About Bread for the World Comprehensive Timeline: 1974 - 2014

WRITING HUNGER into history 40 Years of Faithful Advocacy 1974 - 2014 1974 has an impact on the price and availability of grain worldwide. Late in 1978, Bread helps to enact a second grain reserve to respond to emergencies quickly and adequately in times of international famine, such as the 1985 famine in East Africa. Bread for the World is founded by Rev. Arthur Simon at Trinity Lutheran Church on the Lower East Side of New York City. Bread begins organizing nationally with 300 members; that number grows to 7,000 members before the year ends. 1978 1975 In one of our first actions on domestic hunger, Bread joins a campaign to eliminate the purchase requirement in food stamps, opening the program to many people who were too poor to buy stamps up front in order to receive bonus stamps. Bread also won expansions in two key nutrition programs—the School Breakfast Program and the Special Supplemental Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC). Bread has been an ardent supporter of the WIC program since it was established in 1974. It now reaches 9 million mothers, infants, and children who would otherwise lack adequate nutrition. The program has significantly reduced hunger and its health complications. WIC for pregnant women has reduced the proportion of low birth weight babies by 25 percent. Every dollar spent on WIC saves taxpayers between $2 and $3 in Medicaid costs in the first two months after childbirth. Bread holds its first Offering of Letters on the Right to Food resolution, which declares that everybody throughout the world has the right to food and to a nutritionally adequate diet. The resolution passes both the House of Representatives and the Senate, becoming the most sweeping statement on hunger that Congress has ever made. It also becomes the foundation for Bread’s efforts over the next four decades and shows that concerned citizens and faith communities can have an impact on hunger through the political process. 1976 The Bread for the World Educational Fund is created as the research and education arm of the organization. In 1988, the fund was renamed Bread for the World Institute. The Institute provides policy analysis on hunger and strategies to end it. 1979 1977 Bread campaigns for the creation of a national nutrition monitoring system. Because of the ultimate success of that campaign, we now have official U.S. data on the extent of hunger and food insecurity in the United States. Congress creates a farmer-owned grain reserve to stabilize price fluctuations and the supply of grain. Because the United States is the world’s largest grain exporter, the price and supply of grain in our country 1 425 3rd Street SW, Suite 1200, Washington, 20024 202.639.9400 425 3rd Street SW, Suite 1200, Washington, DCDC 20024202.639.9400 Toll Free 800.822.7323 Fax 202.639.9401 www.bread.org Fax 202.639.9401 www.bread.org