By Patricia Rojas
Washington D.C is still looking great on the second day of the FRAC conference and the day is looking as busy as yesterday. This morning’s plenary and breakfast had us listening to Margaret McKenna from the WalMart Foundation and Sue Brockway from Tyson Foods, two long-time partners of FRAC and Feeding America. It was interesting to hear the comments from the people at my table discussing the work that Wal-Mart has been doing with their organization in Arizona. You can see how it’s easy to make an argument that WalMart is a good partner to have in the fight for hunger to some extent -- the Walmart Foundation donated more than $7.8 Million to support Summer Feeding Programs and U.S. Food Banks.
The speaker of the morning was Kevin Concannan, Under Secretary for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services, USDA, whose speech reminded us why we were there; to make sure that Childhood Hunger ends in 2015. Part of that morning breakfast was also the announcement of the winners of the Dick Goebel Public service award and the Raymond Wheeler Leadership Award, Second Harvest Heartland from Minnesota and Center for Civil Justice, from Michigan respectively. There is something inspiring about watching organizations win awards for the great work that they do.
After that very busy morning it was off to the workshops where I was reminded that the Farm Bill is coming up in 2012 (Didn’t this just happen!? The work never ends!) and that SNAP is, for all intents and purposes, a child nutrition program. While it’s not technically governed by the CNR Act, it is a program that affects millions of children in the United States. So, while we’re preparing for the CNR Act we must also look ahead to the Farm Bill and make sure we protect this very vital nutrition program that affect millions of our citizens each day.
To see an updated matrix of all priority Child Nutrition Reauthorization bills and recommendations for "taking action" on anti-hunger community priority bills, respectively, go to http://sites.google.com/site/cnrrelatedlegislation/ and http://www.frac.org/Legislative/action_center/index.html
