Press Conference
Hunger Awareness Day
Remarks by FRAC President Jim Weill
June 5, 2003

Thank you Bob Forney and America's Second Harvest for the opportunity to speak here today.

I'm Jim Weill from the Food Research and Action Center. We are delighted to participate in this Hunger Awareness Day event.

Several speakers have addressed the fact that 33 million Americans – 13 million of them children – live in households suffering from hunger or living on the very edge of hunger.

That is the official number from 2001; the number undoubtedly is higher today.

I want to focus on a solution to this problem – particularly the way that Congress can address the hunger problem in a positive and effective way in the next 4 months.

The nation's federal child nutrition programs – school lunch and school breakfast; summer food in public and private agencies; afterschool food; WIC; child care food in Head Start programs, child care centers and family child care homes – have to be reauthorized by Congress by October 1st .

The Child Nutrition Forum – co-chaired by FRAC and the American School Food Service Association – is releasing today a National Call to Congress to Reinvest in Our Children by improving the child nutrition programs.

This call is signed by 82 national organizations – anti-hunger, children's advocacy, child care, education, labor, commodity, religious and other organizations, including America's Second Harvest. It also is signed by more than 2,300 groups from every state (for example, 78 groups in Iowa; 39 in North Carolina; 294 in New York).

The nation's child nutrition programs are strong and effective investments in children. They feed hungry children, and they do a lot more. They save lives, improve health and early child development, and raise student achievement. They also raise the quality of child care for pre-schoolers. They strengthen schools and public and private community service providers, including faith-based providers. And they have great public support and broad bipartisan support.

But they fall well short of their full potential. Summer food programs only reach two children for every 10 low-income children the regular school year lunch program reaches. School breakfast only reaches four for every 10 children in school lunch.

This Call is a roadmap to fix these problems and use the full potential of these federal investments. It calls on Congress to strengthen the out-of-school time federal food programs that help attract children to local summer and afterschool programs which keep them safe and engaged. By broadening the number of geographic areas that can be served by summer and afterschool programs, for example, and by letting afterschool programs feed children supper when they operate into the evening because so many low-income parents are working longer hours or non-traditional shifts, these federal investments can be strengthened.

Adjusting the programs to today's economy, demographics and realistic family lifestyles would be a victory for everyone – children and parents; communities; federal, state, and city governments; urban, rural and suburban areas; Republicans and Democrats.

This Call also explains why school breakfast programs need to be expanded so more children can receive the nutrition they need to succeed in school. Study after study has shown the strong links between school breakfast and achievement. We should offer kids breakfast the way we offer them teachers and books and paper: these are all basic tools for the job that we give children – learning.

The Call also urges that the school meals fee structure be adjusted; that the food program for preschoolers, especially in family child care, be expanded; and that all the programs, including WIC, be improved to address obesity and health concerns.

On Hunger Awareness Day, with the needs of our children so central to this event, no greater good could come out of it than making every member of Congress aware of the modest in cost, but profound in impact, changes that strengthening the child nutrition programs would bring.

So we are delighted to be here today with America's Second Harvest to release this Call from these many organizations – organizations from every state – and to give to Congress this challenge that forward-thinking legislators should rush to embrace.