Community

For the 10th year in a row, Christian Community Action (CCA) will be participating in the nationwide $1-million Alan Shawn Feinstein Foundation Anti-Hunger Challenge. This means that the Feinstein Foundation (www.feinsteinfoundation.org) will make a financial donation for each food item/cash donation made to the CCA Food Pantry during March and April.

The more donations received from March 1st to April 30th, the bigger the donation from the Feinstein Foundation. These donations can include cash, checks and food items (valued at $1.00 per item or pound) or pledges.

CCA’s food pantry is one of the largest in the region, serving more than 600 people a month, 50 percent of them children. It is available to families with children, senior citizens and people with disabilities in the Hill section of New Haven, and over the years the agency has served more than 40,000 people. Starting in 2001, they have offered a “Client Choice” program. Food pantry participants are given the opportunity to “shop” for their food items rather than receiving a pre-made bag. CCA maintains membership with the Connecticut Food Bank but relies on others for donations.

First Presbyterian Church has a green wheel barrow parked in the Copeland Room to collect food items for CCA. On the last Sunday of each month, a volunteer packs up the bags and delivers them to the CCA food pantry at Davenport and Asylum Streets. If you would like to join in this effort, please contact Jane Hindenlang at jane.hindenlang@gmail.com.

March and April are traditionally periods when donations to food pantries are low, which is why the Feinstein Foundation picked these months for their campaign. Please consider making an extra effort to fill the green wheelbarrow during this time.

David Beckmann President Bread for the World

Come and hear David Beckmann, President of Bread for the World, on Sunday evening, January 15th at 7 p.m.

World Food Prize laureate David Beckmann is one of the foremost U.S. advocates for hungry and poor people. He has been president
of Bread for the World since 1991, leading large-scale and successful campaigns to strengthen U.S. political commitment to overcome hunger and poverty in the country and globally.

Beckmann is also president of Bread for the World Institute, which provides policy analysis on hunger and strategies to end it. He founded and serves as president of the Alliance to End Hunger, which engages diverse U.S. institutions—Muslim and Jewish groups, corporations, unions, and universities—in building the political will to end hunger.

Currently Beckmann is co-chair of the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network. He has served as a board member of InterAction, the Partnership to Cut Hunger and Poverty in Africa, the ONE Campaign, the National Anti-Hunger Organizations, and the U.N. Millennium Hunger Task Force.

Prior to joining Bread, Beckmann worked at the World Bank for 15 years, overseeing large development projects and driving innovations to make the bank more effective in reducing poverty.

Under his leadership, Bread for the World has garnered an impressive record of achievements. Due in part to the persistent, bipartisan advocacy of Bread members, the U.S. government has tripled funding for effective programs to help developing countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Bread has also helped double funding for U.S. nutrition programs, assisting millions of families in the United States who struggle to feed their children. Recently, Bread for the World initiated a campaign to press Congress to reform U.S. foreign aid to make it more effective in reducing hunger and poverty, and another to protect and strengthen tax credits for low-income working families.

Since 2000, Beckmann has been asked to testify in Congress 18 times, appearing before such committees as the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Ways and Means Committee of the House of Representatives. Beckmann has appeared on Bill Moyer’s Journal, PBS’s Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, CNN Español, and C-Span, and in radio interviews with NPR’s Morning Edition, and The Diane Rehm Show. He has written many books and articles, including Transforming the Politics of Hunger and Grace at the Table: Ending Hunger in God’s World. His latest book, Exodus from Hunger: We Are Called to Change the Politics of Hunger, will be published by Westminster John Knox Press in October 2010.

Beckmann earned degrees from Yale University, Christ Seminary, and the London School of Economics. Six universities have awarded him honorary doctorates. In 2010, he was named a laureate of the World Food Prize. He is a Lutheran pastor as well as an economist. Beckmann has lived in Bangladesh and Ghana, overseen projects in Bolivia and Ecuador, and visited more than 70 countries. He speaks Spanish.

Bread for the World is a collective Christian voice urging our nation’s decision makers to end hunger at home and abroad. Bread for the World members meet with and write personal letters and emails to their members of Congress. It is one of the largest organizations in the world dedicated to building the political will to end hunger.

Come and hear David Beckmann, President of Bread for the World, on Sunday evening, January 15th at 7 p.m.

Bread for the World (of which our church is a member) is a non-partisan citizens’ movement urging our nation’s leaders to adopt policies and programs to alleviate conditions that allow hunger and poverty to persist. Started in New York City in 1974 by a small group of Protestants and Catholics, the movement, now based in Washington DC, includes a broad spectrum of some 50 church organizations and faith communities. It is one of the largest organizations in the world dedicated to building the political will to end hunger and poverty.

David Beckmann is no stranger either to New Haven or to the issues of hunger and poverty. A graduate of Yale College and the London School of Economics, he and his spouse served some 15 years in South America and Asia before he became president of Bread for the World in 1991.

Join us in the unique opportunity to learn more about the work of Bread for the World and its related partners in the Alliance to End Hunger, and also to meet David Beckmann, the recipient in 2010 of the World Food Prize.