New! Our CFK video coverage of the moving, innovating Witness to Hunger program.

---

If Ashley Ortiz has said it once, she has said it a thousand times.

“I don’t understand how a school can look a child in the face and say, ‘You didn’t bring your money for lunch today, so you don’t get anything to eat or maybe we can make you a peanut butter and jelly sandwich,’” Ortiz said. “If a child doesn’t have money to start with, that doesn’t mean he should be denied the basic right to food, the basic right to a good meal.”

Ortiz was one of the three mothers speaking as part of the Witness to Hunger/Children’s Health Watch policy briefing on Capitol Hill, June 2, 2009.

As part of the Witness to Hunger program, Ortiz along with Erica Smalley, Quiana Harris and 37 other women have spent much of the past year using cameras and video to document their struggle to provide nutritious food for their children in the lower-income neighborhoods of Philadelphia. Created by Mariana Chilton, an Assistant Professor at the Drexel University School of Public Health, with funding from the Claneil Foundation, Inc., the Witness to Hunger program provides a reality check—and a human face—to legislation pending on Capitol Hill.

“These women are the experts on what it’s like to deal with the consequences of what our lawmakers decide,” Chilton said. “People cannot connect with statistics, they connect with the human element of hunger and poverty, and by coming here and speaking today, these women now put a face on what it means to be hungry. You can overlook a number, but you can’t overlook a human, a story. I hope lawmakers realize that after hearing them today.”

The bill in question is the Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act, which governs all federal child nutrition programs, including the School Breakfast and the National School Lunch Programs, the Summer Food Service Programs, the Child and Adult Care Food Program and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC). All but the School Breakfast Program and the National School Lunch Program (which are permanently authorized) will expire this September, and the Congressional reauthorization process provides an opportunity to make the programs more effective, especially in this current economic climate.

“When all you can provide your child is a box of Oddles of Noodles night after night, that free or reduced lunch is really the only nutrition that my child has during the day,” Smalley said. “Our kids need and deserve something nutritious, something that can get them through the day, and more importantly, give them something that is going to make them healthy and strong. If this plan isn’t reauthorized, I don’t know what my kids are going to do.”

From the audience, Rep. James McGovern (D-MA) gave an impromptu message to the audience, one that called for increased awareness and support for the Nutrition Reauthorization Act and policies fighting against hunger on the streets.

“These are your neighbors who are starving. These are our citizens who are dealing with no food on their table. This is unacceptable in this country,” McGovern said. “We cannot ignore this. We cannot ignore the fact that our children are hungry and need food. We cannot ignore this as legislators and policy makers for this country.”

Learn More

• For more on the June 2 briefing, visit the Children’s HealthWatch site

• Federal Food Programs (an overview from the Food Research and Action Center)

• Witness to Hunger

• The Philadelphia GROW project at Drexel University

• CFK’s Hunger and Nutrition topic page

Get Involved

• SNA alert from Update

• Invite Members of Congress to Your Child Nutrition Sites! FRAC's resources can help you organize program site visits over the July 4th and August recesses.

---

Clare Krusing is CFK’s editorial intern. A senior at Indiana University, Clare runs the university television station and is majoring in journalism. Last summer, she interned with the Children's Society in the U.K.