Week Ending June 4

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Week Ending June 4, 2004

Senate Concurrent Resolution 114 concerning the importance of distributing food in schools to hungry or malnourished children around the world.

BRIEF

The resolution holds that achieving a better world begins with keeping kids in school with a full stomach and that the effort will improve many of the World’s woes including a tendency towards terrorism, obstacles to education and the benefits of health and opportunity.

Congress has found that there are more than 300 million chronically hungry and malnourished children in the world and that more than half of those children go to school on an empty stomach.

Congress believes that many of those children would attend school if there were food for them there. Congress concludes that the distribution of food in schools encourages better school attendance, thereby improving literacy rates and fighting poverty. When school meals are offered to hungry or malnourished children, attendance rates increase significantly, particularly for girls and the education of girls is one of the most important factors in reducing child malnutrition in developing countries because girls who attend schools tend to marry later in life and have fewer children, thereby helping them escape a life of poverty.

The resolution concludes that terrorism is enhanced by the consequent drop in literacy rates and job opportunities from poor school attendance. As such, the distribution of food in schools increases attendance of children who might otherwise be susceptible to recruitment by groups that offer them food in return for their attendance at extremist schools or participation in terrorist training camps;

The Global Food for Education Initiative pilot program, established in 2001, donated surplus United States agricultural commodities to the United Nations World Food Program and other recipients for distribution to nearly 7,000,000 hungry and malnourished children in 38 countries. A recent Department of Agriculture evaluation found that the pilot program created measurable improvements in school attendance (particularly for girls), increased local employment and economic activity, produced greater involvement in local infrastructure and community improvement projects, and increased participation by parents in the schools and in the education of their children;

Congress expresses its grave concern about the continuing problem of hunger and the desperate need to feed hungry and malnourished children around the world and requests the President to work with the United Nations and its member states to expand international contributions for the distribution of food in schools around the world.

Sponsor: Senator Elisabeth H. Dole (R-NC)

Vote: Passed by unanimous consent