More than a year into a public health crisis that snowballed into a social and economic disaster, Baker was still among the 28 percent of households struggling to cover household expenses in July. She was still among the 11.5 million renters behind on her payments. She was still among the 1 in 7 parents struggling to feed their families. All this despite a raft of government interventions, the latest of which is an expanded child tax credit approved by Congress in March.

It should be an energizing break from school. Kids should hang out, go to the pool, see movies. They should get to just be kids. But where I’m from in Phoenix, that’s just not always the case, because they’re hungry. And I see it almost every day.

Senator Sherrod Brown, a Lutheran, Democrat, and US senator from Ohio, and Peter Edelman, faculty director of the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality, share an opinion about the child tax credit.

A report issued jointly by five U.N. agencies said hunger outpaced population growth in 2020, with nearly 10% of all people estimated to be undernourished. It said the sharpest rise in hunger came in Africa, where 21% of the people — 282 million — are estimated to be undernourished.

“This is one of the largest expansions of an anti-poverty program we’ve probably ever seen,” said Elyssa Schmier, vice president of government relations and national budget at the advocacy organization MomsRising. “It will likely cut poverty in half over the next year, childhood poverty in particular.”

Calling this a “tax credit expansion” makes it seem less momentous than it is. It’s really a one-year test of an idea known as a child allowance, a policy that has been adopted in most rich countries besides the United States.

Cindy McCain, who has long used her voice for humanitarian causes worldwide, is President Joe Biden’s pick as the U.S. representative to the United Nations Rome-based Agencies for Food and Agriculture, where she would help combat global hunger.

As one of the Grand Canyon Synod’s Global Engagement initiatives, this new ministry “table” brings together lay people across the synod who are interested in hunger issues within their communities.

Learn about the root causes of hunger and what you can do to take action and help stop world hunger today

This resource presents a faith-based effort to identify what sustains poverty and to organize people to work together to overcome its root causes. The result is collaborative relationships that change systems contributing to poverty. Within this process, new leadership will emerge, relationships will be enriched, and congregations will experience renewed love for people by undergoing transformation.

President Biden’s Covid-19 relief package is poised to bring a historic reduction in poverty rates, with nonmetro counties among the biggest beneficiaries.

As Christians, we are called to seek justice, care for those experiencing hunger and poverty, and embrace our Creator’s vision of hope, love, and peace. We are called to embody it in public as we commit to live in solidarity with those who are made vulnerable by the inequities that drive hunger and poverty in the United States and around the world.

Food banks are a lifeline for Arizonans in need. That has never been more clear than during the COVID-19 pandemic, when our food banks have seen 2–3 times as many people in their lines.

During Covid-19, food banks have been swamped, serving people who don't get SNAP benefits and millions more whose SNAP benefits don't provide enough food.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) issued an important new tool at the end of January to help states implement Pandemic EBT (P-EBT), which provides federally funded grocery benefits to replace the meals that children are missing when they’re not attending school or child care.

The Senate version of the Fruit and Vegetable Incentive Program Bill (SB1176) is scheduled for a hearing in the Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday, February 2, 2021.

From Bread for the World comes this exceptional Special Report on COVID, hunger, and the racial disparities that have further deepened from it. It is well written, graphically interesting and worth reading.

Stories of deep, pervasive hunger have been among the more disturbing undercurrents of the past year. Food lines stretch for miles. About 29 million U.S. adults — nearly 14 percent of the adult population — said last month that their household sometimes or often didn’t have enough to eat in the previous seven days, according to the Census Bureau’s most recent Household Pulse Survey. The shares are even higher among Blacks, Latinos and households with children.