Bread May-June 2014 | Page 3

ADVOCACY IN ACTION ‘Glocal’ Thinking “We [as a nation] have done very little to end hunger,” declared Bill Clark, executive director of Philabundance, a food bank serving the Philadelphia area. “The problem next week is the same problem we were facing last week. We really haven’t done anything, and we haven’t been engaged in any way to actually end hunger. But I believe we can do that, and some of these large movements that we’ve seen historically give me faith that we can.” Clark was one of three local anti-hunger leaders and activists who addressed 62 hunger advocates in Southeastern Pennsylvania March 29 at Villanova University. The advocates gathered for a day of information, inspiration, and being equipped for activism at a workshop organized by Bread for the World. Clark spoke to participants, who included dozens of students from area colleges and seminaries, about his work assisting the nearly 1 million people in the Delaware Valley who face hunger every day. He provided a national context for his work in the area by explaining that the federal government and social movements have each played key roles in ending other societal ills such as slavery and child labor. He and the other two speakers, who presented in the short, information-intensive style of the popular TED Talks, were at the workshop as examples of local practitioners, people who are fighting hunger in local communities day-byday. Clark spoke about the success of Philabundance’s new nonprofit grocery store, Fare and Square, in Chester, Pa., a former food desert. A fourth speaker at the workshop, Bread’s director of government relations, Eric Mitchell, provided a national perspective on ending hunger in his talk, titled “Why Do Elections Matter?” “I like to call elections marching orders,” said Mitchell. Stephen Padre/Bread for the World Philadelphia-area Activists Learn about Fighting Hunger at Home and Abroad Bill Clark of Philabundance, a Philadelphia-area food bank, makes the case to participants of a workshop that the government has long had the ability to address hunger as a social crisis. “It’s constituents telling their member of Congress, ‘When you go to D.C., you better vote on this issue and that issue.’” He explained to advocates that all elections, even midterm elections, like the ones approaching in 2014, can and do have long-lasting effects because of who gets elected to Congress and how they vote. Following these speakers, which provided different aspects of fighting hunger, advocates received training on carrying out a letter-writing event in their church or on their campus as part of Bread’s Offering of Letters campaign. Bread offers workshops similar to the one at Villanova for Bread’s biggest church- and campus-based legislative campaign every year to provide background on the campaign’s topic and to hone the advocacy skills of advocates. Bread’s 2014 Offering of Letters focuses on reforming the U.S. government’s programs that provide food aid overseas, which provided yet another perspective, an international one, to the workshop’s participants. In small-group discussions, which occurred between speakers throughout the day, advocates wrestled with the truth that hunger is not well-known in communities where it exists. They agreed that it is crucial to emphasize realitybased, compelling stories told by those directly experiencing hunger and poverty. One participant noted, “We need to bridge the gap between people who have stories about hunger and those who have the mental space to campaign.” To see if there is a workshop scheduled near you (or to request one), contact your Bread regional organizer (www. bread.org/contact/regional.html), who can also assist you with organizing an Offering of Letters. www.bread.org 3