It Is Hard to Work When You Are Hungry
More than 2 billion reasons to act now.
A few years ago, after I joined CRS but before I started working with the Fair Trade Program, I was involved in an event at Loyola College here in Baltimore focused on world hunger. In preparing comments for the event, I wrote that “Hunger is an intrinsic and instrumental evil.”
I think we all can agree that hunger is inherently awful — it denies us the nourishment we need to survive. But sometimes I think we don’t always appreciate the ways it is also an instrumental evil — it weakens us physically and mentally in ways that undermine our ability to participate in the fullness of human life. Hunger reduces our ability to think clearly, making it hard for children to concentrate in school and get the full benefits of formal education. Hunger reduces our bodies’ natural resistance to illness and makes us vulnernable to opportunistic diseases. And hunger makes it awfully hard for us to put in a full day’s work, harvesting Fair Trade coffee or cocoa, for example. Tens of millions of people around the world — most of them in the nearly 100 countries where CRS works – will go hungry today. That hunger is both a symptom of the lack of present development in those countries and a cause of future underdevelopment.
As I write this, my colleagues in our advocacy department are working to shape legislation that will fight global hunger effectively, and we are calling on you to help. The U.S. House and Senate are currently working to decide how much to appropriate to the two most important U.S. government programs designed to fight hunger around the world: the Title II program, which provides food for humanitarian emergencies and long-term development, and the McGovern-Dole program, which is focused on child nutrition. Based on our conversations with our partners and the people we serve around the world, we estimate that the U.S. must appropriate $2 billion for Title II food aid and $140 million for the McGovern-Dole child nutrition and education program to meet current needs. But the legislation under consideration provides only $1.2 billion for Title II programs and only $100 million for child nutrition — nearly $1 billion short of what is needed.
Help craft legislation that reflects the best of the American and Catholic traditions and provides generously for our brothers and sisters in need around the world. Send an email to members of the House and Senate Appropriations committees now, and urge them to:
- Earmark $2 billion for the Title II program, including at least 50% for long-term development, and
- Appropriate $140 million for the McGovern-Dole child nutrition program.
Act now.
Tell Congress we need to spend more than $2 billion to combat the hunger that threatens the lives of the more than 2 billion people around the world who live on less than $2 a day.
Learn more about U.S. food aid.
Join the CRS Legislative Network to receive email updates on urgent issues like this one.
