Making hunger a political priority!

It’s Super Tuesday and that means millions of people throughout the country will be heading to the polls to cast their ballots to vote in the U.S. Presidential Primaries. Meanwhile, there are thousands of hunger advocates in Washington, D.C. meeting with their federal legislators during today’s National Anti-Hunger Policy Conference Lobby Day, including our own Manager of Federal Food Programs Brittany Mangini and Public and Government Relations Coordinator Catherine Drennan. They are advocating to strengthen federal food programs such as SNAP and TEFAP, and they are also encouraging Congress to pass a Child Reauthorization bill so that important programs like WIC can remain an important safety net in our state. These activities come on the heels of GBFB’s second year of Advocacy 101 Trainings for our member agencies. In the past couple of weeks, GBFB has partnered with our agencies to host three regional trainings in Boston, on the South Shore/Cape at the Falmouth Service Center, and on the North Shore at Our Neighbor’s Table. These trainings taught attendees about the legislative process, their role in that process, and GBFB’s legislative priorities.  

During these trainings we also gave our attendees an opportunity to have a Q&A with local elected officials. We want to thank Sen. Sonia Chang Diaz, Sen. Vinny deMacedo, Rep. Jim Kelcourse, and Rep. Tim Madden for either coming or sending a member of your staff to meet with your constituents. On the state level, GBFB’s main priority right now is to advocate for an increase in the Massachusetts Emergency Food Assistance Program (MEFAP) to $20M in the FY17 budget. Many of our agencies have taken the tools from these trainings to engage in our advocacy efforts.

To learn more about these advocacy efforts, please visit our Advocacy webpage and sign-up for our advocacy alerts. In this election year, it is critical that we ensure that hunger is an issue that is part of the political conversation. Hunger is completely solvable; we just need the resources and the political will to end hunger here.