Vote to End Hunger campaign to launch today

3 MIN READ
Design by Doug Puller/Bread for the World

By Bread Staff

The country is already well into presidential election season, with a couple of debates behind us and news of the candidates dominating the airwaves. Bread views the 2016 presidential election as a critical milestone on the path toward ending hunger by 2030 as it seeks to get leaders in place who are aligned with that goal.

Bread has already gotten into the fray with a project of gathering videos from all of the presidential candidates to bring awareness of their plans on addressing hunger and poverty.

This month Bread will introduce its second initiative in the 2016 presidential race. Bread will be part of the Vote to End Hunger coalition as part of its array of activities in both the presidential and congressional elections. The coalition’s campaign of the same name will be launched Oct. 13 during the Iowa Hunger Summit in Des Moines.

“In order to end hunger by 2030, the next president is going to have to make this one of his/her top priorities,” said Eric Mitchell, Bread’s director of government relations. “That is why this upcoming election is crucial.”

The Vote to End Hunger campaign will mobilize grassroots supporters to make sure the 2016 presidential candidates focus on ending hunger, alleviating poverty, and creating opportunity in the United States and across the world.

Four people will be speaking at the launch:

  • Rev. David Beckmann, president, Bread for the World
  • Lisa Davis, senior vice president of government relations, Feeding America
  • Most Reverent Richard E. Pates, Roman Catholic Bishop of Des Moines
  • Jamy Rentschler, hunger advocate, Results

The launch will be followed by a lunch, which the governor of Iowa will attend, and a national press conference to announce the launch of the campaign to the media. Bread will be tweeting live from the launch (at 11 a.m. CT) and press conference (12:30-1:00 p.m. CT).

Bread is committed to raising poverty and hunger as election issues in the months leading up to the votes for Congress and president in November 2016. Our aim is to make sure the new president puts hunger and poverty in his/her top five domestic and top 20 international priorities. We also want the new members of Congress taking office in 2017 to work in tandem with the president on these goals. Together, they can enact legislation that sets our nation – and the world – on a course toward ending hunger by 2030.

Because Bread is a bipartisan organization, we will promote only the issues and will not endorse any candidates.

Besides the Vote to End Hunger campaign, the other elections work Bread will engage with in a coalition is the Circle of Protection’s election work. The Circle of Protection is a broad coalition of over 100 national faith leaders representing a diverse array of Christian denominations, churches, colleges, and agencies across the country. It has, to date, received videos from nine presidential candidates speaking about hunger and poverty. The members of the Circle of Protection, including Bread, are distributing the videos through their networks.

 

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