether or how economic impacts of the pandemic will affect progress toward gender pay equity in the coming years. 

But a different barrier to achieving gender pay equity may be surprising to some: domestic violence. Many people realize that domestic violence, often called intimate partner violence, is far too common in our society. We may recognize that it does not respect boundaries such as education level, income, or class. Many people understand that a question like “Why doesn’t she just leave him?” oversimplifies the issue. 

Onlookers may know this intellectually, yet still be tempted to think that surely leaving will solve the problem, regardless of any potential arguments against it. Without experience as family, friends, or victims themselves, the extent of the difficulties with “just leaving” may simply not be clear.  For example, the most dangerous time for a victim of domestic violence is when she or he attempts to leave the abuser. Who can decide for anyone else that the risk of being killed while trying to leave, whether at the time or later, is a risk worth taking?  

Another reality that may be overlooked is the fact that financial abuse is an extremely common facet of domestic violence—almost universal, according to organizations that work with survivors. Financial abuse may take many forms, from preventing victims from working or forcing them to quit their jobs; to taking the money they earn, either outright or by draining joint bank accounts; to running up credit card debt or otherwise ruining the victim’s credit rating.

It may be even more startling to learn that a leading cause of homelessness among women is domestic violence. But according to the nonprofit organization End Homelessness, domestic violence is the immediate cause [of] homelessness for many youth, single adults, and families. The media and people may report things like: “She grabbed the kids and they left with only the clothes on their backs.” 

But what happens after that? Some survivors are able to leave and re-establish themselves without outside help. Others may live paycheck-to-paycheck but be able to plan ahead and put aside a little money or turn to family and friends.

But others face emergency situations with little or no savings to fall back on. In 2019, Laura Rogers, Principal Deputy Director of the Office on Violence Against Women, affirmed the reporting of nonprofits, saying, “Domestic violence is one of the primary causes of homelessness for women and their children in the United States… If our goal is to truly empower survivors of domestic violence, they must be provided with the tools to establish economic self-sufficiency, short-term goal-setting, and long-term planning for their futures.”

There is much more that could be said about survivors’ own perspectives and priorities. We also need a fuller discussion of how government agencies and nonprofit entities could advocate for survivors. To start, anti-hunger advocates could ensure that the leadership of these institutions, as well as their own family members, friends, and neighbors, are aware of the problem. Large numbers of women in our country are caught in a dilemma, for themselves and their children, between the risk of worsening domestic abuse, and potential homelessness and hunger.

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

The post Gender Pay Equity: Overcoming Barriers to Equity appeared first on Bread for the World.

This year, several pieces in Bread for the World’s Institute Insights newsletters provide a more detailed look at gender pay gaps and their impact on hunger and poverty in the United States. Please see links to earlier articles above. 

One way to visualize pay gaps that affect women, as we explained, is the idea of Equal Pay Day. This is the date when female workers have been paid the same amount as their male counterparts were paid by December 31 of the previous year. In other words, if men were paid $50,000 in 2023, Equal Pay Day is the date in 2024 when women have “caught up” by also receiving $50,000. This year, Equal Pay Day for U.S. women as a whole was March 12. But discrimination based on race and ethnicity pushes Equal Pay Days for women of color much further into the calendar year. These days include July 9 for Black women, October 3 for Latinas, and November 21 for Native American women.    

The primary legislation aimed at preventing pay discrimination based on gender remains the Equal Pay Act of 1963. While pay gaps between men and women are narrower today than 60 years ago, progress has been extremely slow. If the pay gap continues to shrink at the average pace of the years 2000-2021, it will take an additional 42 years to close the gender pay gap for U.S. women as a group. Today’s 25-year-old women would not see pay equity until after their retirement. Black, Latina, and Native American women are projected to face gender pay gaps for many decades after that.

In the past, gender pay gaps were even wider. This helps explain why many elderly women today live on very limited incomes. Even if they worked outside the home until retirement age, their Social Security checks are likely to be much smaller than men of their generation, because their total earnings were significantly lowered by the gender wage gap. 

Bread’s earlier pieces in this series mentioned several recommendations from experts on how to speed up progress in closing the gap. Our U.S. anti-hunger advocacy work includes ending racial and gender inequities, protecting the rights of workers, and urging the creation of jobs that enable people to meet their basic needs. The gender pay gap would be narrowed by progress in these areas. 

Strengthening the Equal Pay Act of 1963 would also speed up progress. Many of the improvements that advocates have proposed are designed to close loopholes and solve other problems that existed in the original law. For example, employers can legally pay men and women different wages if they work for the same company but at different locations. Some loopholes are based on factors that are themselves the result of gender pay discrimination, such as paying men more if they have higher past salary histories.

The Paycheck Fairness Act, a bill that has been introduced in Congress several times, would redress such loopholes. It passed the House in April 2021 but remains stalled in the Senate. The bill would also make other improvements in the Equal Pay Act, such as protecting workers from retaliation for challenging pay inequities and making it easier to bring class action lawsuits. 

One aspect of the problem is far more difficult to solve by making policy changes, and that is societal devaluation of work that is done by women. A classic example is the field of veterinary medicine. Research conducted for Vetspanel, a professional organization for veterinarians, explains, “The veterinary industry seems to add another industry datapoint to the theory that when an industry starts (for any reason) to become more female, its perceived value, and therefore salary level, drops.” The work did not become simpler, but by 2020, nearly 75 percent of all veterinarians were women.

In our next piece, we’ll look at an evolving success story — the only country in the world that has managed to reduce its gender pay gap to less than 10 percent. Can the United States make progress against gender pay inequities by following Iceland’s example?

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

The post Strengthening Protections Against Gender Pay Inequities appeared first on Bread for the World.

Institute Insights’ earlier piece on gender pay equity, published in the April 2024 issue described racial and gender pay inequities as an integral part of the U.S. economy. When the first federal legislation on gender pay equity, the Equal Pay Act of 1963, was enacted, women who worked full-time year-round were paid 59 cents for every dollar paid to men.

Nearly 60 years later, in 2022 (latest data available), women who worked full-time year-round were paid 84 cents for every $1 paid to men. 

Pay disparities add up quickly. In 2021, women working full-time year-round were paid, on average, $9,954 less than their male counterparts. That is enough to buy a lot of groceries.

The impact of these missing funds on the U.S. economy has also been dramatic. Researchers at the Center for American Progress did the math: Between 1967 and 2021, in 2021 dollars, the total amount lost due to the gender pay gap was $61 trillion. That’s “trillion” with a T—nearly double the current U.S. government debt and nearly 21/2 times the 2022 U.S. gross domestic product.

Every year, the United States observes Equal Pay Day. This is the date when U.S. women who work full-time, year-round have reached the pay level that men received the previous year. Put another way, Equal Pay Day was March 12, 2024, meaning that women worked for the first 2 ½ months of 2024 to “catch up” to the amount men were paid in 2023. 

But women in some specific groups—including those who are Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI), Black, Latina, Native American, or mothers—do not reach Equal Pay Day until later. These Equal Pay Days are April 3 for AANHPI women, when calculated with the inclusion of the many part-time or part-year workers in this community; July 9 for Black women; August 15, 2023 (and to be determined for 2024) for mothers; October 3 for Latinas; and November 21 for Native American women. 

The national organization Equal Pay Today has also named June 13 LGBTQ Equal Pay Awareness Day in an effort to ensure that more data is collected on equity in the community and its subgroups. To this end, Congress has previously introduced the LGBTQIA+ Data Inclusion Act, but it has not yet been enacted. There is also a lack of specific data on other subgroups of female workers, such as older women and women without a high school diploma.

Has the Equal Pay Act made a difference? Yes, but not nearly enough. Over the 56 years of federal records that are available, the pay gap has decreased by 25 cents. Progress must be stepped up, because if the gap continues to decline at the average rate of the years 2000 to 2021, it will take an additional 42 years to close the gender pay gap. Today’s 25-year-old women would not see pay equity until after their retirement.

Racial and gender pay inequities contribute to the fact that single mothers and their children have the highest poverty rates in the country. In 2021, the poverty rate for single-mother families was 31.3 percent. Poverty was even more common in families led by women of color: 37.4 percent of families with Black mothers, 35.9 percent of Hispanic families, and 42.6 percent of Native American families had incomes below the poverty line. 

The evidence mentioned so far points to the need for proactive government policies to speed up progress toward racial and gender equity in the U.S. economy. 

One example of such a proactive policy is the Child Tax Credit (CTC) expansion. Bread has been persistent in its advocacy for this policy improvement because it would reduce poverty among families with children, particularly families of color. We know this because, when tens of millions of families became newly eligible for the CTC in 2021, poverty among children began to decrease almost immediately. But when Congress let the CTC expansion expire, child poverty increased rapidly again.  

In March 2024, the Center for American Progress published its Playbook for the Advancement of Women in the Economy. It is full of examples beyond the CTC expansion of how the federal government can advance racial and gender equity while also strengthening the U.S. economy. 

The next piece in this pay equity series will examine how the Playbook’s recommendations can work in combination with plans such as the White House National Strategy on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health to end hunger in the United States. 

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

The post A Closer Look at Gender Pay Inequities 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.

Hunger in the United States is primarily caused by economic inequality, which is a driver of poverty, and the lowest-paid American workers are far more likely to face food insecurity than those who are paid more. 

Over the past few years, Bread for the World’s U.S. anti-hunger advocacy has included support for several policies that would help lower poverty among specific groups of workers. For example, Bread called for an end to the “tipped minimum wage,” which allows employers to pay workers such as restaurant servers as little as $2.13 an hour with the expectation that tips would bring the hourly wage up to the standard minimum wage. Under federal law, employers are responsible for making up the difference if tips alone do not, but workers report that this does not always happen. 

Tipped workers are disproportionately women, especially women of color. Bread has also been working to promote racial and gender equity in the workplace. Restaurant servers and cashiers are among the lower-paid workers who would benefit from stricter enforcement of existing laws against pay discrimination on the basis of race or sex. But racial and gender inequities are very broad causes of poverty that affect millions of people around the country. These forms of inequities are tied to essentially permanent aspects of people’s identities, such as race, gender, and age, rather than to factors such as occupation or level of education that are easier to change. 

Pay disparities based on race and/or gender are entrenched in the American economy. They are one of many visible signs of long-term societal ills such as racism and sexism. But this does not mean we have to accept that poverty, or the idea that racism and/or sexism, will inevitably be present. In fact, we cannot accept these things, because doing so means giving up on Bread’s mission of ending hunger in this country.

The changes needed to make lasting progress on pay disparities, let alone the deep-seated biases that cause the disparities, call for proactive leadership. Leaders can be almost anyone who is committed to finding ways of achieving part or all of the goal. Local community groups and organizations like Bread have been able to get proven policy improvements enacted into law. 

Landmark legislation often requires an “all hands on deck” approach, with members of Congress, the administration, and the courts working to get something completely finished. One such critically important achievement was the Civil Rights Act of 1964. 

Another was the Equal Pay Act of 1963. It was the first federal legislation that specifically prohibited pay discrimination based on gender—an important step along the path to gender equality that had also featured, not so long before, thousands of women mobilizing for decades to secure the right to vote.

Data for 1963 indicate that the Equal Pay Act was undoubtedly needed: women who worked full-time year-round were paid 59 cents for every dollar paid to men. 

Nearly 60 years later, in 2022, women who worked full-time year-round were paid 84 cents for every $1 paid to men. The next part of this series will assess how significant the progress has been and consider next steps.

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

The post Reducing U.S. Hunger by Closing the Gender Pay Gap appeared first on Bread for the World.

This month is Women’s History Month and last month was Black History Month. The Bible offers opportunities to see alignment of these observances for today. One illustration of this is the story of Zipporah, her sisters, and Moses in Exodus 2:16-17.

More specifically, Exodus 2:16-17 is one of several illustrations of the leadership women played in Moses’s life. While the stories of Moses’s leadership are often visible, the leadership of the women, and especially African women, related to Moses are most often marginalized, less visible, and erased—but are still important. 

For example, Moses’s mother, Jocabed, his older sister, Miriam, and an African princess from Egypt, Bityah, were key actresses in the deliverance story of Moses’s life that later led to him being available for his leadership in the deliverance story of the Hebrew people. These courageous and loving women ensured the safe keeping of Moses’s infant life and prosperity with an African (Egyptian) princess who also raised him. They, like the midwives mentioned earlier in Exodus, protect Moses from the edicts of the Egyptian government to snuff out the lives of the boy children under the age of 2.

In the case of Zipporah—another woman from Africa who later becomes Moses’s wife—we see Moses’s entry with Zipporah and her sisters. This is another pivotal point in Moses’s life when he becomes a fugitive but finds deliverance with a new home away from the capture of the Egyptian government after having stepped in to protect the life of a fellow Hebrew. Moses is delivered but then also intervenes to deliver Zipporah and her sisters from the intruders who seek to do harm. It is after this that Jethro, the father of Zipporah and the sisterhood, gives Zipporah to Moses as his wife. Later we also see where Zipporah saves Moses’ life in Exodus 4:24.

The marriage of Zipporah and Moses provides a familiar illustration of deliverance today. The shepherd’s life, care of the land, planting, gleaning, and preparation of the food—as well as the sales of such at the market—are works of the sisterhood from rural areas in Africa and elsewhere today and historically. Women who are strong, resilient and defenders of their family lands and farms. Today there is an increasing number of women of African descent who are becoming farmers. 

Policies included in our Nourish Our Future legislative agenda accompany the resilience and delivery of care, love, and protection by these women. Bread for the World is committed to working alongside women as we advocate for policies that directly impact them. 

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

The post Zipporah and Her Sisterhood: A Story of Deliverance for Women’s History Month 2024  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.

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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

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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.

“Ethiopia will quickly stretch out her hands to God.” —Psalms 68:31b

I recently visited Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on my way to participate in a faith workshop on the effects of conflict on Pan African women and girls.

Conflict is one of the greatest threats to ending hunger—affecting women and girls in particular, the hardest. Conflict and other issues related to the lack of empowerment of women and girls often do not have much visibility. Bread for the World’s 2015 Hunger Report: “When Women Flourish…We Can End Hunger” included an interactive tool that showed the world is missing nearly 80 percent of data essential to charting women’s progress on empowerment.

Also, not well-known is the historic and contemporary stories of hope, resilience, and leadership of women and girls in conflict. But Ethiopia offers an important lesson. Ethiopia is not only a biblical and secular treasure; it is a dignified location for all peoples and especially African peoples.

Ethiopia is the only African country not colonized by a European power. Ethiopia’s self-governance and acceptance of Christianity was codified and practiced long before the disruption of colonialism and colonial missionizing to other African peoples. Leadership by Ethiopian women during the ancient period and today are examples of this lesson despite conflict in their country.

Three Ethiopian women come to mind: The Queen of Sheba, Queen Candace, and current Ethiopian President Sahle-Work Zewde.  

The Queen of Sheba story can be found in 1 Kings 10 and 2 Chron 9:1–12. Queen Candace of Ethiopia’s story can be found in Acts 8:26-40. Sahle-Work was unanimously elected president by Ethiopia’s parliament in 2018. She is the first woman to hold the post.

Sahle-Work, along with Prime Minster Abiy Ahmed, who recently won the Nobel Peace Prize, are leading transformative changes in Ethiopia, expanding civil society space, voting, and voice. They have also received global recognition for reforms in the country’s agriculture sector.

This year, we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the right to vote for women in the United States. We also lament that African American women were not beneficiaries of this victory 100 years ago due to inequitable laws and practices.

Today, many women still cannot vote—including many Pan African women. Still, these women have fought and are still fighting for their rights. So, I invite you to celebrate Women’s History Month and vote!

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

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Sin embargo, como grupo, los hispanos son más propensos que otras personas a vivir en la pobreza y a carecer de acceso regular y fiable a alimentos necesarios para la buena salud. Los hispanos también son más propensos a recibir sueldos por debajo del mínimo, y a trabajar y vivir en condiciones subestándar.

Las tasas elevadas de hambre y pobreza entre los hispanos son resultados directos de la discriminación de raza, género, y estado migratorio. Comparado con la tasa nacional de pobreza de 12.7 por ciento, el 19.4 por ciento de los latinos, 30 por ciento de familias encabezadas por una persona indocumentada, y un sorprendente 34.7 por ciento de familias latinas encabezadas por mujeres viven debajo de la línea de pobreza.

1 de cada 5 familias latinas tiene por lo menos un miembro padeciendo hambre en algún momento del año.

USDA Economic Research Service

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This is one of the groups that Bread for the World recognizes as being especially vulnerable to hunger and poverty. Female-headed households are more than twice as likely as all U.S. households to face poverty (27.9 percent vs. 12.3 percent).

The fact sheet provides statistics and examines the factors that contribute to hunger and poverty in this community:

• Gender discrimination in pay, benefits, and employment
• Job segregation by gender and race
• Unpaid care responsibilities and high childcare costs
• Impacts of mass incarceration
• Gender-based violence

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In April 2014, much of the world was appalled by the kidnapping of 276 girls from a secondary school in the town of Chibok in northern Nigeria. The region is a stronghold of the terror group Boko Haram. They were not the first girls abducted for daring to defy Boko Haram’s prohibition of female education, and sadly, they have not been the last.

Nearly five years later, more than 100 girls from the Chibok school remain missing. Some of those who escaped or were freed sought help from Dr. Rebecca Dali, who runs the Center for Caring, Empowering and Peace Initiatives (CCEPI). Some of the girls have been rejected by their families and communities because they are rape survivors who have given birth to children whose fathers are terrorists.

Dali founded CCEPI in 1989 to help Nigerian women, children, and orphans. Dali and her colleagues at CCEPI not only offer treatment for the traumas the Chibok girls have endured, but also enable them to learn skills and offer them tools to improve their ability to earn a living.

Dali offers herself as an example to the girls of what they are capable of doing. “I have walked the same path that you are going through,” she tells them. “My history is terrible, but I did not lose hope, so I don’t want you to lose hope.” Dali was raped when she was 6 years old. When she turned 8, her father told her that she must get married to help support the family. She wanted to stay in school, so she ran away. Dali ultimately earned a Ph.D. and has written books documenting what happened to people whom CCEPI has cared for over the decades.

In 2017, Dali was awarded the Sergio Vieira de Mello Award, named for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights who was killed in Iraq in 2003. “Dr. Dali’s access into the local community and academic research have been invaluable to the advocacy community in the U.S. as we amplify the voices of those affected by violence in northeast Nigeria,” says Nathan Hosler, director of the Office of Peacebuilding and Policy for the Church of the Brethren in the United States.

Ekklesiyar Yan’uwa a Nigeria (Church of the Brethren in Nigeria) is the church’s largest national body. Samuel Dali, Dr. Dali’s husband, served for many years as president of the Church of the Brethren in Nigeria, and most of the kidnapped Chibok girls are members. In addition to support from the church, CCEPI receives support from other donors, including USAID, the European Union, the U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR), and the International Rescue Committee.

Dali has had many encounters with Boko Haram and has paid a terrible price for treating its victims. In 2014, the group kidnapped her son. He has not been heard from since, and she presumes that he is dead. Despite the dangers, Dali and CCEPI remain committed to their ministry. As she told an interviewer, “If my organization is not there, who will go?”

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Julie Brewer has worked as a nutrition specialist implementing the WIC program in Montana; as head of the Montana Hunger Coalition; as a government relations analyst at Bread for the World, where she advocated for improvements in nutrition program policies; at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA); and, most recently, at the Office of Management and Budget, designing and administering federal nutrition policies.

Brewer knew before she went to college at the University of Montana that nutrition was her calling. A project for a high school home economics class catalyzed her interest. So, did growing up in a single-parent household, where the struggle to make ends meet meant that school lunch often depended on the generosity of classmates.

She studied nutrition in college and began to work for WIC after graduation. She found that it could be difficult to reconcile her work in providing expectant and new mothers with information about healthy foods and how to prepare them with the realities of their lives. It was common to hear, “This nutrition stuff is great, but we don’t have any food at home.”

WIC is designed only to supplement the diets of mothers and young children, not to provide all the food they need. When Brewer started her job, the list of foods that were eligible for WIC did not include fruits and vegetables, and their cost was prohibitive for families in deep poverty. WIC participants realized that fruits and vegetables are healthier, but they needed to buy cheap foods—such as ramen noodles or macaroni and cheese—that could be stretched and would at least keep children from feeling the pangs of hunger. They had to make the best of their very limited resources.

Getting to know women who participated in WIC was a transformative experience for Brewer. While she’d known hungry times as a child, it struck her that her clients and their children were enduring far worse. Her time with WIC Montana broadened her understanding of the types of reforms that would improve federal nutrition programs—and led her to advocacy.

While still working in Montana, Brewer attended a conference in Washington, D.C., where she was able to talk to members of the Montana congressional delegation about the importance of WIC. After she and her family moved to the East Coast in 2001, she joined Bread for the World’s Washington office, advocating for strong nutrition programs as well as for policies that would help solve the root causes of hunger in the United States.

In 2006, Brewer took a job in the Child Nutrition Division of USDA, administering school meal programs and the Summer Food Service Program (SFSP). The limitations of the SFSP were clear: only one in seven children who receive free or reduced-price school lunches also receives summer meals. Efforts to expand the number of sites around the country and reach more children have met with little success.

Seeing this, Brewer played a pivotal role in advocating for a change that could potentially make dramatic improvements in the well-being of food-insecure children in the summer months. She and her colleagues in the Child Nutrition Division advocated providing additional SNAP benefits to low-income families during the summer months so that they could afford to feed children the meals they usually received at school. In 2010, Congress agreed to fund a pilot program in 10 states and Indian Tribal Organizations, involving more than 100,000 households. The pilot SNAP expansion reduced child hunger in participating households by one-third.

Reflecting on the success of the pilots, Brewer explained, “Unfortunately, we can waste a lot of time trying to make people adapt to how we design programs, without reflecting the realities in their lives. I see my job as making sure policy reflects reality.”

Brewer was directly involved in the administration of the pilots. As she explained, what seemed like a simple, common-sense solution turned out to involve several thorny administrative issues. She and her colleagues worked patiently to resolve these problems, contributing to the success of the pilot program and, most importantly, to fewer hungry children.

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May 25 is an annual holiday recognizing the leadership of African peoples wherever they may be live.

Led by the African Union (AU) which recognizes the diversity of Africans and African nation-states, Africans including Africans in diaspora who may be citizens or residents in countries outside the African continent, join in this celebration.

The following are some of the primary tenets of Africa Day:

• Common African Unity and Identity
• The Developments of the African Union and the Agenda 2063 (defined below)
• Women’s Empowerment in the African Union
• Continent-wide Disease Control and Prevention
• Africa Day as a Public Holiday
• Africa Day Celebration

This year the AU theme is “Healthy Lifestyle Prolongs Life.” The tenets of Africa Day and this theme complement the mission of Bread for the World to end hunger and address poverty. The AU Agenda 2063 is a strategic roadmap aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the legislative agenda of Bread for the World, especially on matters related to global nutrition and immigration. Bread for the World is committed to partnering with African peoples everywhere to create and execute equitable strategies for rooting out hunger and poverty, as well as the historic and present scourge of systems and attitudes that fail to advance progress for all to be fed and live lives of dignity.

The AU Agenda 2063, along with the following facts and advances on the African continent, are critical to ensuring the success of our equitable partnership:

• The Christian Church has been continuously present on the African continent since the days of Christ and one out of four Christians in the world is an African. The Pew Research Center estimates this number will grow to 40 percent by 2030.
• The Continental Free Trade Area Agreement is an agreement among 52 out of 55 states to promote free trade throughout the continent of Africa.  This trade agreement is the largest since the formation of the World Trade Organization in 1995.
• Africa has six of the world’s 10 fastest growing economies this year, according to the World Bank.
• Africa’s 1.2 billion population is expected to double in 2050 and comprise 60-70 percent youth.
• Africa has made great progress in the fight against malnutrition. Between 2000 and 2016 Senegal, Ghana, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Togo, Cameroon and Angola reduced malnutrition, child wasting, child stunting and child mortality by 42-56 percent.
• 40 African countries are Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) members.
• Country-led plans, strategies and policies in place – mostly multisectoral and led by Heads of State or Heads of Government.

Join us in celebrating the faith and resilience of African peoples wherever they are and our common vision of ending hunger for all.

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

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USAID’s Multi-Sectoral Nutrition Strategy (MSNS) provides a roadmap to elevate and integrate nutrition as a priority for all of the agency’s work to support countries to achieve these goals.

While having the Strategy in place has elevated the profile of maternal and child nutrition at USAID and brought high-level action on nutrition, USAID must build on and strengthen its multisector nutrition efforts to accelerate progress on nutrition.

USAID should:

• Ensure sufficient, equitable, and well-targeted funding for global nutrition
• Set and monitor SMART targets for nutrition across the agency
• Provide analysis and guidance on programmatic strategies to maximize nutrition outcomes
• Establish permanent positions for nutrition focal points at headquarters and in missions

This briefing paper is intended to complement USAID’s assessment of the MSNS. It highlights both successes and challenges identified in our interviews and field research, and it offers recommendations for sustaining and strengthening the impact of the Strategy on progress toward the 2025 global nutrition targets and the 2030 goal to end malnutrition in all its forms. Download a summary of the paper.

“Optimal nutrition is fundamental to achieving USAID’s wider mission.”

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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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The causes and consequences of fragility do not have national borders, and can even have global dimensions. IDA’s increased focus on fragility will allow the global community to both respond to fragility, conflict, and violence, and to mitigate these risks.

IDA also takes an integrated approach to development in the countries in which it invests. For example, in recent years, 38 percent of IDA’s commitments were focused on developing the private sector to facilitate broad, inclusive growth in countries and create resilient economies.

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The SDGs are an opportunity for advocates and organizations to work together to achieve maximum impact. Many are already engaged. For example, leaders of all major U.S. faith traditions, as well as five U.S. cities and one state (California), have committed to the SDGs.

The post Briefing Paper: The Sustainable Development Goals in the United States 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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“Las familias encabezadas por madres solteras componen poco más de la mitad de familias de bajos recursos con niños en Estados Unidos”, dijo Asma Lateef, directora del Instituto Pan para el Mundo. “Las madres solteras y sus hijos padecen tasas más altas de hambre y pobreza que las de otras familias. Dos factores que contribuyen a estas tasas elevadas entre las mujeres son la divergencia salarial y la segregación por género en los empleos”.

El 30 por ciento de todas las familias encabezadas por madres solteras viven la pobreza, comparado al 14 por ciento de todas las familias. Hay 4.7 millones de familias encabezadas por madres solteras.

Las mujeres de color enfrentan una divergencia salarial mayor, y es más probable que tengan empleos en los que no se les ofrece beneficios. Según el Censo de Estados Unidos, las familias encabezadas por madres solteras afroamericanas o latinas corren un riesgo de padecer hambre y pobreza muy por encima del de todas las familias estadounidenses.

Las mujeres componen la mayoría de los trabajadores en los 10 oficios menos remunerados y con el mayor número de empleados. Las mujeres que cuentan solo con una educación secundaria o menos ganan solo 76 centavos por cada dólar que se les paga a los hombres con el mismo nivel de educación. También es más probable que los oficios de baja remuneración ofrezcan seguro médico para sus empleados, lo cual deja a las mujeres y a sus hijos sin acceso a servicios médicos esenciales.

Cerrar la divergencia salarial reduciría la pobreza por 50 por ciento entre las mujeres empleadas. “Si esperamos poder reducir el hambre y la pobreza entre las mujeres y los niños, debemos abordar la divergencia salarial y la concentración de las mujeres en oficios de baja remuneración”, dijo Lateef.

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“Female-headed households make up just over half of American low-income households with children,” said Asma Lateef, director of Bread for the World Institute. “Single mothers and their children have higher rates of hunger and poverty than other families. Two factors that contribute to higher poverty rates among women are the gender wage gap and job segregation by gender.”

Thirty percent of all households headed by a single mother live in poverty, compared to 14 percent of all U.S. households. There are 4.7 million low-income households headed by a single mother.

Women of color face an even greater wage gap and are more likely to hold jobs that do not offer benefits. According to the U.S. Census, households headed by single African-American and Latina women are at far higher risk of poverty and hunger than other U.S. households.

Women make up the majority of workers in the 10 low-wage occupations with the most employees. Women with a high school diploma or less are paid only 76 cents for every dollar paid to men with the same level of education. Low-wage jobs are also less likely to provide health insurance for employees, leaving women and their children without access to essential healthcare services.

Closing the gender wage gap would cut poverty in half among working women. “If we expect to reduce poverty and hunger among women and children, we have to tackle the wage gap and the concentration of women in low-wage jobs,” Lateef said.

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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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This is a shortened version of an article from the online edition of the May/June 2014 issue of Frontlines, the news magazine of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which is the focus of the request to Congress in this year’s Offering of Letters.

By Fungma Fudong and Pallavi Dhakal

Married at 17, Meena Gurung from Lamjung district, a remote mid-hill region of Nepal, suffered the loss of her firstborn child without her husband by her side. He, like an estimated 2.1 million Nepali men, had gone abroad to work. Gurung relies on subsistence farming for her livelihood and has little or no access to a variety of diverse and nutritious goods, such as green leafy vegetables and protein, to ensure proper nutrition. As a result, she and her child were malnourished.

A byproduct of poverty, poor nutrition is a major public health concern across Nepal’s rural areas, where about 80 percent of the population lives, and death is all too common.

One out of 19 children dies before his or her fifth birthday due to treatable causes, such as pneumonia, diarrhea, and malnutrition. Over 40 percent of children under age 5 suffer from stunting, a severe form of chronic malnutrition in which a child suffers permanent physical and cognitive damage, resulting in serious health, social, and economic consequences.

“Such nutritional deficiencies mean a whole generation of workers in Nepal with reduced economic potential,” says Shanda L. Steimer, director of USAID/Nepal’s Office of Health and Planning. “For a resource-limited country like Nepal, this has devastating consequences for the country’s socio-economic development and anti-poverty efforts.”

To address this and build a brighter future for Nepal, the Nepal Government developed a five-year nutritional plan of action in 2011 that promotes a lifetime of optimal health and nutrition for mothers and their children. To complement this effort, USAID introduced the Suaahara program, which means “good nutrition” in Nepali, in 25 of Nepal’s most undernourished districts.

A Plan of Action

Suaahara works closely with the government to improve the health and nutritional status of pregnant and lactating women and children under 2. The project integrates nutrition, agriculture, food security and health activities such as small-scale backyard farming; poultry farming; improved child feeding practices; and nutrition, hygiene and maternal and child health care education.

The Suaahara project relies primarily on a cadre of 50,000-plus female community health volunteers and community extension workers to deliver health and agriculture messages and services in communities, many of whom have been trained by Suaahara. Sample messages include the health benefits of exclusive breastfeeding, timely transition from breastfeeding to complementary feeding (solid and semi-solid foods) from 6 to 24 months of age, and washing hands before feeding children.

In just two years, Suaahara has improved food security and nutrition for 74,000 families. The prevalence of exclusive breastfeeding of children under 6 months has increased from 46 to 68 percent, and the number of children between the ages of 6 and 23 months meeting their minimally recommended nutrition intake increased from 36 to 47 percent.

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Second Chances

When Gurung gave birth to her second baby, Yushida, she was still unfamiliar with the importance of proper nutrition for infants. In her effort to make her daughter healthy, she started feeding her non-nutritious food such as rice porridge mixed with unclean water at 5 months. Yushida suffered frequent bouts of diarrhea as a result.

Gurung was pregnant for a third time when she met Ram Maya Shrestha, a local female community health volunteer, who was hosting a session in her village for “1,000 days” mothers — those who are pregnant or have children under 2.

“Thanks to the training and constant counseling in the village for pregnant women and new moms, there have been significantly fewer deaths of babies in our village,” says Shrestha.

Recently, Gurung gave birth to a healthy baby girl, Supriya, in a hospital with a skilled birth attendant. She plans to exclusively breastfeed her for the first six months.

“Compared to my elder daughter, Surpiya does not fall sick as often. In my ignorance, I was doing everything wrong while raising Yushida, but thanks to Suaahara training and Ram Maya Shrestha, I have finally learned to do the right things for the healthy development of my two daughters,” says Gurung.

Pallavi Dhakal is with Save the Children.

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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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“Our analysis shows that discrimination increases hunger and poverty for women,” said Asma Lateef, director of Bread for the World Institute. “Women earn less than men for doing the same job. They bear the burden of unpaid responsibilities such as housework and cooking and are the primary caregivers in their families. And women are more likely than men to spend additional income on their children’s health and education.”

In the United States, the median annual pay of full-time, year-round female workers is more than $10,000 less than the pay of male workers. Working single mothers are twice as likely as men to hold low-wage and/or part-time jobs with few or no benefits. Working mothers with children under 18 report that the gender pay gap contributes to poor living conditions, poor nutrition, and fewer opportunities for their children.

Globally, about 60 percent of people who go hungry are female. Nearly half a billion women and girls do not have access to the nutritious food they need for healthy, active lives. Women do work that is essential to the resilience of their families and communities and to their countries’ economic growth. But this unpaid work takes time away from working outside the home or getting an education. More needs to be done to share these responsibilities and support women’s ability to work – and, when a woman is working, to ensure that she earns as much as her male counterpart.

“While we have made significant inroads by closing the gender gap in health and education outcomes, we still have a long way to go,” Lateef said. “Evidence shows that we will not be able to end hunger and poverty until we reach gender equality.” 

Download Women’s Empowerment: Why Does It Matter to Ending Hunger? at www.bread.org/library/womens-empowerment-and-hunger-fact-sheet 

The post Gender Inequality Worsens Hunger and Poverty appeared first on Bread for the World.

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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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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Each short essay answer key questions from why development assistance is so important and what impact it has to whether the U.S. can afford it and where we should concentrate our efforts.

The essays clear up common misconceptions about development assistance and tell stories about people who are improving their lives with the help of U.S. development assistance.

Development Works is for Bread members and activists, Hunger Justice Leaders, adult Sunday school teachers, and others who need information about our international advocacy work.

This series helps people get a clearer picture of what is happening today in the struggle against global hunger and extreme poverty.

The post Development Works: Short Essays Explaining Myths and Realities about Development Assistance appeared first on Bread for the World.

August 12 is International Youth Day, and the generation that will lead efforts to end hunger and poverty by 2030 is a large one.  About one-fourth of the entire global population, or between 1 and 2 billion people, is in the age group 10 – 24.

Children and youth have higher rates of hunger and less opportunity to participate in national economies and politics. The obstacles are most daunting for young women, who face the double burden of gender discrimination and marginalization as young people.

The United Nations established International Youth Day in 1999 as a way of focusing on legal, cultural, and economic challenges specific to young people.  

Today we highlight three stories from the 2015 Hunger Report that celebrate bold young women leaders who are confronting the social norms and discrimination that perpetuate hunger, poverty, and exclusion among young people and women.

Fouzia Dahir

Fouzia Dahir, whose mother never learned to read, sees education as a launching pad. Fouzia grew up in rural Kenya, where poverty and gender based violence meant that most girls never advanced beyond primary school. But her mother was determined. She escorted Fouzia and her sisters to and from school, even staying with them during the school day to ensure their safety and full participation in class. That personal investment paid off for Fouzia in big ways. She excelled at school and continued on through high school, college, and finally graduate school. She’s now the founder and executive director of the Northern Organization for Social Empowerment, a nonprofit based in Northern Kenya that aims to create livelihoods based on farming for women from pastoral backgrounds.

Sara Howard

Sara Howard was elected to the Nebraska State Legislature in 2012 — the youngest female senator and one of 10 women in the 49-member body. Sara feels she especially represents a younger generation of Nebraskans, with their concerns about student debt, low-wage work, and other issues that affect young people more than others.  By the time Sara herself finished law school, she had accumulated more than $100,000 in student loan debt. Women use a greater share of their salaries than men to pay off education debt – not surprising since women are paid less than men.  One result, however, is that women are less likely to raise the money to run for public office. Sara uses her position to help raise awareness and spur action on problems specific to women and young people.

Patience Chifundo

Patience Chifundo believes there is no reason to deny women opportunities simply because they are women. Her mother lived this truth; she owned and drove a minibus, an unusual occupation for a woman in Malawi. Patience herself was a gifted student who began college at 15. She was the first female candidate for student body president. The discrimination and disparagement she suffered as a candidate fueled her determination to make things better for other female leaders. Though she never became student body president, Patience now works with the  Young Politicians Union of Malawi, training women interested in running for elected office. They demonstrate how politics actually works at the grassroots level – and Malawi needs more elected leaders who prioritize issues such as children’s health and education.

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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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This is the first 10-year reauthorization of AGOA since it was first enacted in 2000. African leaders, U.S. businesses, and civil society all supported the extension. Bread for the World has consistently advocated for this bill since 1998.

“This helps to strengthen U.S.-Africa trade opportunities, and encourages job creation both in Africa and in the United States,” said David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World.

AGOA remains the most important legislation that defines trade relationships between the United States and sub-Saharan Africa. Since it went into effect in 2000, exports under AGOA increased more than 500 percent, from $8.15 billion in 2001 to $53.8 billion in 2011. However, 95 percent of the total goods traded under AGOA was in the form of oil, gas, and minerals over that decade.

“It is essential that our trade policies and agreements contribute to the efforts to reduce hunger and poverty”, Beckmann said.

In addition to the 10-year extension, the bill includes a provision that will strengthen the trade capacity of smallholder women farmers, giving them better access to markets. “Closing the gender gap and investing in small-scale farmers are crucial elements to reaching our goal of ending hunger around the world by 2030,” Beckmann added.

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The report also shows that women’s willingness to share men’s breadwinning responsibilities has not been matched by men’s willingness to share unpaid household work or caregiving responsibilities. Though domestic work is a public good in the same way that education, clean water, clean air, and the food supply are, it is not recognized as such. Women constitute half the global population.

In many countries, women and girls are more likely to suffer from hunger and malnutrition than men and boys. Poverty and lack of education contribute to this disparity. However, giving women greater control of their income and assets would increase their bargaining power in the household and the market economy. Research has shown that this benefits their families and leads to widespread improvements in a country.

The post When Women Flourish … We Can End Hunger | The 2015 Hunger Report appeared first on Bread for the World.

“We have made great strides in reducing hunger and poverty at home and around the world, yet women continue to be treated like second-class citizens,” said Rev. David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World. “Progress towards women’s empowerment has been slow due to discriminatory laws, unpaid work caring for the family, and traditions that demean their capacity as decision makers.”

The 2015 Hunger Report comes at a time when the 114th  Congress, which starts in January, will have 100 women legislators – the most ever in U.S. history. Despite the fact that fully 22 percent of the world’s legislators are female, women face barriers that limit their ability to engage fully in economic activity. Women are also more likely to earn less or work in low-wage jobs.

The report also shows that women’s willingness to share men’s breadwinning responsibilities has not been matched by men’s willingness to share unpaid household work or caregiving responsibilities. Though domestic work is a public good in the same way that education, clean water, clean air, and the food supply are, it is not recognized as such. Women constitute half the global population.

“Eliminating barriers and empowering women around the world is key to ending hunger in our time,” said Asma Lateef, director of Bread for the World Institute. “We must not tolerate discrimination against women and instead, demand a comprehensive approach to women’s empowerment that includes applying a gender lens to all programs and policies.”

In many countries, women and girls are more likely to suffer from hunger and malnutrition than men and boys. Poverty and lack of education contribute to this disparity. However, giving women greater control of their income and assets would increase their bargaining power in the household and the market economy. Research has shown that this benefits their families and leads to widespread improvements in a country.

Speaking at the launch of the 2015 Hunger Report were Victoria Stanley, chair of the Gender in Agriculture Thematic Group at the World Bank; Fouzia Dahir, executive director of the Northern Organization of Social Empowerment in Kenya; Gary Barker, co-chair of MenEngage Alliance; and Andrea James, executive director of Families for Justice as Healing. The panel was moderated by Sandra Joireman, chair of Bread’s board of directors and a professor of political science at the University of Richmond.  

Two current representatives of Congress, Kay Granger (R-Texas-12) and Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.-17), wrote a section in the report on the importance of U.S. foreign aid in empowering women around the world. 

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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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Video – running time: 1:13

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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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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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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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Over the past decade, the MDGs have become in many ways the most accessible set of global benchmarks — embraced by governments, civil society actors, grassroots and youth-focused groups, and celebrities alike.

However, progress on the MDGs as a whole is a mixed bag, particularly in Africa, where many of the MDG targets will not be met. For most of the past decade, global hunger has steadily increased, particularly in 2008-2009 as a food price crisis emerged in tandem with the global economic downturn. One of the most important requirements for progress on the MDGs is clear leadership at the country level, including the integration of the goals into national planning.

With a focused strategy, based on measurable results, the United States can redouble its efforts to accelerate progress on the MDGs.

The post The MDG Summit: Strengthening the U.S. Role in Accelerating Progress appeared first on Bread for the World.

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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Developed countries have agreed to establish a policy environment that does not undermine efforts for developing countries to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Goal Eight calls for developed countries to ensure greater coherence among an array of policies critical to achieving the MDGs. On policies related to trade, migration, and intellectual property rights, the United States and other rich countries are not living up to this agreement.

Improving its policies in trade, migration, and intellectual property rights would not only prove that the United States is fully committed to global development, but also would increase the effectiveness of U.S. foreign assistance.

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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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