It’s tax day. When it comes to feeding two of America’s most vulnerable populations — children and the poor — are we getting our money’s worth? Today, the House Agriculture Committee and the House Education and Workforce Committee will attempt to answer this question.
As the Chief Program Officer of Feed the Children, one of the largest US-based anti-hunger nonprofits, I believe the federal government and nonprofits can do a better job. Based on my work in 25 countries, there are several lessons I’ve learned from the global war on poverty. Absolute poverty and child deaths have decreased globally by half since 1990, and we can apply the lessons of that fight to improve domestic anti-hunger efforts.
Historically, my organization has specialized in delivering food to needy people. There is an important role for emergency food aid, especially after natural disaster, but delivering two weeks of groceries to a hungry family does not solve any systemic problem.
As a Christian, I believe in charity and having a strong safety net that is there when people need it. The majority of us will need the safety net at some point in our lives. But government and food security organizations can do a better job of lifting more people out of the safety net, and helping more people never to need it.
In today’s House Agriculture Committee hearing, Feed the Children will make three recommendations to dramatically improve how the public and private sectors work together to end hunger.
First, Congress should use existing resources to establish a Food Security and Nutrition Social Innovation Fund. This fund would promote collaboration among nonprofits, academics, community leaders, churches and other faith groups, and the government to identify and scale up program models and policies that decrease the number of people who fall into poverty and experience hunger.
This would be done with innovation grants to consortia of anti-hunger practitioners, but it would also fund a better network of anti-hunger organizations — a “community of practice” — so they work together more effectively to end hunger and replicate the best models. Ronald Reagan believed that ‘every problem in America had been solved somewhere in America,’ and this network would help make that replication happen.
This has been done already in international food security and nutrition with great success. For example, I participate in the Food Security and Nutrition Network that was created through a USAID Food for Peace grant and now has 210 member organizations collaborating to produce training manuals, create new tools (e.g., for assessment and formative research), test new program models, and improve members’ knowledge and skills in international food security and nutrition. Also, the CORE Group’s Child Health Network (partially funded by USAID) now has 70+ member and associate organizations collaborating to reduce child deaths in developing countries.
Second, every federal food security grant program should require measurement of a consistent set of indicators to accurately assess which program models are having the greatest impact, as has been done with some of the most effective international health and nutrition programs. It’s hard to improve what you don’t measure. Those in the private sector learned a long time ago the value of common metrics and good measurement.
Third, the Congress and USDA need to allow consortia of nonprofit organizations (including local community groups) to compete for a larger share of federal food security dollars. Currently, the Congress and USDA send significant funding to state governments. While there is some laudable support for innovative approaches to improving nutrition and food security (e.g., pilot projects to help more SNAP participants find jobs), there has not been enough focus on fostering innovation.
The 50th anniversary of America declaring a war on poverty has come and gone. Poverty is still winning, in part because the federal government and its partners are not collaborating efficiently or effectively. We hope and pray that the federal government will help enable more effective collaboration to send poverty into retreat.
Tom Davis is the Chief Program Officer for Feed the Children and the Director of the Center for Children and Social Engagement. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions for editorials, available at this link.
