Bread's Opportunities in 2010
Although the global recession has caused hunger to rise in the United States and around the world, we can take important steps in 2010 to reverse this trend.
We have several unique opportunities to help hungry and poor people at this critical time—both domestically and internationally. Even in these difficult economic conditions, Bread for the World members stand ready to respond as faithful Christians.
Hunger in the United States
This year, we have a chance to make progress on two key components of any successful effort to end U.S. hunger: helping low-income families make ends meet and ensuring that children have access to nutritious food.
Congress will be turning its attention to tax policy because a significant group of tax cuts and tax credits enacted in previous years will expire in 2010. Legislators must decide which ones to renew or change.
Bread’s 2010 Offering of Letters calls on Congress to protect and strengthen key tax credits to help working families who struggle to put food on the table. Our Offering will help ensure that the needs of low-income families do not get lost in the critical congressional debate on taxes.
Two tax credits in particular, the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the Child Tax Credit, help bridge the gap between what a family earns through low-wage work and the cost of basic necessities. The EITC alone lifts more than 5 million Americans above the poverty line—including 2.6 million children.
For more information on the goals of the Offering of Letters and stories of families who benefit from these tax credits, see Bridging the Gap for Working Families, the background paper in this issue of Bread.
For many years, Bread members have worked faithfully to protect and strengthen federal nutrition programs that ensure low-income children and families have enough to eat. In the past year, our efforts have been bolstered as President Obama and others began actively working toward the goal of eliminating childhood hunger by 2015. Congress will reauthorize child nutrition programs this year. Bread members can make a difference by urging Congress to improve program access and participation among low-income children, particularly at breakfast and during the summer. By reaching more eligible children, these programs could do much more to reduce childhood hunger.
Hunger around the World
Children all over the developing world benefit from effective foreign
assistance.
Bread members work consistently to make more resources available for international development—and the past decade has seen consistent increases in poverty-focused development assistance. The FY2010 budget, finalized in December 2009, includes nearly $22 billion for nutrition, health care, basic education, clean water, and other programs that give hungry and poor people in the developing world the opportunities they need to build a better life for themselves and their children. This amount has nearly tripled in the 10 years since $7.5 billion was approved in FY2000.
Poverty-focused development assistance is also an area where we have new opportunities. In April 2009, the president announced a new U.S. initiative to address world hunger by strengthening agriculture and food security in poor countries. He persuaded other donor countries to commit $20 billion over the next three years to agricultural development—a critical area since most of the world’s poor people earn their living as small-scale farmers.
Bread has been involved from the beginning in shaping the administration’s initiative. For example, we brought together hunger organizations and the new Inter-Agency Taskforce on Global Food Security last summer to discuss how the hunger community can support the initiative. This year, Bread will continue to advocate for our top priorities in the global hunger initiative.
We want to ensure that improvements in nutrition, particularly among mothers and young children, are used as a measure of the initiative’s success. In addition to nutrition, the initiative must be comprehensive, addressing short-term emergency food needs and including long-term agricultural development and safety net programs.
Still another opportunity to make progress for hungry and poor people comes with the continuation of our efforts to reform U.S. foreign assistance, the goal of the 2009 Offering of Letters. Bread members have built significant bipartisan support in both the House and the Senate for legislation that begins to make foreign assistance more effective in reducing poverty. Additionally, the president has ordered a comprehensive review of the role of the United States in global development policy.
Finally, the State Department has begun a Quadrennial Development and Diplomacy Review to determine roles for both the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development. All of these efforts signal a growing consensus among our nation’s leaders that improving foreign assistance is a priority. Bread will push for continued action to make sure our development dollars stretch as far as possible to address the causes of global hunger and poverty.
Ultimately, reducing hunger is a matter of political will, and political will is built by citizen advocacy—by you. In the past few months, hunger has hit the national news ever more prominently—providing more openings for Bread members and our partners and communities to persuade Congress to act on U.S. and global hunger. Join us in taking advantage of all our opportunities to reduce hunger in God’s world.
- Urge your members of Congress to protect and strengthen key tax credits that can make a big difference for low-income workers and their families.
Points to make:
The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) alone lifts more than 5 million Americans annually above the poverty line, including 2.6 million children.
The EITC, the Child Tax Credit, and other measures are effective, but more must be done. In 2008, nearly one in four children lived in a family struggling to put food on the table.
Sen. __________
U.S. Senate
Washington, DC 20510
Rep. __________
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515
The model of Jesus' life
New Resolve for a New Year
“As I have loved you, so you also should love one another”
– John 13:34
Many words in Scripture challenge and inspire us on the topic of eliminating hunger and poverty. Jesus’ new commandment, as stated in John’s Gospel, provides the perfect standard to follow. Unlike other Gospel messages, such as “Love your neighbor as yourself,” in John, Jesus is the standard rather than us. In this passage, the setting is the eve of Jesus’ death. The Passover is not marked by the sharing of bread and wine—rather, Jesus gets down and dirty by washing his disciples’ feet. In this setting, he gives his new commandment—love.
We can be overwhelmed or inspired by following Jesus’ call to love. Advocating for justice and providing charity for those experiencing hunger and poverty has become more difficult under our current economic conditions, despite the good intentions and hard work of many. Yet our present moment is a potentially wonderful opportunity.
The start of a new year gives us an occasion to evaluate the past and set a new resolve for our future efforts to promote justice for poor and hungry people. By reflecting on Jesus’ life, we can be inspired to reach out and invite new people to walk with us.
At gatherings, we can engage others through conversation, as Jesus did at the wedding in Cana. We can continue to feed with loaves and fishes while seeing Jesus in those who come to soup kitchens and food pantries. We can be good shepherds of our time, talents, and treasure. We can respond non-judgmentally, yet with conviction, to those who might question or disagree with our passion for justice for all people in need. We might provide instruction about the connection of faith and justice.
If we feel overwhelmed by present conditions, we can take inspiration from Jesus, who continued to guide and form his disciples up until his death. Jesus was not distracted from his mission, even though he knew his disciples would betray, deny, and abandon him. May we all find new wisdom and direction in our reading, reflection, and prayer that increases our understanding of God’s love for all.
By evaluating at the start of the year our past intentions and actions regarding justice, we have the advantage of seeing transformative moments in the past. With that awareness, we can make adjustments to our present and future directions. By using Jesus as our standard, we can increase our resolve to give witness to Jesus’ words to his disciples: “This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35).
Daniel Doyle is active in Bread for the World at Church of the Resurrection in Muncy, PA, and through the county-wide ecumenical efforts of the United Churches of Lycoming County’s Social Concerns Committee.
Monthly Gifts to End Hunger
More and more Bread for the World members are using the convenience of pre-authorized monthly gifts to support our work together to end hunger. This dedicated group of members belongs to our Baker’s Dozen program and makes monthly gifts via credit card or electronic funds transfer. Their monthly gifts—which average $21 per month—provide a predictable stream of financial support and enable Bread to plan for the future. The money saved in gift processing, membership reminders, and administrative costs equals the value of a 13th gift—a baker’s dozen.
Bread for the World’s monthly giving program began in the mid-1980s. Today Baker’s Dozen has grown to include more than 4,000 members and generates more than $1 million every year for our work.
Please consider joining this cost-effective program to sustain our work. For more information, visit www.bread.org/bakersdozen.
New Resources Available!
Lenten Prayers for Hungry People
www.bread.org/lent
Ash Wednesday is early this year—February 17—so now is the time to order Bread’s “Lenten Prayers for Hungry People.” This year’s “table tent” features scripture readings, prayers, and actions that invite us to travel again with Jesus to Jerusalem.
New Briefing Papers from Bread Institute
www.bread.org/briefingpapers
“New Hope for Malnourished Mothers and Children” outlines recommendations for the administration’s new Global Hunger and Food Security Initiative. Given the human and economic costs of malnutrition, especially among young children, nutrition must be a core area of emphasis in any plan to fight hunger and build food security. Our recommendations include focusing on strategies that have proven successful, making resources available to enlarge these strategies, and using improvements in maternal and child nutrition as key indicators of the initiative’s success.
“U.S. Foreign Assistance Reform: Food Security and Poverty Reduction” has been prepared by John Mellor, former director-general of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and chief economist at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The briefing paper argues that U.S. efforts on agriculture and food security have been much less effective than they could have been and suggests refocusing attention on improving agricultural and economic growth rates and reducing poverty at the national level.
Responding to Rising Hunger
As hunger worsens, school breakfast, lunch, and after-school programs are more important than ever.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently reported that in 2008, one in seven U.S. households (14.6 percent) had trouble putting food on the table, up from 11.1 percent in 2007. The 3.5 percentage point jump is the largest one-year increase since USDA began publishing this data.
There is every reason to believe that hunger has continued to increase through 2009. As of September 2009, more than 37 million people—about one in eight Americans—were receiving SNAP benefits. This is the tenth straight month of record highs, and participation continues to rise.
Children are faring worst. USDA reported that 22.5 percent of children live in families that are struggling to get enough to eat. “What should really shock us is that almost one in four children in our country lives on the brink of hunger,” said Bread for the World President David Beckmann. Childhood hunger is not just a phenomenon of the current recession. Since the beginning of the recession, 4 million additional children are living in families struggling to put food on the table—but well over 12 million children lived in such families before the recession began.
“Unless we take the necessary steps, kids will continue to suffer after the economy recovers. We need to make significant progress when Congress renews child nutrition programs this year,” Beckmann said. He cited a recent study that estimated that nearly half of all children—and 90 percent of African-American children—will participate in SNAP at some point before the age of 20.
Around the world as in the United States, poor people have been hit hardest by the recession. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization reported during World Food Day, October 16, 2009, that more than 1 billion people were experiencing chronic hunger. Hunger is causing lifelong, irreversible damage to the infants and toddlers included in that figure.
In an interview aired on the Kojo Nnamdi Show, Beckmann said that although there has been an alarming setback, the world is still making progress against hunger and can regain its momentum.
“We used to have a billion hungry people out of a world population of 4 billion. Now we have a billion hungry people in a world of 7 billion,” he told listeners of the nationally syndicated radio program.
“We know how to make progress against hunger. One key thing is to put more of our foreign aid dollars into agriculture. That’s an area that has been increasingly neglected since the 1980s. We can no longer be complacent about cheap food prices—rather, we must invest in producing more and better food,” he said.
Annual Hunger Reports Support Our Advocacy
Advocates around the country use Bread for the World Institute’s annual Hunger Report to learn more about the root causes of hunger and see real-life examples of how we can get involved in shaping solutions.
Each year, the Hunger Report explores a theme—whether it’s the role of agriculture in ending hunger, re-thinking the path to global development, or supporting low-wage workers in the United States. The reports offer information, visuals, and stories to help explain the ins and outs of the issues, even those that may seem unfamiliar or complicated.
For example, Sister Elizabeth Schaad and other members of the Bread group in Cincinnati, OH, held a series of meetings to study chapters of Agriculture in the Global Economy: Hunger 2003. Why international trade policies and U.S. commodity payments play important roles in world hunger and its solutions became much clearer as group members took turns presenting the material for discussion.
“We find that the issues apply to more than one year,” said Schaad. “The earlier report really helped when we started working on the farm bill in 2007. We use the information as background for our Offerings of Letters, and I especially like the sidebars that give a one- or two-page look at various subjects. They give the ideas a human face.”
Other Bread activists concur. Recently George Aman used excerpts from Global Development: Charting a New Course—Hunger 2009 to help prepare a world hunger workshop for a mission weekend at Wayne Presbyterian Church in Wayne, PA. “The book showed careful research and was well written,” Aman said.
Schaunel Steinnagel organized devotions at the Presbytery of Philadelphia with the help of Healthy Food, Farms, and Family: Hunger 2007. Barbara Mercer also uses the Hunger Report to prepare presentations for churches and denominational gatherings. A recent one was a workshop at the Northwest Ohio ELCA Synod Assembly. “I pick and choose facts, figures, and examples. Examples are especially important in trying to bring the big picture ‘home,’” she said.
Professors and teachers appreciate the up-to-date information and examples in the Hunger Report. Michelle Tooley, Eli Lilly professor of religion at Berea College in Kentucky, has used the resource for her senior seminar in Christianity and contemporary culture, called “Hunger in a Global Economy,” as well as for a course focused on the U.N. Millennium Development Goals and on farm policy.
Global Development: Charting a New Course—Hunger 2009 was a required text for “Global Poverty and the Struggle for Justice” at Villanova University in Pennsylvania. Suzanne Toton, associate professor of theology and religious studies, said that her students’ response to the report was “overwhelmingly positive.”
Those who would like to connect Scripture with a closer look at hunger issues have a new resource—a six-session Christian study guide developed for A Just and Sustainable Recovery: Hunger 2010. The theme of the study guide is “right relationships.” Particularly as Lent approaches, groups have an opportunity to combine Scripture-based reflections on God’s intentions for the world with a discussion of current realities based on A Just and Sustainable Recovery and their own experiences.
“The best part of the new Hunger Report Bible study is that it is truly helping my small group think about hunger issues in a way that we have never thought about them before,” said Melissa Yao, who has begun using the resource at Heritage Community Church in Severn, MD.
Visit www.bread.org/hungerreport to order or download A Just and Sustainable Recovery: Hunger 2010, use interactive graphs, access the study guide, see “The Report in Pictures,” and more. You can also order or download previous Hunger Reports at www.bread.org/institute.
Energy Plus Compassion
Activist Couples Are Powerful Teams
Ending hunger and poverty has been a lifelong commitment for Bread for the World member Clarke Chapman. “If some cannot feed themselves and their families,” he says, “no one can deny it’s an urgent need. Helping hungry people has a powerful appeal.”
Clarke grew up in Los Angeles during World War II. It was a time of exclusion for Japanese and Mexican immigrants and others. “I grew up hearing my father, a Methodist minister, preach. His sermons were steeped in social concern for those who struggled,” Clarke remembers.
Clarke’s wife, Ardis, was also raised in a Methodist church, in Michigan, with an atmosphere of community service. “When I hear about a person or a group that cuts down hierarchies and levels the playing field, my antenna still goes up,” she says today.
That confluence of beliefs led Clarke and Ardis to join Bread for the World as two of our earliest members. They were attracted to Bread’s powerful blend of Christian motivation and public response. In 2004, the Chapmans decided to include Bread in their will. After their three children are taken care of, a percentage of their estate will go to Bread and two charities whose missions reflect the couple’s values.
In 2005, the Chapmans joined our Baker’s Dozen monthly giving program. “There is so much to do to fix the world,” Ardis says. “We have found Bread’s approach to be most effective.”
For many years now, Clarke has conducted an Offering of Letters each spring at the couple’s home church, Wesley United Methodist Church in Bethlehem, PA.
Bread regional organizer Larry Hollar reports, “Clarke has been a trusted partner for decades. He’s one I can turn to when I need a special call made to Capitol Hill or some letters to go to Congress. Clarke travels each year to Allentown, PA, to attend the Offering of Letters workshop, where he asks great questions and shares helpful insights born of his years leading the activity at his church.”
Ardis is very active in advocacy efforts both inside and outside Wesley United Methodist. She sees this work as an act of faith, taking a leadership role in initiatives such as “Vote Out Poverty,” “Shower of Stoles,” and other efforts focused on inclusiveness. She also supports Clarke’s direct service to Bread.
“In my experience,” Hollar says, “the strongest activist couples are those who do it together, prayerfully. They work as a team. One may be the stronger activist for Bread—but in these cases, we’re always grateful for the sacrifice the more ‘silent’ partner is making. There are many other things they could be doing together, but one member of the couple is supportively releasing the other to serve.”
People of faith using their energy and compassion to bring about change for hungry people: that’s the heart of Bread for the World, and that’s what Ardis and Clarke Chapman demonstrate so effectively.
