19-Cents-A-Day Campaign on School Feeding

Floor Speech

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the order of the House of January 20, 2004, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern) is recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.

Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I have come to the well of this floor many times to speak in support of the George McGovern-Robert Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program.

McGovern-Dole provides hungry children around the world at least one nutritious meal a day in a school setting. The Bush administration's own Department of Agriculture has evaluated this program and found it to be very effective at reducing child hunger, increasing academic attendance and performance, especially among girls, and strengthening community commitment to education.

The McGovern-Dole program is carried out in the field by a wide range of partners, principally through U.S. private voluntary organizations and the United Nations World Food Programme, which has a special unit specializing in school feeding programs.

Currently, the World Food Programme, or WFP, carries out McGovern-Dole-supported school feeding programs in Bhutan, Bolivia, Cambodia, Cameroon, the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Mozambique, Nepal, Pakistan, Tanzania and Uganda. But this is just part of WFP's worldwide effort in the area of school feeding, which reaches literally every corner of the world.

Mr. Speaker, over 840 million people do not have enough food to eat on a daily basis. Three hundred million of these are children, who go to sleep every night without enough food to eat. Today, and every day, 24,000 people will die because of hunger and its ugly effects. This is more than HIV and AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined, although hunger and disease are closely intertwined.

In short, between 8 and 10 million people die needlessly every year because of hunger and malnutrition.

Last year, the World Health Organization listed the top 10 health risks around the world. The number one risk is not cancer or HIV/AIDS or heart disease. It is not war or armed conflict or accidents. The number one health risk in the world is simply the lack of food.

In an effort to reach out to students and communities throughout the United States, the World Food Programme has launched a campaign to raise money and awareness about the hunger and educational needs of children in Third World countries.

This campaign will help shine a light on what life is like for the more than 300 million children who daily endure, suffer and die from hunger. Nearly half of these children, mainly girls, do not go to school. The campaign will give students in communities a simple yet concrete way to make a difference in these children's futures.

The campaign is called the 19-Cents-a-Day Campaign depicted in this poster here. Why 19 cents? Because 19 cents is the average daily cost to feed a child in a school setting.

Think about this for a moment, Mr. Speaker. Nineteen cents a day, a dime, a nickel and four pennies, that is half the cost of a first-class stamp. For about the cost of one Big Mac, a soda and an order of fries each month, we can feed a child for an entire school year.

Mr. Speaker, we know that one of the best steps anyone can take to reduce or escape poverty is to get an education. Offering a meal at school is a proven method of convincing poor families to send their children to school, including their daughters.

Last month, Judith Lewis, the Washington Director of WFP, traveled to her home State of Mississippi to officially launch the 19-Cents-a-Day Campaign. Mississippi is a place that knows something about hunger. Last year, over 392,000 Mississippi children received free or reduced school lunches. I am happy to report the response from the high school students in Brandon, Mississippi, was overwhelmingly positive, raising hundreds of dollars for WFP school feeding programs.

The 19-Cents-a-Day Campaign is a great way to talk about child hunger, both around the world and in our own congressional districts. It is a great way to raise awareness and funds and engage our own students and communities in the fight against hunger abroad and here at home.

In the weeks to come, the campaign will be launched in high schools in Illinois, North Carolina, and California. I hope to launch a similar campaign in Massachusetts, my home State. I encourage my colleagues to contact the World Food Program to find out more about the 19 Cents a Day Campaign and how more students and communities can become involved.

Mr. Speaker, I firmly believe we can end hunger among children, both here in the United States and around the world. It only takes the time, commitment, and political will to do so.

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