This post was written by Caitlin Hodes, a member of ONE’s Field team. She was one of the lucky ONE staffers to visit the White House last week.

On Friday, a group of ONE staff  members and a herd of summer interns delivered your voices to the White House. Together we met with Yohannes Abraham, chief of staff for the Office of Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs, to represent the 59,664 US ONE members who signed our G8 petition asking world leaders to prioritize fighting malnutrition and increasing government transparency at the summit this week. This follows our G8 petition delivery of 342,219 EU signatures to UK Prime Minister David Cameron, and more than 8,900 French signatures to French President François Hollande last week.

Taking smart action on food and nutrition will allow Africa to lift itself out of poverty and make important strides in preventing 3.1 million children from dying each year from malnutrition. The G8 leaders can also have the opportunity to spark a transparency revolution,  enabling Africans to use their resources effectively and preventing the illegal and corrupt appropriation of $20 to 40 billion every year.

ONE’s Senior Director for US Campaigns Laurie Moskowitz delivers the G8 petition signatures to White House Chief of Staff for the Office of Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs Yohannes Abraham.

World leaders have arrived in Lough Erne, Northern Ireland for the 39^th G8 Summit and will discuss the most pressing global issues in these next two days. Thanks to the support from ONE members like you who are pushing G8 leaders to act this week, we will be one big step closer to getting world leaders on board to virtually end extreme poverty by 2030.

We at ONE have been preparing for this moment for months now, and we’re glad to send your voices in. We’ve been taking action and building momentum to get the ball rolling, so that the G8 leaders can get the job done as efficiently as possible.

The summit may have started, but that doesn’t mean that this moment is over. Add your voice in the fight against extreme poverty by visiting one.org/protestsongs.

Last week, the House Foreign Affairs Committee held an important hearing on H.R. 1983, the Food Aid Reform Act, which was introduced last month. If passed, the reforms outlined in the bill would not only improve the speed and efficiency of delivering US food aid in humanitarian crises but also save tax dollars on food and transportation costs. (Read more why we’re trying to get it passed in this blog post, “Fight for the 4 million“).

The hearing made it clear that food aid reform is desperately needed and there is political will to get it done, even in the face of opposition from members of Congress and organizations that prefer to maintain the status quo. However, it also proved that we’re not finished yet.

We need to fight global malnutrition, particularly during food crises. Between 2010 and 2011, 44 million people were pushed into poverty due to food price increases. By 2050, seven out of 10 people will live in a country that doesn’t produce enough food for its population. We can no longer ignore that food security is a problem and that it’s worsening.

If we want to see these common-sense, bipartisan reforms become a reality, the Food Aid Reform Act needs more support. Thus far, much of the push for passing the bill is thanks to outreach from thousands of passionate activists from dozens of NGOs—including over 14,000 ONE members who have called, emailed and tweeted—all clamoring for these reforms.

Within the next week few weeks, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce, R-Calif., will propose the reforms as an amendment to the Farm Bill, the all-encompassing legislation related to US agricultural policy.  Let your voice be heard in support of food aid reform and ask your Representatives to co-sponsor the bill and support the food aid reform amendment as well as the Food Aid Reform Act.

Want to learn more about food aid reform and how you can get involved? Read up on the fight for global nutrition here.

For the past two-and-a-half years or so I have been working with my father, his partner Will and a team of passionate social entrepreneurs for Two Degrees Food, which is dedicated to the eradication of childhood hunger. Our company sells gluten-free and vegan snack bars in flavors like apple pecan, chocolate peanut and cherry almond [Editor's note: They're really yummy!] — but with a special catch. For every product we sell, we donate a meal to a hungry child through one of our nonprofit partners in Haiti, India, Kenya, Malawi, the United States and others.

In fact, we are the first buy-one-give-one food company, putting two degrees of separation between the consumer and the child who benefits from the purchase (hence the name “Two Degrees”). Many of the meals we give these children include Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (a nutrient-dense peanut butter paste that is 95 percent successful in curing malnutrition in young children) and other life-saving, nutrient-rich foods.

Up until last month, I would repeat this mission without grasping what that really meant. Intellectually, I understood the scope of the problem. There are an estimated 200 million hungry and malnourished children around the world,  including here in the US. But I hadn’t met any of these malnourished children for myself, or witnessed the impact of Two Degrees on the ground.

But all that recently changed.

Last month I visited Haiti with IMA World Health, one of our fantastic nonprofit partners that provides medicines and supplies, fights disease, develops health and information systems and distributes meals to people in need all over the world.

I learned and and saw a lot in my short trip, but three lessons stuck with me most:

1) Haitians are fiercely industrious. Unlike many US cities, where panhandling and homelessness are fairly common, I never saw this in Haiti. Everyone was busy! Port Au Prince felt like a bustling ant colony of people working hard to both make money and improve their city.

2) There is no “quick fix” for helping Haiti rebuild. Unfortunately the problems that exist in Haiti are not merely surface level. Deep-rooted cultural and political issues prevent socioeconomic growth in Haiti. Thousands of relief and aid organizations poured into Haiti after the 2010 earthquake with workers, money, food, medicine, building materials and the like. However, these are ultimately bandaids and often short term fixes. Real change needs to come from within– Haitians need to lead their growth and development from within if long-term change is going to occur.

3) Empathy. Not sympathy, but empathy. Understanding and feeling the plight of another. Too often we “feel bad” for others, when we should be striving to feel with others. During my trip I rarely ate. Not simply because I was trying to macho, but because we were in places where there were no gas stations or restaurants within a few hours of us. Because the thought of chomping away at a meal in the face of such poverty made me feel sick. Empathy is sitting with another person and trying to feel their experience with them — physically and emotionally.

I listened to the stories of countless mothers who talked about both their struggles to simply feed their children and also of their hope for a better future. Those stories are now deeply ingrained in my psyche and will continue to drive my own work with Two Degrees Food, which provides meals to these families and is working to eliminate hunger in their countries, toward a more equitable world for years to come.

The concept of poverty is a complicated and sometimes uncomfortable one to tangibly wrap your mind around, as is the statistic that 2.4 billion people live on less than $2 US a day, which helps us define what poverty means around the world. However, these are people, not mere data points, who live in extreme global poverty. They are mothers, fathers and children with ambitions and dreams just like you and me.

I want to help bridge the gap between our seemingly different worlds. We share a common humanity, and it can be easy and affordable to help save lives. The work of large nonprofits and corporate giving isn’t enough. There is a huge, churning vehicle of social impact opportunity that is waiting to be harnessed for social good – and that’s why Two Degrees Food (along with many other social ventures) offers products that can help make real progress in eradicating childhood hunger.

There’s nothing sadder and more humbling than holding a severely malnourished child. However, while there is a huge gap in the supply and distribution of Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food  …  we, Two Degrees Food and the ordinary people who buy our  products, are saving lives everyday. We are offering hope.

Interested in helping eliminate childhood hunger? Visit Two Degrees Food to purchase their snack bars or donate meals online.

All photos can be credited to IMA World Health Senior Communications Director Chris Glass.

A few months ago, Bono made a really huge statement during his TED Talk: Extreme poverty can be virtually eliminated by 2030. If it sounds too good to be true, consider this: it’s going to take an extraordinary amount of support from both activists and world leaders alike to make this statement a reality.

If we keep going at this current rate, we can and will achieve this ultimate goal. But ONE members, we need to make sure that the momentum is there. If world leaders slow down or cease prioritizing extreme poverty, so will our progress. And then who knows when we’ll be able to see the end of poverty? The year 2100, anyone?

By being the amazing force that keeps world leaders on their toes, we can keep up the momentum. We need to be right behind them every step of the way, pushing them when they need to be pushed, to get the job done as efficiently and quickly as possible.

Here’s a video to show you what I mean.

OK, so now that you understand that part, let’s talk about our new petition (which you can sign right now if you’re anxious to take action). 

The G8 is coming up on June 17, and our super smart policy team has written a report, Summit in Sight: The G8 and Africa from Gleaneagles to Lough Erne, to identify what crucial issues must be prioritized right now. The verdict? Food and transparency.

Why food? Because Africa needs to grow and thrive –  feeding itself, lifting millions from poverty and preventing chronic malnutrition.

Why transparency? So Africans can have the information they need to call governments out on corruption.

Here’s another huge thing our team discovered: If we don’t tackle those two issues now, the task to end extreme poverty by 2030 will be doubly difficult. The G8 Summit is a huge opportunity for activists to mobilize and put pressure on world leaders to keep up the momentum. So that’s why we’re asking you to sign this petition to G8 leaders, which reads:

Dear World Leaders,

This year, commit to fight chronic malnutrition and unleash a transparency revolution. By acting now, you can help transform millions of lives, put power into people’s hands and set a course to end extreme poverty by 2030.

The petition may sound broad, but when we deliver your signatures, it will include all the fine print, which is outlined right here in our report. For transparency, we need governments to make solid commitments on extractives transparency, tax transparency and open data. For food, we need world leaders to fund Africa-led agriculture, strengthen and expand the New Alliance, and back credible plans to tackle chronic malnutrition.

Well, what are you waiting for? Click here to sign the petition now!

Remember, YOU are the push world leaders need to get them moving on ending extreme poverty. So forget “be the change”. Be the momentum!

It is not often that I read a statistic that makes my jaw drop and head spin.  Today, I did. 

Last midnight, the eminent British medical journal The Lancet released a seminal new study on child and maternal nutrition.  In the report is a shocking discovery: we have been (dead) wrong about malnutrition all along.  Yes, we knew that malnutrition is a major problem across the developing world. Yes, we knew that it robs millions of children of their lives and productive futures.  But we what we didn’t know is just how bad it really is.

Today we learned that the scourge of malnutrition is a far greater threat to children’s lives than we ever thought.  It turns out that a shocking 3.1 million children every year die because of the underlying problem of malnutrition.  That accounts for 45% of all child deaths under 5 years of age, not a third as we previously understood.  In other words, malnutrition is responsible for 600,000 more child deaths each year than we realised.  

On top of that, for the children who manage to survive malnutrition in their early years, 165 million will grow up stunted as a result.  This means that their growth, learning ability, cognitive development, and future income and productivity is jeopardized – for the rest of their lives.  And it also means that the development and human capital of entire countries is sabotaged.

What is so shocking about this statistic is the juxtaposition to what donors are contributing now to the fight against malnutrition.  Total global aid to basic nutrition last year was only $418 million, or only 0.4% of all foreign aid.  How can this be, when malnutrition claims millions of lives and affects so many of the world’s poorest children and mothers?

Fortunately, there is good news – and just in time.  The Lancet authors found that a million child lives could be saved each year if a set of 10 proven nutrition interventions were scaled up.  This is not easy, and it costs money – $3-4 billion/year from donors alone, according to the new study.  But we have the evidence and the solutions.  What we need now is the political will for leaders to finally tackle this nutrition crisis.

In just two days, world leaders will convene in London for what is the single biggest opportunity in two decades to fight malnutrition.  At the Nutrition for Growth event, Prime Minister David Cameron and the Government of Brazil will call on these leaders, heads of states, CEOs, and heads of foundations and civil society organisations to make bold pledges to finance the fight.  The breaking news from The Lancet should add urgency to their calls and should trigger even more ambitious action.

268,000 ONE members have already shown their support by signing our Global Food Revolution campaign – and it’s not too late for you to do the same. Click here to take action now. 

World leaders need to step up.  48 hours to go. 45% of child deaths.  The moment for action is now. 

Last month, The World Affairs Council of Atlanta, along with CARE and the Center for International and Strategic Studies, presented the Atlanta Summit on Global Health and Hunger. The purpose of the daylong gathering was to promote discussion about – and brainstorm solutions for – food insecurity and poor nutrition (search Twitter #solutions2hunger for commentary). The summit provided the perfect venue for several Atlanta ONE members to interact with thought leaders in the global health community during our week of “Food Revolution” activities.

Keynoted by Georgia Senator Johnny Isakson, with featured speakers Helene Gayle, President and CEO of CARE (who also served, along with World Affairs Council President Wayne Lord, as the event’s host); Tom Frieden, Director of the CDC; and Mark Suzman, Managing Director of International Policy and Programs for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the summit also included executives from Coca-Cola, UPS and Cargill.

My fellow ONE Congressional District Leader Nancy Bauer and I had the opportunity to speak with Senator Isakson before his address, and recalled our recent conversations with him during meetings in Washington in February and March. Here’s Nancy with Senator Isakson (see photo on the right).

During his speech at the Summit on Global Health and Hunger, Isakson reiterated his stance on the relationship between hunger and poverty and political instability, stating that, “terrorism grows where people hunger and thirst.”

Isakson’s sentiments were echoed by USAID’s Tjada D’oyen McKenna, Deputy Coordinator of Feed the Future, who told the audience, “A hungry crowd is an angry crowd.” (See journalist Maria Saporta’s excellent recap of the summit in the May 21 issue of the Atlanta Business Chronicle.)

Cargill’s Michael Robach emphasized trade and cultivation of open markets in Africa as part of a business approach to fighting hunger (and discussed controversial genetically-modified crops; see Global Atlanta’s report on remarks by Robach here).

We also heard from Birdsong Peanuts president Jeff Johnson about how regional corporations in the southern US are contributing to the hunger discussion globally. And – we learned about an innovative peanut product called Mana, which is produced in Georgia and distributed by USAID as one of many second-generation “Ready to Use Therapeutic Foods” (RTUF) designed to treat children suffering from severe acute malnutrition.

Although the summit included highly respected leaders in the global health community and representatives of corporations whose business practices are occasionally called into question by anti-poverty activists, both the speakers and attendees of the event agreed that finding solutions to hunger worldwide would take far more than innovative public-private partnerships.

“Advocacy is key,” Gayle said, as she waved to CARE Action Network and ONE members in the audience. “We aren’t powerless; we can take action together to end global chronic hunger.”

Food Trucks Join the Fight

During Food Revolution week here in Atlanta, food trucks supported ONE members’ efforts to bring awareness to issues surrounding poverty and hunger.

On Sunday, May 20, Holy Innocents’ Episcopal Church celebrated Pentecost by inviting food trucks to the parish as part of the church’s outreach mission. Participating food trucks agreed to donate a percentage of sales to the church’s outreach programs, which included the Sandy Springs Community Assistance Center and ONE partner Episcopal Relief and Development, among others. Below: an organic local salad topped with wild salmon from Atlanta’s Happy Belly food truck.

On May 21, after the Atlanta Summit on Global Health and Hunger, ONE members in Marietta were invited to table at Food Truck Night at Paper Mill Village. Here’s a photo of “Soup’r Noodles” truck gals with ONE CDL Nancy Bauer at the event.

Mixing at the Top

It’s not often that business and pleasure combine in a visually dramatic way, but such was the case when ONE was invited by the BiNational Chambers of Commerce to speak to members of Atlanta’s international business community on Thursday, May 23. The International Social Mixer for professionals and nonprofit executives was held on a rooftop bar at the W Hotel Downtown, where a beautiful sunset unfolded as ONE CDLs Luna Searles, Nancy Bauer and I talked with dozens of people about joining us as advocates fighting against poverty. We also directed attendees to our food aid reform ask and demonstrated ONE’s nifty new mobile G8 petition on our cell phones.

Thank you Kristi for sharing these local events with our ONE.org readership. Want to share yours on our website? Email Charlie Harris at charris@one.org. 

This morning, USAID Administrator Raj Shah joined a Google+ Hangout – a group video chat – with ONE’s US Executive Director Tom Hart and a group of ONE members and agriculture policy experts from Feed the Future, GAIN, Thousand Days and Future Fortified.

Tom gave Administrator Shah a fat stack of 100,336 petition signatures from ONE members across the US. Their ask? End chronic malnutrition for 25 million children by 2016. Administrator Shah heard them loud and clear, with two ONE members, George Houk and Vanessa Avila, as witnesses and representatives of our US membership.

One of the highlights of the Hangout was hearing Administrator Shah talk about how global food security is in fact in America’s best interest.

“We know that this [nutrition] is an issue that touches on the economic prospects of countries that will be our trading partners in the future, it touches on our national security in places ranging from Afghanistan to Somalia, where far too many children die of core underlying malnutrition, and most importantly, we know it just touches on our moral consciouness because we cannot live in 2013 knowing that hundreds of millions of children go hungry and that that hunger prevents them from learning in school, from fighting disease, from surviving a simple bout of diarrhea or pneumonia and of building a better future for themselves,” he said.

After handing off the petition signatures, the conversation turned to our agriculture policy experts, Tjada McKenna, Deputy Coordinator for Development at Feed the Future, and Lucy Sullivan, Executive Director of 1,000 Days, and guest foodie activist, Chef Candice Kumai, a nutrition champion for Future Fortified. Adrianna Logalbo from GAIN moderated a lively discussion on the importance of agriculture, some of the successes and progress the world has made on nutrition, and how everyday citizens can get more involved.

Watch the full Google+ Hangout here:

Administrator Shah will be off to the pre-G8 Summit event, Nutrition for Growth, next week, with your petition signatures in hand. Stay tuned to ONE.org for updates on this important and critical event.

Want to do more? Tell Congress that it’s time for food aid reform. We can deliver more food to more people for less cost – but only if this bill passes. Send a letter to your representative now. 

Watch the event in the player below. The video will not go live until 12:15PM ET/ 9:15AM PT.

Click here for more info on the Google+ Hangout…see you soon!

What if I told you that right now, today, we have the opportunity to prevent 4 million people from starving?

I’m writing this and you’re reading it because we care about global poverty. Because at some point, somewhere along the way in our lives we looked around and decided that the world as it is was unacceptable. That 870 million hungry people was unacceptable. That one in four children suffering from malnutrition was unacceptable. That we had an obligation – moral, social, political – to change things so that not one more person should die, not one more child should go hungry because of preventable diseases or avoidable starvation.

So how are we going to prevent 4 million people from starving? By fighting for critical reforms to the US food aid program.

In April, President Obama put out a bold plan to take our current system into the 21^st century by easing time-consuming and costly restrictions that emergency food aid be bought here and shipped across the ocean. Instead, his proposal would allow the government to buy food closer to communities in need, getting taxpayers 25 to 50 percent more food for our money. It would deliver it to people in need some 14 weeks faster – weeks that can make the difference between life and death, particularly for pregnant women, nursing mothers and babies. We could use vouchers in conflict zones like Syria and Somalia where trucking in bags of food is impossible.

Through these changes, we can make sure that no food aid dollar is wasted and none of those 4 million people fall through the cracks of a 60-year-old system in need of reform.

We have an ally in the White House. Now we have allies in the Congress as well. Chairman Ed Royce, R-CA, of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Ranking Member Karen Bass, D-CA, of the Africa sub-committee have teamed up on the Food Aid Reform Act.

The Food Aid Reform Act goes a long way toward making the changes the president proposed. But the special interests that benefit from the status quo aren’t going to let it go easily. That’s where you and I come in. My organization, American Jewish World Service is dedicated to fighting for food aid reform alongside allies like The ONE Campaign. Congress needs to hear from you that you are too.

Take action with ONE now and tell Congress: It’s time for US food aid reform! Sign our petition here.

Earlier this week, I attended the Chicago Council’s Symposium on Agriculture and Food Security, and for the second year in a row heard from experts in the fight against hunger. It’s is one of the most important issues we need to address in the fight against extreme poverty – and with the introduction of the Food Aid Reform Act early last week in Congress, I’m ecstatic that smart changes are being proposed in order to more efficiently help the world’s poor. The legislation, co-sponsored by bi-partisan leaders – Foreign Affairs Chairman Ed Royce (R-CA) and Africa Subcommittee Ranking Member Karen Bass (D-CA) – will provide much needed flexibility and overdue reforms to the way the United States currently delivers its food aid.

The Act, encouragingly, mirrors President Obama’s proposed changes in his FY14 budget. They focus on three important provisions:

First, it allows the U.S. government the option to respond to food emergencies in a variety of ways. When appropriate, the government can choose to use traditional direct food assistance, similar to how we’ve done it the past 60 years. However, when time and money can be saved, local and regional purchase will be used to provide food for those in need.

Second, the legislation effectively eliminates the practice of “monetization,” by which the U.S. government buys agricultural and ships commodities to private voluntary organizations who then sell them to finance their development programs. The elimination of this grossly ineffective method is estimated to save more than $30 million per year.

Finally, this bill exempts food assistance from cargo preference, a practice that adds unnecessary costs to shipping commodities. Under current law, whenever the U.S. government procures commodities to be shipped overseas, at least 50% of overall tonnage needs to be shipped by U.S.-flagged vessels.  Exempting commodities from this policy will result in an estimated $50 million in savings per year. In this time of fiscal discipline, any opportunity to do more with the same amount of resources should be considered.

All of that is to say that the Food Aid Reform Act is a nimble response to the way we deliver assistance to people in need all around the world. Indeed, the development community was encouraged by these changes; notably in this timely piece in Politico by the Chicago Council’s Catherine Bertini and Dan Glickman. As they said, “By bringing more flexibility to the way we distribute food aid, our programs will save more lives, serve more hungry people and do more to advance America’s reputation and interests around the globe.”

Representatives Royce and Bass have submitted a timely and welcome proposal to address current inefficiencies in our nation’s food assistance program, and we urge Congress to enact these reforms. It’s a win-win. These smart policy reforms will not only save taxpayer money, but also ensure that when millions of lives are on line, the helping hands of the American people will reach an additional two to four million people who are in dire need of food deliveries that happen over the course of weeks, not months.