The post FAQ: Hunger Crisis in Afghanistan appeared first on Bread for the World.

For many people, struggles with the COVID-19 pandemic and its many impacts beyond health continue to consume a great deal of time and energy. The availability of vaccines has made it possible for people in high-income countries to resume many aspects of their normal lives. There are still many countries that have little or no access to vaccines, and—a different problem that nonetheless has a similar effect—too many people in some high-income countries have not yet decided to get the vaccine.

Thus, what the pandemic looks like and the limitations it imposes will change, sometimes dramatically, with specific locations. The scientific and medical fields that concentrate on preventing and treating COVID-19 are also changing rapidly. It is unclear how many variants (changes caused by mutation) will emerge and how dangerous they will prove to be. Global vaccine equity matters to individuals and families, of course, but also to people all over the world. This is because as fewer people are transmitting the virus and inadvertently providing opportunities for mutation, the chances that humanity will ultimately be able to contain and manage COVID-19 will improve.

While containing the pandemic would undoubtedly make it easier for people to rebuild their lives and for humanitarian workers to reach people in need, Bread members as anti-hunger advocates know that, particularly for pregnant women and children under 2, malnutrition and hunger cannot wait until other things fall into place. Access to health care and nutritious food, with priority given to those in the 1,000 Days between pregnancy and age 2, is essential.

Recent blog posts include a look at key messages from the recently published assessment of hunger’s increase in 2020, The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World, as well as a look at how Black farmers, despite pervasive discrimination for generations, are advocating for their needs, including by contributing to the U.N. Food Systems Summit to be held in September.

Institute Insights readers may recall from earlier mentions that a food system, sometimes summed up as “from farm to fork,” is a term for all the various steps involved in producing, transporting, preparing, and consuming food. Clearly, Bread’s mission of ensuring that all people have sufficient nutritious food calls for a strong and reliable food system.

The goal of the Food Systems Summit is to alert the global community to the need to identify sustainable solutions to the major problems of the global food system. Organizers explain: “Too many of the world’s food systems are fragile, unexamined, and vulnerable to collapse, as millions of people around the globe have experienced firsthand during the COVID-19 crisis.” The changes needed in the global food system must be made by stakeholders working in partnership.

The principles that the Food Systems Summit has adopted for its work echo some of the concepts that are fundamental to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) process, such as leaving no one behind and reaching the most vulnerable people first. Ideally, global and national food systems should prioritize human health and well-being, resilient livelihoods, and good stewardship of natural resources, all while respecting local cultures and contexts. Partners working to improve food systems must recognize the reality that these systems are complex and require a systemic approach because they impact human and animal health, land, water, climate, biodiversity, the economy, and other systems.

Finally, the Summit’s organizers emphasize the need for nations and communities to be inclusive. Food systems transformation efforts need to “bring in diverse perspectives, including indigenous knowledge, cultural insights, and science-based evidence to enable stakeholders to understand and assess potential trade-offs.”

Adopting practices that support the idea of “building forward better” when it comes to food systems at all levels will help people recover from the global pandemic more quickly and set the stage for significant, sustainable progress toward ending hunger.

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

The post Ending hunger calls for a stronger global food system appeared first on Bread for the World.

This is the final installment of a five-part series on hunger in fragile contexts and how development assistance can enable people to improve their food security.

The road ahead will undoubtedly be hard, but there are ways that the United States and the rest of the global community can help people in fragile contexts as they seek to build a future without hunger, malnutrition, or a global pandemic.

The cases in this series show that fragile contexts can be found specifically in the Middle East, Latin America, and sub-Saharan Africa, but more universally anywhere in the world. This is because the primary cause of fragility is conflict and the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and weak government capacity also contribute. No human society is immune from such factors.

Bread for the World Institute described fragility and its main causes in our 2017 Hunger Report, Fragile Contexts, Resilient Communities. Drawing from our previous work, articles and research by international aid agencies, such as Concern Worldwide, IFPRI, and the World Bank, and interviews with subject matter experts, we offer the following key recommendations for a COVID-19 recovery plan in fragile contexts. The emphasis is on making assistance more effective in ending hunger.

• Recognize and invest in local capacities for resilience and governance

Any anti-hunger or other development effort, but especially those in fragile areas, must be planned and carried out in context-specific ways. As outside humanitarian workers have learned over the years, a one-size-fits-all approach does not work in different countries nor, quite often, in different regions of the same country. In addition, the effects of this drought may not be like those of the one 10 years ago, even in the same place.

Foreign assistance must focus on strengthening resilience in local populations to future disasters (natural and manmade) and recognizing and strengthening their local capacities to deal with them effectively and efficiently. More than a year into the COVID-19 pandemic that has led to national lockdowns, closed international borders, and decimated international travel, the importance of building resiliency and funding local capacity could not be more apparent.

The concept of “country-owned” development is not new, but in fragile contexts, perhaps especially where there is armed conflict, the process of shifting power to local communities and leaders may not have been completed or even begun. In these situations, donors can use the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to redefine their relationships with local partners. It’s important to ensure that they are equipped to take ownership of programs and resources, and also that they have any support requested to hold their governments accountable for the basic services they should be providing their populations.

• Prioritize ensuring that policies work together, not against each other

All policies and actions—whether in the realm of economic development, humanitarian assistance, trade, security assistance, or diplomacy—must work together, rather than against each other or at cross-purposes. Otherwise, efforts to improve food security and nutrition in sustainable ways cannot succeed.  Two brief examples help illustrate why this is so.

Providing food without considering the potential harm to smallholder farmers of flooding the market is likely to hinder the efforts of rural communities to adapt their agricultural practices to be more climate-resilient—and thus to avoid the next food emergency. Rebuilding schools and homes without pressing the fighters who destroyed them to declare a ceasefire and then enter genuine negotiations runs the risk of seeing the same families displaced, the same children unable to continue their education, the next year and possibly the year after that.

Donors also need to think through whether decisions about humanitarian assistance and international development in fragile contexts are coherent. One potentially difficult question is whether to withhold foreign assistance to press a government to meet a donor country’s policy priorities. Donors need to find the right balance between pressuring recipient countries on important issues—such as human rights violations—and maintaining assistance so as not to make the population worse off and in even greater need of assistance.

Aid effectiveness in fragile contexts requires a clear understanding of the many effects of policies, whether obvious or subtle and especially in humanitarian and development areas, and a willingness to adjust accordingly.

• Incorporate a climate-conscious lens

As we pointed out earlier in the series—for example, in the piece on countries in the Sahel in sub-Saharan Africa— climate change is a major contributor to fragility in many contexts. Climate change can be a “last straw” where deep poverty, armed conflict, poor government performance, and other factors have already created a fragile country or region. Therefore, many of the countries most affected by fragility are also those facing the brunt of the climate crisis.

All development aid and humanitarian assistance to climate-affected nations must be seen through a “climate lens” to ensure that it does not make matters worse, but instead works to mitigate the impacts of the crisis. Agencies must be mindful of how food systems are rebuilt in a post-COVID-19 world. Local food systems need more investment, especially from a climate-sensitive lens. Farmers need support to use agroecological and climate-smart agricultural techniques to adapt to the changing climate.

The other side of the coin is that in addition to supporting adaptation by countries that are most affected, the United States should take all measures necessary to limit its own climate impacts. Among the many reasons to do so is the contribution of greenhouse gas emissions to growing hunger and food insecurity.

The main lesson learned from this project is that there is no silver bullet to design and implement effective aid in fragile contexts, but that traditional donor/recipient relationships and siloed approaches have not worked in the past, and they will not work in the post-COVID-19 world.

It is time to reset the direction of the route the world is taking in its efforts to end hunger, especially in fragile contexts. It is time for a collaborative approach, from the grassroots up, to address the myriad causes of fragility. It is time to shift resources and power definitively into the hands of the people whose lives are affected. It is time to aspire to and implement a U.S. foreign policy that is more than “do no harm”—a strategy that seeks the highest good attainable for all.

Jordan Teague is interim co-director, policy analysis and coalition building, and Rahma Sohail was 2020 Crook fellow with Bread for the World Institute.

The post Transforming assistance to help end hunger in fragile contexts appeared first on Bread for the World.

Earth Day, April 22, is quickly approaching. Read on for a look at some of the main activities, many virtual and all centered around this year’s theme, Restore Our Earth.

We have also recently published a feature on continuing advocacy on the Child Tax Credit expansion, the most significant opportunity to reduce U.S. child poverty in many years; a look at the daunting problems Venezuela faces, despite its status as an oil-rich, previously middle-income nation; and an update on efforts to contain the COVID-19 pandemic in the only way possible—through worldwide vaccination.

Ahead of Earth Day itself, on the evening of April 20, the Hip Hop Caucus and its partners will host the “We Shall Breathe” virtual summit. This digital event will “examine climate and environmental justice, connecting the climate crisis to issues of pollution, poverty, police brutality, and the pandemic, all within a racial justice framework.”

Organizers of this year’s Earth Day, the 51st annual, have identified five pillars that will contribute to realizing the goal of restoration of the Earth. They are the Great Global Cleanup, Food and the Environment, the Canopy Project, Climate Literacy, and the Great Global Challenge.

Of the five pillars, Bread for the World Institute is, of course, primarily focused on Food and the Environment, but we also work on other pillars, particularly Climate Literacy. Bread staff work to enable policymakers, anti-hunger advocates, climate advocates, and others who are interested to see why and how hunger is inextricably connected with climate change. In fact, as we describe in our 2017 Hunger Report, Fragile Environments, Resilient Communities, climate change is one of the main causes of global hunger. 

The first-ever Earth Day was held in 1970. Climate change was not on the radar among people in the United States. Nevertheless, the first annual Earth Day is credited with inspiring the modern environmental movement, and it focused on key environmental concerns that are even more pressing today than 51 years ago. The Great Global Cleanup is always much needed.

The Canopy Project produces and shares training events and educational materials on why and how communities may plan to plant and—equally important—provide life-sustaining care for new trees. It joins a host of impressive grassroots reforestation initiatives. Among the best-known is Kenya’s Greenbelt Movement.

The Great Global Challenge pillar is centered around science, including a citizen science initiative. People all over the country are invited to participate in research on important environmental and climate concerns. Two current topics are air quality and plastics. Another key focus is bees, as we continue to hear alarming news about the collapse of bee colonies—and ultimately, of course, people’s ability to grow food since bees are essential pollinators.

Because I live in Maryland, I have been encouraged to download and use an app to help track cicadas. Maryland will be the epicenter when, in mid-May, the billions of cicadas of Brood X, all of which have lived underground for the past 17 years, emerge to seek mates. Researchers are gathering reams of cicada data from “citizen scientists” and others to learn more about how climate change is affecting insect species.

Returning now from climate science to Bread’s central concerns, I’d like to mention a few other hunger and food systems initiatives of the network that organizes Earth Day. A 2020 report, Climate Change and the American Diet, offers insights into U.S. public attitudes toward eating more climate-friendly, plant-based foods. Written through a partnership between Earth Day Network and the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, the report finds that people are fairly receptive to the concept but don’t have much information.

About half (51 percent) of those surveyed said they would eat more plant-based foods if they had more information about the environmental impacts of their food choices. But nearly two-thirds reported that they had never been asked to eat more plant-based foods, and more than half said they rarely or never hear about the topic in the media.

Just a sampling of other Earth Day Network initiatives: The Foodprints project measures the various environmental impacts of the “farm to fork” system in the United States. The 2012 Urban Environment Report evaluated 72 U.S. cities on more than 200 environmental indicators, centered around residents who “may have greater sensitivity or susceptibility to environmental, health, and social problems.” Farmers for Earth is a free information-sharing platform for small and medium-sized farmers in the United States. Launched on Earth Day 2019, it offers opportunities for farmers to connect with peers who are already engaged in sustainable agriculture as well as with subject experts.

Bread for the World Institute wishes everyone a Happy Earth Day and, since restoring the Earth is not a one-day project, a fulfilling Earth Year as well.

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

The post Earth Day is next week appeared first on Bread for the World.

School meal programs are a vital safety net for children and their families around the world. In few places is this more apparent than in Turkana County in arid northwest Kenya. 

The poverty rate in Turkana is 80 percent, the highest in the country, according to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics. Nearly a million people live in the county, spread over an area slightly larger than West Virginia. The harsh environment makes it hard to farm. Long dry spells are a way of life. Climate change is increasing the intensity of droughts, shortening rainy seasons and reducing food supplies. Some of the children receiving a hot lunch through the school meal program have nothing to eat when they return home.

Turkana is a pastoralist society. Like their ancestors since time immemorial, most of the population lives as nomadic herders of goats, sheep, and camels. To find water for the animals, families are regularly on the move, walking long distances from one location to another. The mobility of the families makes it difficult for children to be in school. School meal programs have given parents an incentive to send their children to school and keep them there.

“The families here are attracted to school by the food,” explains the headmaster of a primary school visited by Bread for the World Institute. “Without the lunch, most of these kids would not be here.”

At lunch time, we follow the children as they run with their bowls to the kitchen, where the school’s chef, a community member, ladles a porridge made of sorghum and cowpeas, drought-tolerant crops high in nutritional value and locally grown. 

The United States of Department of Agriculture (USDA) provides support to the World Food Program (WFP) to purchase food from local farmers to supply schools in this and other localities. WFP has been working with the Kenyan Ministry of Education since 1980 to implement school meal programs in Turkana and other high-poverty areas of the country. USDA supports school feeding in Kenya through the McGovern-Dole Food for Education Program established in 2004. The program provides training to chefs and school administrators in personal hygiene and how to preserve nutrients while cooking.

Areas with high poverty rates, such as Turkana, have low school enrollment and, typically, high gender disparities. School meals have been shown to increase enrollment of girls and reduce dropout rates. Educated women give birth to healthier babies who have lower risk of stunting and wasting. To end intergenerational cycles of poverty and hunger, it is hard to think of many better investments than school meal programs.

In 2018, the Government of Kenya formally took over responsibility for the school meal program in Turkana and other arid and semi-arid areas of the country, providing hot lunches to 1.6 million school children in all.  WFP and USDA continue to support the government to ensure a smooth transition. It’s a journey to self-reliance facilitated by steadfast partners.

To end intergenerational cycles of poverty, it is hard to think of many better investments than school meal programs

The post In Kenya with a Home-grown School Meals Program appeared first on Bread for the World.

In Baltimore’s African American neighborhoods, grocery stores are a rare sight. Rev. Dr. Heber M. Brown III, the senior pastor of Pleasant Hope Baptist Church, calls the situation “food apartheid.”

In 2015, Brown founded the Black Church Food Security Network in Baltimore, aiming to build an alternative food system for residents of neighborhoods without grocery stores, mainly using fresh produce grown in gardens on church properties. Today, 12 Baltimore churches are part of the network, and Baltimore’s initiative has inspired similar church-led efforts in other areas of the United States.

The term food apartheid is increasingly used to explain the lack of access to nutritious foods in black communities, but the more common term among anti-hunger activists is “food desert.” Heber explains that food desert does not fully convey the racial inequity caused by disinvestment in black communities. Lack of investment is just one item on a long list of laws and practices, from slavery and sharecropping to Jim Crow and redlining, that have created the segregated neighborhoods of concentrated poverty that are the visible signs of past and present U.S. racism.

Across the nation, black communities are more likely not to have a grocery store than majority white communities. Instead of food retail outlets selling healthy foods at prices residents can afford, black communities typically have many fast food outlets as well as corner or dollar stores that sell either highly processed foods or none at all. In many communities, such businesses have reached a saturation point.

When Brown became a pastor at Pleasant Hope in 2010, he didn’t expect food to be part of his ministry. But when he found himself spending inordinate amounts of time visiting members of his church in hospitals—many with diet-related conditions—he realized that something needed to be done. Brown was only 30 at the time, while most of his ailing parishioners were seniors. Their conversations reminded him of his grandparents—most were too proud to admit that they couldn’t afford healthy food, could not travel long distances to stores that carried these foods, or both.

At first, Brown was at a loss as to what to do for them. Baltimore already has established food charities, and his people were not looking for charity anyway. As he was walking up the front steps of the church, he passed a modest-sized lawn—why not plant a garden? Except he didn’t know anything about gardening. So he raised the idea of planting a garden during one of his sermons, and found there was not only interest but excitement, especially among older members of the church, many of whom had grown up on farms and knew a thing or two about growing food.

Sister Maxine Nicholas taught him how to work the land, and he was astonished as their little garden yielded 1,200 pounds of produce the very first year. He had never imagined they could produce that much food on their modest plot of land. The garden provided members of the church with fresh foods that were rarely or never seen in the neighborhood.

Before long, the success of gardening at Pleasant Hope attracted local media attention, and other churches in the city were reaching out to him for help. “Right after I shake the pastor’s hand,” says Brown, “I’m immediately looking around for the Sister Maxines. You’ll never see them standing on podiums at conferences, but those are the natural leaders.”

Brown thinks a lot about the sustainability of the alternative food system. The church is the most well-established institution in the black community, and that’s why he believes the work should be anchored in the black church. But sustainability depends on individuals willing to do the work. Sister Maxine passed away in 2018 at the age of 83, and he’s acutely aware that transforming food systems requires the energy of young people.

“You have to offer a compelling vision about the pride in doing what we have to do to take care of ourselves,” he said. But it’s not easy, he admits. Like Brown himself, they are city kids, and they may be more likely to associate agriculture with slavery than liberation.

Unlike Sister Maxine and others like her, Brown does stand on podiums to talk about food system transformation. As often as he can, he brings young adults from the church with him. He wants to enable them to see themselves as part of a movement that transcends themselves and their neighborhoods.

“Rev. Dr. Heber M. Brown aims to build an alternative food system for residents of neighborhoods without grocery stores”

The post Baltimore’s Black Churches Take on Food Apartheid appeared first on Bread for the World.

The World Food Program (WFP), the UN food assistance agency, provides a wide range of services in addition to coming to the aid of those experiencing humanitarian emergencies. Strengthening the capacity of countries is integral to how WFP engages with national governments to achieve SDG 2. 

In 2015, WFP developed the Fill the Nutrition Gap (FNG) tool to inform national nutrition policy and programming, linking data analysis to decision making by identifying the barriers vulnerable households face in accessing nutritious foods. Stakeholders across government, civil society, and business gain a better understanding of how they can work together to complement each other’s efforts on sector-specific interventions. 
 
Until about a decade ago, when maternal and child malnutrition was mainly seen as an area of focus for the health sector, interventions looked much the same from one high-burden country to the next. That may have seemed like a logical response. Countries with a high burden of malnutrition share several common characteristics, and the consequences of malnutrition at the household level were primarily seen in the health sector.

More recently, there has been a shift towards multisectoral interventions—addressing both direct causes and underlying causes—to suit the complexity of nutritional situations, not only from country to country, but also within the country itself. Moreover, it is now widely understood that achieving rapid progress against malnutrition is more difficult without action across health, agriculture, education, social protection, and other sectors. 

“There is a role for every sector in nutrition,” says Saskia de Pee, the leader of the FNG team and senior technical advisor on nutrition with WFP. “What sectors and which actions should be prioritized depends on the context, and that’s what FNG helps to identify.” 

People are prevented from choosing nutritious foods for a variety of reasons, such as availability, physical access, and affordability. All contribute to the dynamics of choice. FNG provides clarity as to main causes within a context and the types of interventions that would be most effective across the food system. The tool presents a clearer picture than before of country-specific and sub-national conditions.

In Pakistan, FNG showed that the cost of a nutritious diet was up to ten times higher than the cash transfer from the social safety net program received by eligible households. This led to the redesign of that program. FNG also identified a widespread issue with the nutritional status and diets of adolescent girls. The nutrient needs of an adolescent girl are the most expensive to meet, accounting for as much as one-third of the cost of a nutritious diet for a six-person household. This is a common finding across FNG analyses in different countries.

FNG relies on existing data, most of it provided by governments, a case in point for strengthening the capacity of national data collection agencies. In order for countries to get the full benefits of FNG, there needs to be a champion, ideally from an inter-ministerial government body, says WFP’s de Pee. “Government has the ability to convene stakeholders, a power unmatched in civil society or the private sector.”

The national government was instrumental in the FNG process in Pakistan. The current prime minister, Imran Khan, refers to the corrosive effects of childhood stunting on human capital development and champions a new multisector nutrition strategy in development as crucial to the nation’s future. Pakistan is a member of the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) movement, committed to multi-stakeholder and multi-sectoral solutions to malnutrition, and the SUN focal point resides in the Ministry of Planning Development & Reform.

FNG was developed to assist low- and middle-income countries where WFP works. More than 30 countries are using the tool to date. These countries understand that they are not on target to achieve SDG 2. But they are hardly alone in that regard. High-income countries are also lagging and could benefit from efforts to promote a multi-sectoral platform for understanding and addressing malnutrition in its different forms and their consequences.

The post The Complexity of Malnutrition Called for a New Tool to Fill the Nutrient Gap appeared first on Bread for the World.

As the owner and manager of Harborview Farms, Trey Hill is a third-generation family farmer on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Along with his father, Herman, and a small team of employees, Hill raises corn, soybeans, and wheat on more than 13,000 acres situated alongside the Chesapeake Bay. This makes Harborview Farms one of the largest agricultural operations in Maryland.

But Hill is known for much more than the size of the farm. His reputation as a leader in transforming and reorienting U.S. agriculture to climate change has spread beyond his home state.

In 2018, Harborview Farms was named the first Forward Farm in North America by Bayer, one of the largest agribusiness companies in the world, headquartered in Germany. Forward Farms are selected “to foster understanding about today’s sustainable agriculture practices, not to promote any single company.” Harborview Farms is one of only 14 farms to receive this honor. The others are located in Europe and Latin America, growing crops ranging from feed grains to wine grapes.  

Hill has been doing as much as anyone to help fellow farmers see themselves as part of the solution to climate change rather than scapegoats in an unfair blame game. There are simple things that farmers can do to deal with climate change that don’t cost them any additional expense, such as “no-till.”

Typically, after crops are harvested in the fall, farmers plow their fields or leave them fallow until the next planting season. What agricultural science has taught Hill and other farmers is that it is better not to plough. Letting the soil rest has made Hill’s fields more tolerant of the hard rains and dry conditions that climate change has intensified.

Only 20 percent of agricultural land in the United States uses this “no-till” practice. The environmental benefits are huge because soil stores carbon, and the less the soil is disturbed by ploughing the more carbon it pulls from the atmosphere, reducing one of the main greenhouse gases responsible for climate change. If enough of the world’s farmers used no-till—combined with emissions reduction from burning less fossil fuel—it would substantially slow the progress of catastrophic climate change substantially, and even begin to reverse it.

Hill also uses what are known as cover crops on his fields. Following a harvest in the fall, he and his employees cover the fields with rye, barley, clover and radish seeds. As these crops grow over the winter and into spring, it improves the soil quality. “The soil likes to thrive,” says Hill, “—just like people.”

Crops that are blanketed in healthy soil contain more nutrients. Setting aside the environmental and nutritional benefits, healthier soil increases his corn, soy, and wheat yields—the crops that generate the farm’s income. Healthier soil also mean he doesn’t have to spend as much on fertilizer, herbicide, or other chemicals to achieve strong yields. “It’s not perfect,” he says, noting it doesn’t lead to the elimination of chemical inputs, “but it’s a lot better than we were doing before.”

Planting cover crops is still an unconventional technique for most U.S. farmers, and that’s why the number of farmers who use cover crops is much lower than those who’ve switched to no-till. Hill admits it’s a challenge to get farmers to change, “If you’ve been farming one way for decades and been having success, there isn’t a lot of incentive to change.”

Farmers on the Eastern shore of Maryland had incentive to change. The state government pays farmers up to $90 per acre to plant cover crops. Pollution in the Chesapeake Bay from farm run off was contaminating ground water and harming the seafood and tourism industries.  It was also a political embarrassment as the Bay was considered an ecological disaster.

While only about 4 percent of cropland nationwide uses cover crops, it is around 50 percent in Maryland. Maryland had a crisis and state leaders were willing to act to prompt farmers to change how they do business. Climate change under business as usual scenarios augur tall challenges for food systems everywhere. “We’re going to have to change the way we grow food,” says Trey Hill.

“We’re going to have to change the way we grow food”

— Trey Hill, Harborview Farms

The post Climate-smart Agriculture on Maryland’s Eastern Shore appeared first on Bread for the World.

Kroger, the second largest grocer in the United States, is serious about sustainability. “Gone are the days when we could all overproduce, overconsume, and over dispose,” says Jessica Adelman, vice president of Corporate Affairs at The Kroger Company. Adelman leads the company’s Zero Hunger/Zero Waste social impact plan.¹

Many grocers are involved in fighting hunger. Kroger can do so on a scale that few can match. The Kroger Co. operates nearly 2,800 stores across the United States, employing more than 453,000 people, serving 11 million customers per day.² “At Kroger” says Adelman, “we are intently focused on using our scale for good, and we encourage our customers, associates and other businesses to join us.”³

Zero Hunger/Zero Waste is a company-wide effort with 83 percent of stores donating food every month to fight hunger in their communities. In 2020, the company expects to donate a billion meals and is aiming to reach 3 billion by 2025.⁴ Partnerships with food banks affiliated with Feeding America and local service agencies ensure that the food reach people in need.

Kroger has a goal of eliminating all food waste across the company by 2025. Between 30 to 40 percent of food in the United States goes to waste, and grocers contribute a hefty share of the total.⁵ Much of what ends up in landfills is perfectly good food. “Ugly produce” doesn’t even make it to the grocery shelves. These are fruits and vegetables, tasty and safe to eat, but less than picture-perfect with minor blemishes or somewhat misshapen. Kroger markets ugly produce under the name Peculiar Picks and reduces the price on these high-nutrition foods to make them more affordable to low-income shoppers.

Adelman also leads the Zero Hunger/Zero Waste Innovation Fund in which the Kroger Co. invests in emerging technologies to reduce food waste and hunger. In 2019, the fund awarded its first round of grants. Seven companies received a combined $1 million, including a Cincinnati start-up named Food Forest, which provides groceries to consumers living in food deserts.⁶ The Consumers, including SNAP recipients, use a mobile app to place orders and schedule free pickup at designated locations in their neighborhoods. Food Forest sources the food from several grocers and smaller stores, offering consumers the best prices.

Another of the first round of grantees is Seal the Seasons, based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Seal the Seasons contracts with small family farms to sell locally and regionally grown fruits and vegetables year-round. The produce is picked in season and flash frozen, locking in nutritional benefits, and sold in grocery stores in the grower’s home region. “By freezing locally grown food, we are able to support local growers and help keep their farms in business,” says Patrick Mateer, founder and CEO.⁷

Mateer started Seal the Seasons in 2014 after graduating from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. During college he worked at area farmers markets. He got to know the family farmers and learned about the challenges they face. The farmers aren’t able to sell all their annual production. Mateer saw the wasted food as a business opportunity. At the same time, he saw a booming demand among consumers for local foods. “Our local-frozen model gives eaters access to locally grown food year-round,” he says.⁸

Seal the Seasons has built supply chains that include local freezing facilities, warehouses, and trucking operations—helping to lift local economies as well as reducing food waste. On a state-by-state basis, Seal the Seasons works with grocers, including Kroger, and has grown from supplying a handful of stores in 2015 to more than 3,000 currently.

In 2018, Fortune magazine ranked Kroger #6 on its Change the World list of companies using their resources to solve society’s most complex issues, citing Zero Hunger/Zero Waste. The private sector can contribute to sustainable development in so many ways. Kudos to Kroger for using its resources in shaping the national discussion around how to end hunger and eliminate waste in the United States.

“Gone are the days when we could all overproduce, overconsume, and over dispose”

Jessica Adelman, The Kroger Company

The post The Kroger Company Zeroes in on Hunger and Waste appeared first on Bread for the World.

Pearl Gaone Ranna is a mother, a farmer, a social entrepreneur, and a visionary. At 25, she is already a leader of youth and women in the agricultural sector in her country of Botswana and beyond.

In 2016, just two years out of college with a bachelor’s degree in business, she convened the first-ever women in farming expo held in Botswana, drawing participants from across Southern Africa to network and discuss the barriers and opportunities they face in their respective countries. She is the founder and managing director of Unitech Farming, which provides training and support to youth and female farmers, most of whom are smallholders operating on a couple of acres or less.

Women farmers in Botswana have advantages many of their peers in neighboring African countries do not. For example, female farmers in Botswana can own land, the most precious asset to farmers everywhere. But laws promoting gender equality don’t lead immediately to changing stereotypes, and women farmers in Botswana continue to struggle to gain recognition for their contributions to food security.  Many internalize negative stereotypes that women can’t farm as well as men, and that’s what Ranna is determined to change.

Unitech has trained hundreds of women in basic capacity-building to run a successful farming enterprise. The national government has just rolled out a school feeding program for all children in primary grades and plans to source much of the foods from local farmers. It’s a tremendous opportunity for all farmers to join, especially those who can break out of subsistence production, such as those women being targeted in its new program for mothers with young children.

“You can’t believe how hard it is to run your own business as well as raising a child,” says Ranna, who has firsthand knowledge, having experienced those challenges running a poultry operation while raising a daughter.  
The program includes an early childhood development center for the children, so that while their mothers are receiving training and working on their farms the children are well cared for in a center-based learning environment. Revenues the women generate with increased productivity on their farms will go towards sustaining the program to provide training to new groups of women.

If the program is successful, as she believes it will be, she hopes it will contribute to policy changes that institutionalize such support for women farmers nationwide. “I am trying to advocate for policies for women and youth,” she explained. “To advocate effectively you need to be able to show something works.”

Ranna is excited, in part, because the program is being launched in the village where she was raised. She fell in love with farming as a teenager helping on her mother’s farm. She says her father wanted her to set her sights higher than being a farmer. Indeed, she did. She intends to transform the agricultural sector for all women.

The persistence of global hunger has more to do with poverty and weak governance than production shortfalls

The post A Mother’s Day Postcard from Botswana appeared first on Bread for the World.

Growing Hope Globally is an organization founded by U.S. farmers that provides support for smallholder farmers around the world. “Our mission is to help hungry people know the dignity of helping themselves achieve food security,” says Max Finberg, president of Growing Hope Globally (and former Bread staffer).

“We connect U.S. farmers with farmers overseas just trying to feed their families,” says Finberg. “By donating a portion of the proceeds of their harvest, farmers in the United States fund agricultural development programs in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.”

This includes training in sustainable agricultural practices such as soil conservation and diversified cropping. One of the beneficiaries is Miguel¹ a smallholder farmer from a region known as the Dry Corridor in Honduras.

In 2012, Miguel participated in a training program. He was a quick study, and his farm soon became much more productive. 2014 was a rough year for many farmers in the Dry Corridor. There was a severe drought, and to add to their troubles, the coffee crop—their main source of income—was wiped out by a highly contagious fungus. Because he had diversified his crops, Miguel’s family had enough food for themselves and were able to offer some to their neighbors.

Neighbors began to come to Miguel for advice on farming, so he established his own training program on Saturdays. His status in the community made him a natural choice to lead their local water committee, and Growing Hope Globally helped by providing training in advocacy and negotiating with local officials.

2014 produced waves of undocumented migrants from Central America to the United States. Hunger resulting from the drought and destruction of the coffee crop were two of the main drivers. Meanwhile, Growing Hope Globally invited Miguel to come to the United States and testify to the value of the training he received. On the issue of migration, he said, “If my family feels secure, and my kids have enough to eat, and I earn enough so they can attend school, then why would I want to leave? But I tell you, if we don’t feel secure, and we don’t have enough to eat, then no wall is big enough to keep us out.”

In 2017, the water committee that Miguel led angered a wealthy landowner who was not accustomed to sharing water resources with smallholder farmers, many of whom he employed as laborers in his fields. The law on water rights was not on the landowner’s side, so he hired some men to intimidate Miguel. The text messages Miguel received from the landowner’s men got more menacing, until eventually they threatened to kill him.

Miguel and his family had no choice but to flee their home and move to another part of the country. Life was much harder there, and he earned barely enough to survive. The statement he made earlier about security and feeding his children ironically had come true, and there was no option but to head north for the United States. That was in 2018. One year later he used the earnings he had saved from his landscaping job to pay traffickers to smuggle the rest of the family out of Honduras. They are living in the United States now. While they are not thriving, they feel secure, and Miguel is earning enough to keep the family from going hungry.

Alex Morse is Growing Hope Globally’s regional director for projects in South and Central America. He has known Miguel since 2012 and has watched this whole story unfold. He recalls the first time he met the family, and it was clear that the children—a 7-year-old boy and a 5-year-old girl, at the time—were in poor health and malnourished. Two years later, after Miguel had incorporated the training he received and the farm’s productivity increased, the children were energetic and playful, like one would expect of healthy children.

“What saddens me most about what happened to Miguel,” says Morse, “is here’s a guy who did everything possible to help himself and improve his community but look at what choices he had to make.”

Growing Hope Globally invites its donors in the United States to visit projects they are supporting around the world and meet the beneficiaries. In April 2019, Morse led a trip to Honduras for a handful of the donors. Gary Gensch, a farmer in Michigan, joined that trip, in part, because he wanted to learn for himself what was driving so many people to migrate from Central America to the United States. At one point, Morse recalls, Gensch was brought to tears when he saw the struggles the communities face, whether they be climate conditions, lawlessness and violence, or grinding poverty.

Despite the difficulties he has faced, Miguel has faith that one day it will be safe enough for the family to return to Honduras. Then they will rejoin their community, and he will resume farming. He is still grateful for all the support he received from Growing Hope Globally and for what other organizations are doing to improve Central America.

“To all of my brothers and sisters in Central America,” he says, simply, “Have faith.”

“To my brothers and sisters in Central America,” Miguel says, simply,
“Have faith”

1  Miguel is using a pseudonym to protect himself and his family.

The post On the Frontiers of Hope in Honduras appeared first on Bread for the World.

Peru has shown that it is possible to make extraordinary progress against childhood malnutrition. Since 2006, the stunting rate of children younger than 5 has been cut by more than half. According to the latest national survey, it is now at 12 percent.

Peru’s success can be credited broadly to political will, but other countries could learn from more specific information about how Peru was able to make malnutrition a top priority for national policy.

In 2006, an alliance of national NGOs, led by CARE Peru and including USAID and other international partners, challenged presidential candidates to commit to a specific goal: to reduce stunting among children younger than 5 by 5 percent in 5 years, “5x5x5.” Candidates embraced the goal, although the catchy slogan wasn’t the reason. Rather, they were persuaded by the alliance’s presentation of the results of its own efforts to reduce stunting in various parts of the country. It used a carefully coordinated multisectoral approach, meaning one that brings together personnel and knowledge from several different fields. In this case, the main sectors were agriculture, water, sanitation, and health. The alliance offered to help the government achieve 5x5x5.

Presidential candidates knew about feeding programs, which had operated in Peru for many years but had made no progress on stunting. In some rural areas, more than 60 percent of young children were stunted. Leaders needed to learn about the multiple causes of malnutrition and its role in depressing economic growth and perpetuating cycles of poverty.

Once the candidates committed to achieving the 5x5x5 goal, the alliance announced this publicly, which got the attention of national media, including the largest newspapers and radio stations. “Getting candidates to commit to a target for anything had never been done before, and that made a huge difference—it gave the campaign a focus,” said Milo Stanojevich, director of CARE Peru during this breakthrough decade.

Alan Garcia, the candidate who was elected president, ratified his commitment to 5x5x5 and included it in the organization of his new government, directing ministries to work together to achieve the goal. Garcia even upped the ante by pledging to reduce stunting by 9 percent during his 5-year term of office.

The government could be seen following through on its commitments, which engendered other good faith efforts by key partners, such as the World Bank and the country’s business community. The World Bank, which was working with the Peru Ministry of Finance to introduce a model of “budgeting by results,” used the alliance’s causal framework for child malnutrition as a prototype for the new system. A large share of Peru’s economy is based on natural resource extraction. Under an agreement with the government, mining companies agreed to dedicate a share of their royalties to achieving the goal.

The previous government had established a national conditional cash transfer program. These programs gave parents, usually mothers, cash grants in exchange for taking actions such as having a child vaccinated or sending all her children to school. The Garcia administration expanded this program with a focus on actions that help reduce stunting.

“It seemed like everyone was talking about malnutrition,” Stanojevich said.

Such a strong commitment to addressing a problem demands proper monitoring and evaluation. Everyone wants an answer to “Are we on track?” The capacity to collect periodic data was not strong in many rural areas. With help from USAID, Peru’s national statistics institute began to administer health surveys annually rather than every three years. It also used larger sample sizes so that the data could provide more detailed information about conditions at local and regional levels.

President Garcia’s term ended in 2011, but the alliance played a key role in ensuring that nutrition remained a national priority and that successful strategies were maintained by subsequent governments. “We are proud of our advocacy, but advocacy does not take programs to scale,” Stanojevich said. “We just kept the pressure on and kept the support through three different administrations, and the government made it happen.”

“You cannot have equality of opportunity if children are not appropriately nourished.”

— Jim Yong Kim, president, The World Bank, 2017

The post Building Political Will to Reduce Child Malnutrition in Peru appeared first on Bread for the World.

Asheville, North Carolina, is one of the fastest-growing cities in the United States. Its setting in the Blue Ridge Mountains has attracted many retirees, as well as artists, writers, musicians, and tourists from all over the country.

The flip side of Asheville’s popularity is its high cost of living, one of the highest in North Carolina. People who work in the low-wage economy confront the near-impossibility of finding affordable housing within commuting distance of their jobs downtown.

This was the situation in 2009 when city officials unveiled a transit master plan. When people who used the bus system because they couldn’t afford to own a car—often called “necessity” riders—saw the plan, they noticed that their needs seemed to have been forgotten. The master plan eliminated routes in some neighborhoods. It changed schedules in ways that made commuting far more difficult for people who work irregular hours.

The buses did not operate at all on Sundays, a longstanding grievance of necessity riders, especially those who hold late-night jobs. Employers would tell job applicants that there was no point in applying unless they had an alternative to public transportation on Sundays. Cab fare could cost an entire day’s earnings.

City leaders were focused instead on recruiting new riders, people who didn’t usually take buses at all. From their perspectives, this may have been a worthwhile goal. Perhaps it would reduce greenhouse gas emissions and/or improve the transit system’s financial stability. At least in part because patrons who used the bus system regularly were not included in the plan’s development, no one pointed out potential negatives until necessity riders finally saw the plan.

Local advocacy efforts on transportation may be more important than on any other basic need. There is no federal program dedicated to helping low-income households meet their transportation needs, as there is for food security, health care, child care, or housing. Yet housing, child care, and transportation are three of the largest items in a low-income household’s budget.

When policies are made that affect low-wage workers and other low-income people, their voices are rarely heard and their concerns even more rarely understood. Just Economics, based in Asheville, helps people organize to change that. Born out of a successful living-wage campaign in the early 2000s, Just Economics includes a leadership development program, “Voices for Economic Justice,” which has trained hundreds of community activists. The eight-week program culminates in a group project. In 2012, one of the groups decided to focus on the transit master plan.

Over the next year, the group members, all of whom used the bus system “by necessity,” came together as The People’s Voice on Transportation Equality. They met weekly and ultimately produced a 19-point plan, which they submitted to the City Council in January 2014. Just Economics supported the group by paying for transportation, child care, and food for meetings. All of these were important because some activists worked more than one job and had young children to care for.

Group member Calvin Allen explained that he worked the late shift at McDonald’s and often missed the last bus, leaving him with no choice but to walk home. Some nights, following a grueling shift, he was too exhausted to walk and chose to sleep at the bus stop instead.

By the end of 2017, the city had agreed to all 19 points of the reform agenda. In addition to proposals on routes and service hours, the points included a requirement that necessity riders be represented on the city’s transit committee, and changes in the rules to better meet the needs of low-income riders. For example, the agenda called for an end to the policy that a rider could bring only three bags of groceries on the bus, because this meant that many riders had to spend extra time and money making multiple supermarket trips every week.

Getting all 19 points accepted by city government was a major accomplishment. But even more than the policy victories, the campaign by the People’s Voice on Transportation Equality was a resounding success because it proved that people living with poverty can get government to respond to their needs and priorities. Empowerment is a word often used lightly, but being able to silence the voice in a person’s own head—repeating the discouraging thought that policymakers will never listen to her, a poor person—is what empowerment really means.

The post Transportation Equality in Asheville, North Carolina appeared first on Bread for the World.

Younger generations have the most to lose if today’s leaders in government do not act more assertively to slow climate change.

This is the basis for an inspired climate advocacy campaign that is currently in progress, centered on a lawsuit filed against the U.S. government in federal court. The plaintiffs, 21 children and young people ranging in age from 10 to 22, allege that the government has knowingly violated their rights by failing to respond to climate change more forcefully and effectively.

Bill McKibben, pioneering climate activist and founder of the international environmental organization 350.org, describes the plaintiffs’ day in court as “the most important lawsuit on the planet right now.”

The case began on October 29, 2018, in the U.S. District Court in Eugene, Oregon. The plaintiffs want the federal government to implement a national Climate Recovery Plan consistent with the best available scientific analysis. The plan would prioritize reducing greenhouse gas emissions, primarily carbon dioxide (CO2). Bill McKibben’s organization is named after the number considered the maximum safe level of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere, 350 parts per million. The level today is 408 parts per million.

Nobel Laureate and economist Joseph Stiglitz will appear as an expert witness. He has been providing pro bono analytical support, which includes a 50-page expert’s report that argues that the U.S. government, through “insufficient action on climate change, [is] imposing and will continue to impose enormous costs on youth plaintiffs.”

The United Church of Christ (UCC) Council for Climate Justice is calling on the faith community to publicly support the children and youth who are bringing the case to court. Kiran Oommen, one of the plaintiffs, is the son of ordained UCC minister Melanie Oommen, and UCC was the first denomination to call for financial divestment from fossil fuels.  In addition to providing financial support for the legal team, the UCC is encouraging young leaders to show their solidarity with the 21 children and youth by delivering sermons on climate justice.

Our Children’s Trust, an environmental organization, is providing legal support to the plaintiffs. It has been supporting cases brought by youth in state courts since 2011 and describes its mission as “elevat[ing] the voice of youth—to secure the legal right to a healthy atmosphere and stable climate on behalf of all present and future generations.”

The federal lawsuit, Juliana v. United States, was filed in 2015, but the federal government has fought at every stage to block the case from coming to trial, and it continues to petition for it to be dismissed. The case has drawn national media attention, which has given several of the plaintiffs a platform to speak out. “You don’t have to call yourself an activist to act,” said lead plaintiff Kelsey Juliana in an interview with Bill Moyers on Moyers & Company. “I think that’s so important that people my age really get [that] into their heads. As a younger person, I have everything to gain from taking action and everything to lose from not … It’s important that youth are the ones who are standing up because of the fact that we do have so much to lose.”

Julia Olson, chief legal counsel for the plaintiffs, believes that whatever decision is reached by the District Court is likely to be appealed to the Supreme Court. The U.S. government is virtually certain to file an appeal if it loses the case or key elements of it. You can follow the latest news about the case at Our Children’s Trust.

The post Millennials and Generation Z Seek Climate Justice in Court appeared first on Bread for the World.

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?”

The post The Center for Caring, Empowering, and Peace Initiatives appeared first on Bread for the World.

Gyude Moore was Liberia’s Minister of Public Works from 2015 to 2018, during the presidency of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. A decade earlier, he was an organizer with Bread for the World. A decade before that, he was an adolescent living in a refugee camp in Sierra Leone, one of the millions of Liberians forced to flee the country during a period of nearly 15 years that included two civil wars. Liberia reached a peace agreement in 2003.

Currently Moore is a visiting fellow at the Center for Global Development, where Hunger Report Senior Editor Todd Post met with him to talk about advocacy and foreign aid. As Minister of Public Works, his focus was entirely on infrastructure, he said, and since leaving the government, he finds it hard to let the subject go.

He told a story about being on a rural road in Liberia and coming to one of the many bridges that had been destroyed during the war years. “When we got to a bridge, we had to arrange planks to get the car across. Everyone got out except the driver, and we walked across after he safely piloted the vehicle over the planks.” It was a hair-raising experience. The Liberian countryside is littered with abandoned vehicles, half submerged under bridges, whose drivers had attempted similar crossings.

As they were negotiating the crossing, a motorcycle driver drove across as well. His passenger was a pregnant woman on her way to the health clinic. Liberia has one of the world’s highest rates of maternal mortality. Moore pointed out that many women don’t seek medical care because so many roads and bridges are badly damaged or simply impassable. Particularly where bridges have been destroyed, a clinic that might have been a two-hour journey in the prewar period could now take an entire day.

The woman on the motorcycle, a smallholder farmer, told Moore that the condition of the bridge was the reason she didn’t sell her products at a larger market where she could earn more. In another part of the country, where Moore oversaw a road improvement project, farmers did gain access to new markets, and as a result, their sales increased.

Infrastructure creates opportunities that people in poverty are eager to seize. Liberia is one of many African countries with a large youth population in search of work. Moore said that how successful the country is in repairing and developing its infrastructure will, to a large extent, determine how successful it is in unlocking the economic potential of its youth.

A crucial part of a country’s infrastructure is electricity. When President Johnson Sirleaf was sworn in, the country’s only source of electric power was diesel generators. Moore said that on game days, the average football stadium in the United States consumed more energy than was being produced in all of Liberia. Liberia signed a contract with the U.S. Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) aimed at rebuilding its power infrastructure. MCC offers multi-year grants to countries that meet governance criteria such as combating corruption and investing in health and education. More than half of MCC’s financial support is used for infrastructure development. In Liberia’s equivalent of the State of the Union, Johnson Sirleaf explained to the public how her administration was tackling corruption and working to meet other MCC criteria. Moore noted that Bread was advocating for the creation and full funding of the MCC when he served as an organizer in 2003-2004.

Lately, Moore has been thinking about another infrastructure challenge that Liberia faces along with other low-income countries: weather forecasting. The World Bank is funding a project in sub-Saharan Africa to create a large, comprehensive network that could provide timely local weather forecasts. This is particularly important for countries and regions that are enduring the increasingly severe impact of climate change. Weather alerts would warn shepherds to move to higher ground. A storm that washes away fertilizer could be the difference between a farmer’s profitability and hunger, so it would be extremely helpful to know when to delay putting down fertilize for a day or two. People about to take their boats out to fish early on a sunny morning would know about a strong afternoon thunderstorm and return to shore in time.

When Moore reflects on the critical role of U.S. foreign aid in his country, he notes that the United States is the largest donor to the World Bank, and he praises Bread for the World and other civil society groups for making U.S. citizens aware of the progress against hunger and poverty that U.S. development assistance helps make possible in Liberia and in other developing countries.

The post Gyude Moore: Building Bridges to Peace in Liberia appeared first on Bread for the World.

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.

The post Profile: Julie Brewer and an Advocate's Impact appeared first on Bread for the World.

At a 2014 congressional hearing before the Budget Committee, Barbie Izquierdo, a single parent of two young children in Philadelphia, PA, explained the predicament that working low-wage jobs presents to parents like her.

“I was proud to be working, to have a place to go each day and bring a paycheck home to support my family. Getting a job, I hoped, meant more stability with an increased income.”

But the job did not lead to more stability. Instead, her earnings pushed her and her children above the income eligibility limit for SNAP—leaving her with less money for food. “So, my kids and I were hungrier than ever,” she told the committee.

Barbie Izquierdo, who has experienced hunger while raising her two children, has testified on Capitol Hill and was featured in the 2013 documentary about hunger in America A Place at the Table.

Young children are more vulnerable than any other group to the damaging impacts of hunger, even for short periods.

The post Barbie: Proud to Be Working, but Hungrier than Before appeared first on Bread for the World.

In 2016, Congress passed the Global Food Security Act (GFSA), which strengthened U.S. commitment to reducing hunger and authorized additional resources to improve agriculture, particularly for farmers who rely on small plots of land for their living. Behind the scenes, Bread for the World’s advocacy was instrumental in securing congressional support for bringing the bill up for a vote and passing it. Smallholder farmers have been a focus of Bread’s work since our founding in 1974.

The support of individual members of Congress is critical to enacting legislation. Every year in both the House and the Senate, hundreds of legislative bills are introduced, assigned a bill number, and then never put to a vote. Because members of Congress cannot study all these proposals, they often decide on their position based on a bill’s list of cosponsors, who are other members of Congress willing to endorse the bill. Often, it falls to advocacy groups such as Bread for the World to bring specific bills to the attention of members of Congress and ask them to cosponsor. If a bill has a strong list of cosponsors, Senate and House leadership are far more likely to schedule it for a floor vote.

One of the hallmarks of Bread for the World’s advocacy has always been its personal touch. To many people on Capitol Hill, stacks of handwritten letters delivered by hand to congressional offices mean “Bread for the World.” Bread advocates have a mission: making hunger a legislative priority. Soon after the bill was introduced in 2015, Bread’s members and staff began visiting House and Senate offices both in Washington, D.C., and in members’ districts. This effort continued into 2016.

Longtime Bread for the World member Rev. Ron Neustadt, a retired Lutheran minister in Beltsville, Illinois, reached out to his newly elected representative, Mike Bost (R-IL-12). Because the representative had minimal experience in global hunand poverty issues when he was elected in 2014, it was an opportune time to brief him on how he could help reduce hunger and malnutrition. Neustadt made persistent efforts to explain why GFSA was important to Bost’s constituents. He was able to make connections between farming in Bost’s district, which is largely agricultural, and the efforts of smallholder farmers in developing countries. Bost ultimately became a cosponsor of GFSA.

GFSA had 112 House and Senate cosponsors when it came up for a vote. Bread advocates had helped secure more than half of them. In the summer of 2016, GFSA passed in both the House and Senate with overwhelming bipartisan support. Once a bill has been enacted, it is generally much easier to get it reauthorized. GFSA was reauthorized in 2018.

GFSA requires the government to coordinate its anti-hunger initiatives and make efforts to avoid the problems associated with planning projects in isolated “silos.” GFSA also authorized spending $1 billion a year on efforts to reduce hunger by focusing on its longer-term causes.

Once GFSA became law, the administration’s new Feed the Future food security initiative began to support efforts to reduce communities’ vulnerability to hunger. To do this, it puts its focus on agricultural growth, increased farmer productivity, and improved nutritional quality, particularly for pregnant women and children younger than 2. Feed the Future reports that in the countries where it works, 5.2 million fewer families are going hungry now, and 3.4 million children to date have been spared childhood stunting.

Feed the Future also supports governments in investing more of their own resources in agriculture. In 2018, USAID Administrator Mark Green reported an average increase of 25 percent in the agriculture budgets of countries where Feed the Future works.

Bread’s organizing team supports advocates in their efforts to communicate with their members of Congress. Zach Schmidt has been a Bread organizer since 2008. His portfolio includes Illinois, and he helped put Rev. Neustadt in touch with Bost’s office. “It’s a testament to the effectiveness of Bread’s strategy,” said Neustadt of his success in winning Bost’s cosponsorship of GFSA.

Schmidt describes the passage of GFSA as the most gratifying experience of his work at Bread. “It’s been empowering for Bread members,” he explained. “They know they have impact, but GFSA shows it. Advocacy does work.”

“Bread members know they have impact, but GFSA shows it. Advocacy does work.”

—Zach Schmidt, regional organizer

The post The Personal Touch: Advocacy and the Passage of the Global Food Security Act appeared first on Bread for the World.

JuJu Harris was in the Peace Corps and stationed in Paraguay when a boll weevil infestation destroyed the country’s entire cotton crop. Her work involved helping farmers choose and plant other crops, mostly fruits and vegetables. She noticed that these new foods clearly improved the health of women and children in the villages—an observation that would serve her well after her return home.

Harris got married once she returned to the United States and became pregnant soon thereafter. As the mother of an infant, she suffered from postpartum depression, as do about one in seven new mothers. She was also eligible for WIC, the federal nutrition program for low-income women, infants, and
children. As it turns out, these two facts were connected: research has shown that low-income women, those who are eligible for WIC, are 65 percent more likely to experience PPD than others.

Harris now works as a birth and postpartum doula in Washington, D.C. One of a doula’s main responsibilities is to provide support to expectant and new mothers, and Harris’s specialty is nutrition education. She works with low-income women, teaching them how to plan meals and shop for foods on a budget and explaining what to eat to keep themselves and their babies healthy.

The best nutrition for infants is exclusive breastfeeding (meaning no water, formula, or other foods) for the first six months. However, this is difficult or impossible for most workers in the United States, particularly workers in low-wage jobs, since they are less likely to have even a few days of paid sick leave.

The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), enacted in 1993, provides new mothers (and fathers) with up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave each year. But not everyone qualifies for this unpaid leave: a parent must work for an employer with at least 50 employees located within a 75-mile radius of the workplace, and she or he must have worked for the employer for at least a year and for at least 1,250 hours (24 hours a week) during that week. The Trump administration’s 2018 budget request includes a proposal to extend six weeks of paid leave for new parents. This would be financed through the unemployment insurance (UI) system and shift most of the costs onto states whose UI programs are already underfunded.

Even if workers are eligible under the current FMLA, few can afford to take unpaid leave—if they do, their families may well go hungry, be evicted, or be unable to buy essential medications. Harris knows a retail worker who had no choice but to return to work one week after giving birth. “As soon as she came back to work she was expected to do the same work, standing on her feet all day,” Harris recalled. “You have to perform up to par, if not better, to prove you are a worthy employee.”

The best nutrition for infants is exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months. However, this is difficult or impossible for most workers in the United States.

The post Juju: Advocate for Paid Family and Medical Leave appeared first on Bread for the World.

Kristyn Davis doesn’t remember ever being hungry as a kid. She thinks she grew up middle class. Her parents worked in a factory, and her mother held down a second job as a server in a restaurant.

Davis, 28, works as a server at a restaurant in Vermilion, a lakeside community in northern Ohio, not far from where she grew up. She enjoys the work and thinks she is good at it, but it remains a challenge for her. Alcohol is flowing at the bar and she knows that some of the cooks and other servers are using. They invite her to come out with them after work, and she politely says no. She doesn’t share her past with anyone at the restaurant or talk about her struggles with addiction and the sober-living facility, Genesis by the Lake, where she’s a resident with her 5-year old son, Eric.

She tried to get a job at another restaurant, and the manager asked what made her different from other people interviewing for the position. She said, “I’ve never met any of those girls, but I can tell you that I don’t drink so I’m never going to tell you I’m hungover if you schedule me for the breakfast shift.” When she explained that she was in recovery, he ended the interview abruptly.

It wasn’t until Davis became addicted to opioids that she came to know about hunger. Her addiction started with a prescription for oxycodone after treatment for an ovarian Medicaid and SNAP have made it possible for Kristyn Davis and her son Eric to get healthy and stay nourished while she receives treatment for opioid dependence. cyst. From there she moved on to heroin and living on the street, going days without food. And she had already had her son Eric. Her family took care of him—and essentially protected him from her. When she got straight, she said, the withdrawal felt like she was dying, but the thought of Eric kept her going through the worst of it, and Eric is what keeps her going to this day.

All the residents at Genesis by the Lake are single mothers, and all have a history with opioids. Ohio has been affected more than most states by the nationwide opioid epidemic. In 2017, the number of deaths from opioids continued to soar. The state has even had to resort to using mobile meat lockers for the bodies of some of those who die of overdoses.

Medicaid covers the largest share of the cost of Kristyn and Eric’s stay at the facility. She says that she doesn’t know what they would do without the program. While Congress was debating health care reform during much of 2017, she tried to put Medicaid’s uncertain future out of her mind. Kristyn knows that she and Eric must leave Genesis by the Lake at some point. She knows the job at the restaurant doesn’t pay enough for her to afford her own place. She dreads being homeless again or exposing Eric to that. They are barely getting enough to eat now with their SNAP card, she says.

Medicaid and SNAP have made it possible for Kristyn Davis and her son Eric to get healthy and stay nourished while she receives treatment for opioid dependence.

The post Kristyn and Eric: Living the Challenge appeared first on Bread for the World.

Rafi Peterson insists that no one should leave prison without a General Educational Development (GED), and preferably an associate’s degree. He earned two college degrees while in prison from 1983 to 1997. Since then, funding for prison education programs has been slashed, and most people leaving prison have no credentials that would help them get a job.

Peterson lives in Chicago and works for the Southwest Organizing Project (SWOP), a community nonprofit that operates in some of Chicago’s toughest neighborhoods. He works with men like himself who have spent 10 years or more in prison. One client had been imprisoned for 37 years.

With support from the Inner-city Muslim Action Network (IMAN), one of SWOP’s partner organiza-tions, Peterson established a transitional housing program for ex-offenders, men whose only other options were a homeless shelter or the street. Adjusting to life on the outside is a process, Peterson points out. In prison, you’re focused on he dangers all around you, and after years of living like that, it takes time to adjust your reflexes.

Finding a job is one of the greatest challenges they face. Few employers will give someone who spent more than 10 years in prison a chance, even in a good economy. Peterson knows he can’t change the stigma of a criminal record and lengthy prison sentence. That’s why in 2007 he created Project Restore Industries, an idea he began developing while in prison.

Work is restorative and makes it possible for ex-offenders to contribute to their communities and their families. But because it is so difficult for them to get hired, Project Restore Industries’ approach is to guide the men in starting their own businesses. A collective self-help structure helps them assume responsibility for creating jobs for each other. Not everyone is an entrepreneur, but with some training, many ex-offenders in Project Restore have proven to be more successful at business than many people would think someone with a GED or less could be.

None of the men he has worked with has re-offended. “People recidivate because of hunger,” he says. “Hunger makes you desperate, and desperate people do desperate acts.”

“Work is restorative and makes it possible for ex-offenders to contribute to their communities and their families”

The post Profile: Rafi Peterson appeared first on Bread for the World.

Sixteen young men and women between the ages of 12 and 17 join us in a conference room on a bright Saturday morning in March 2017. Bread for the World Institute staff have come to meet with them. The youth are enrolled in a Life Skills Intervention Program that meets on Saturday mornings at the Urban League offices in downtown Charlotte. Charlotte’s branch of the Urban League provides services to some of the city’s most-at-risk youth. The group we meet with live in some of the poorest neighborhoods and attend the city’s most disadvantaged schools. The risks they face range from dropping out of school to substance abuse to incarceration to chronic unemployment.

Nationally, one in eight young people between the ages of 16 and 24 are disconnected from school or from both work and school, meaning they are neither in school nor working.1 Once youth become disconnected, the risk to their future increases. Disconnection is what the Urban League is trying to preempt. The most talkative member of the group tells us he is 12, although he looks closer to 10. When we ask what he wants to be when he grows up, he says he would prefer to stay home with his mother and protect her from danger. Most of the others say they are interested in attending college, but none of the older ones approaching graduation feels that high school has prepared them well for college. One of the 17-year-olds wants to become a nurse. When we ask whether anyone in her family is helping her reach her career goal, she responds sharply that she has no support system at home. But she sounds determined. “I asked my teacher what can I do to improve my grades to get into college,” she said.

One of the Urban League staff compliments her and points out that she is creating a support system for herself. “The teacher you went to is going to work for you because you’ve shown you want help. Now we’d love for you to have that support system at home, but if you don’t have it there, then you can create it with other people who are around you,” the staff member said.

Another of the Urban League staff commented after the meeting, “There is a young man who is involved in one of our computer training programs. I noticed that he wasn’t eating lunch when other students in the class were, and I asked, ‘Don’t you have anything to eat?’ He didn’t have money for food and was so proud that he didn’t want to say he was hungry. I connected him to services so that he has food now. When you’re hungry, it affects your whole person and your ability to succeed. Now he’s doing better in class because he has food. When the support you need is there for you, you should not feel ashamed in asking for it.”

Children in poverty are disproportionately affected by mental health challenges, putting them at higher risk of involvement with the criminal justice system.

The post At Risk in Charlotte appeared first on Bread for the World.

Chicago is the birthplace of community organizing in the United States. Community organizing is essentially a bottom-up approach to reducing poverty and revitalizing neighborhoods. It enables residents to see that they themselves are the most powerful and sustainable instruments of change in their communities. The Southwest Organizing Project (SWOP) in Chicago is an example of community organizing at its best. In 2013, SWOP received the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Award for Creative and Effective Institutions, the nonprofit equivalent of the foundation’s “genius award” for individuals. It was given to SWOP for effective community organizing in general and for its anti-foreclosure work in the wake of the Great Recession in particular.

SWOP is an institutionally based community organization, bringing together 37 dues-paying member institutions that participate in the organization’s collective actions. Successful community organizing engages multiple stakeholders since there is no single “silver bullet” that will solve all the problems of low-income communities. SWOP members include religious organizations, schools, social service providers, and businesses. SWOP organizers bring them together to agree on and implement strategies and to engage with key actors at multiple levels.

The neighborhoods where SWOP works have higher poverty and unemployment rates than the city average. Chicago Lawn is the poorest of the five areas where SWOP member institutions are located, with a median household income of $33,000. At the height of the foreclosure crisis, Chicago Lawn had twice the foreclosure rate as the city of Chicago overall. In one 20-block area, 93 proper-ties were left vacant after the housing crash. Latinos and African Americans, who made up nearly 90 percent of the residents, were heavily targeted by subprime lenders.

As part of the anti-foreclosure work, Neighborhood Housing Services, a SWOP member institution, provided counseling and mediation services that helped hundreds of families keep their homes. Working through another partner, real estate company Brinshore Development, SWOP has purchased vacant properties that will be used to increase the supply of affordable housing. After the properties are rehabilitated, SWOP member churches reach out to parishioners interested in buying or renting in the neighborhood. Would-be homeowners or renters can also learn about affordable housing opportunities through the activities SWOP leads at schools for students and parents.

SWOP was founded in 1996 with the mission of encouraging a multiracial and multicultural response to the increasing diversity in the area and promoting social cohesion. SWOP’s current areas of focus include reducing violence, advancing the rights and civil liberties of immigrants, and improving achievement in public schools through parent, student, and school staff engagement.

Senior organizer David McDowell explained, “Jobs are the logical result of the work we’re doing in the schools. If we’re going to be successful getting people out of the gang life, the outcome of that work is their seeing that a job is a better option.” SWOP was also instrumental in passing a statewide law in 2013 that made it possible for undocumented immigrants to obtain a driver’s license. Being able to drive expanded the job opportunities available to community residents.

“We need community leaders who can educate political and policy leaders from firsthand experience”

— Chris Brown, Southwest Organizing Project

The post Community Organizing in Chicago appeared first on Bread for the World.