About Bread for the World Comprehensive Timeline: 1974 - 2014

WRITING HUNGER
into history

40 Years of Faithful Advocacy 1974 - 2014
1974

has an impact on the price and availability of grain
worldwide. Late in 1978, Bread helps to enact a second
grain reserve to respond to emergencies quickly and
adequately in times of international famine, such as
the 1985 famine in East Africa.

Bread for the World is founded by Rev. Arthur Simon
at Trinity Lutheran Church on the Lower East Side
of New York City. Bread begins organizing nationally
with 300 members; that number grows to 7,000 members before the year ends.

1978

1975

In one of our first actions on domestic hunger, Bread
joins a campaign to eliminate the purchase requirement
in food stamps, opening the program to many people
who were too poor to buy stamps up front in order to receive bonus stamps. Bread also won expansions in two
key nutrition programs—the School Breakfast Program
and the Special Supplemental Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC). Bread has been an ardent
supporter of the WIC program since it was established
in 1974. It now reaches 9 million mothers, infants, and
children who would otherwise lack adequate nutrition.
The program has significantly reduced hunger and its
health complications. WIC for pregnant women has
reduced the proportion of low birth weight babies by
25 percent. Every dollar spent on WIC saves taxpayers
between $2 and $3 in Medicaid costs in the first two
months after childbirth.

Bread holds its first Offering of Letters on the Right
to Food resolution, which declares that everybody
throughout the world has the right to food and to a nutritionally adequate diet. The resolution passes both the
House of Representatives and the Senate, becoming the
most sweeping statement on hunger that Congress has
ever made. It also becomes the foundation for Bread’s
efforts over the next four decades and shows that concerned citizens and faith communities can have an impact on hunger through the political process.

1976

The Bread for the World Educational Fund is created
as the research and education arm of the organization.
In 1988, the fund was renamed Bread for the World
Institute. The Institute provides policy analysis on
hunger and strategies to end it.

1979

1977

Bread campaigns for the creation of a national nutrition monitoring system. Because of the ultimate success of that campaign, we now have official U.S. data
on the extent of hunger and food insecurity in the
United States.

Congress creates a farmer-owned grain reserve to
stabilize price fluctuations and the supply of grain.
Because the United States is the world’s largest grain
exporter, the price and supply of grain in our country
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