Global School Feeding Program Critical in Fight Against Hunger

Global School Feeding Program Critical in Fight Against Hunger
by William Lambers

Following World War II, food aid was crucial to the reconstruction of Europe. As Secretary of State George Marshall noted, "For recovery and political stability, Europe needs many things, but the most elemental, indispensable need is food."
Today, impoverished nations around the world are also in desperate need of food aid as a first step toward building stable, peaceful societies. A U.S. government program seeks to combine this critical need of food with another priority: education. This initiative is called the McGovern-Dole Global School Feeding Program.
Named after former senators George McGovern and Robert Dole, the program provides school lunches to children in impoverished countries. For many children, a school lunch is the only meal they receive the entire day. Organizations, such as Catholic Relief Services, CARE and the UN World Food Program, carry out the distribution of meals via the McGovern-Dole funding.
The school lunches not only improve a child's nutrition and learning ability, they also provide the parents with incentive to send their kids to school. Take-home rations are also included in some school lunch programs. Combining food with education promotes healthier children in these developing countries. For the United States, supporting school feeding programs serves as a powerful tool of public diplomacy improving America's image across the globe.
Catholic Relief Services, the official international relief and development agency of the U.S. Catholic community, describes its McGovern-Dole funded activities in Benin:

"Under the "McGovern-Dole Food for Education Program" (FFE) initiative, two meals were provided each day to more than 11,000 students while 6,653 girls received take-home rations as incentives for regular attendance with the support of their parents. The project has positively affected students by increasing enrollment and attendance, as well as improving attentiveness during classroom activities. The project has also had a positive impact on the communities' involvement in school development activities."

The McGovern-Dole program currently reaches about 3 million children in nations such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kenya and Guatemala. But worldwide nearly 110 million school-age children suffer from hunger.
This year the Congress will decide whether to reauthorize and expand McGovern-Dole. New legislation introduced into the House and Senate calls for steadily increasing the McGovern-Dole annual budget from its current level of 100 million dollars to 300 million dollars. The Friends of the United Nations World Food Program is currently hosting an online petition at http://www.friendsofwfp.org to show support for expanding this global school feeding program.
Congressional action on expanding McGovern-Dole will help children across the globe and promote development through education. But Congress can also pave the way toward a strong coalition of nations sponsoring school lunch programs in developing countries. U.S. leadership is clearly needed before this international coalition can realize the goal of ensuring that every child weakened by hunger receives a school lunch.


William Lambers is the author of "The Road to Peace: From the Disarming of the Great Lakes to the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty." His articles about world hunger issues have been published by the Chicago Sun-Times, the Cincinnati Enquirer, the Wichita Eagle (KS), the North Adams Transcript (MA) and the History News Network (http://www.hnn.us)


Copyright © 2007 by William Lambers