TESTIMONY PRESENTED BY

THE HONORABLE JAMES P. McGOVERN (MA-3)

MAY 10, 2007

SUBCOMMITTEE ON SPECIALTY CROPS, RURAL DEVELOPMENT AND FOREIGN
AGRICULTURE

HOUSE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE

1300 LONGWORTH HOUSE OFFICE BUILDING

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

I want to thank Chairman Mike McIntyre, Ranking Member Marilyn Musgrave
and the members of the Subcommittee for granting me this opportunity to
testify on the important contributions of the George McGovern -- Robert
Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program
(McGovern-Dole). I am especially pleased to be joined by my
distinguished colleague from Missouri, Representative Jo Ann Emerson,
who has played such an important role in helping to establish and
promote this program.

McGovern-Dole is among the newest of U.S. food-related development
programs. It was launched in 2000 by President Bill Clinton as a pilot
program, the Global Food for Education Initiative (GFEI). The purpose of
the program is simple and straightforward: to reduce the incidence of
child hunger among school-age children and to increase their access to
education by providing at least one nutritious meal each day in schools.
The GFEI was administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)
and provided \$300 million to 48 school feeding projects in 38
countries, reaching nearly 7 million children. These projects were
carried out in 2001 -- 2002 by U.S. non-governmental organizations
(NGOs), the United Nations World Food Program (WFP), and one national
government, the Dominican Republic.

The pilot program proved so successful and received such high
evaluations that it was established as a permanent program in the Farm
Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002 and named in honor of former
senators George McGovern of South Dakota and Robert Dole of Kansas for
their tireless commitment to end child hunger here at home and around
the world. The McGovern-Dole made a number of improvements over the GFEI
pilot program -- expanding the universe of U.S. commodities available
for projects; providing financial and technical assistance for
transportation, storage, and to strengthen nutritional and educational
inputs; emphasizing the enrollment and attendance of girls and other
marginalized children; requiring family and community engagement in the
project; requiring elements of sustainability to be built into the
projects from the beginning; and strengthening USDA's monitoring and
evaluation criteria and capacity for each project. The projects must
target low-income and poverty areas with low school attendance,
especially among girls, and where there is a high incidence of child
hunger and food insecurity. The program continues to be administered by
the office of Foreign Agricultural Services in the USDA.

Over the past five years, the McGovern-Dole programs have received
stellar evaluations, both from USDA and from non-governmental studies.
On average, enrollment rose by 14 percent in schools served by
McGovern-Dole projects, with enrollment of girls increasing by 17
percent. Teachers and program administrators report a greater ability of
children to concentrate after receiving school meals, a general
improvement in academic performance, and improved test scores. The
McGovern-Dole Program has increased local communities' concern for and
participation in their children's education. In addition, both
households and schools have benefited from training on food preparation,
health -- including HIV/AIDS education and prevention -- and hygiene
provided through the program.

Rather than report a variety of statistics and results, I encourage the
members of the subcommittee who have not yet had a chance to review the
USDA evaluations of the GFEI and the McGovern-Dole Program to ask USDA
to provide you with copies. There you will see the wide variety of
commodities, projects, and best practices employed by the implementing
NGOs and WFP. Each program is tailored to meet the needs of the local
communities, region and country; each receives additional financial and
in-kind support from national governments, other country and
international donors, private sector or individual contributors, and/or
the local communities themselves. Several programs have already
"graduated" and achieved sustainability, including projects initiated in
Lebanon, Moldova, Vietnam and Kyrgyzstan.

Leaders on both sides of the aisle in Congress agree that the
McGovern-Dole Program is one of the best programs the United States has
to end poverty and hunger in the developing world. I have attached to my
testimony copies of letters and cosponsors of legislation that verify
this broad bipartisan support. Republican Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas
has stated that the McGovern-Dole Program serves U.S. national security
interests. Terrorism breeds where there is hunger and poverty, ignorance
and despair. McGovern-Dole addresses all of these by providing children
not only with food, but the hope and promise that come with education.

Over the April recess, I traveled to Ethiopia, Kenya and eastern Chad to
look at food aid and food security programs that address child hunger,
HIV/AIDS and nutrition, and meeting emergency humanitarian crises. In
Kenya, I was privileged to visit two McGovern-Dole projects, both
administered by the World Food Program.

WFP, in collaboration with the Kenyan government's goal to provide
universal education to its children, carries out a school feeding
program that reaches 1.1 million children in 3,800 schools. On average,
it costs about 9 cents a day to provide these children with a hot lunch
each school day made up of pulses, corn and vegetable oil. The
U.S.-funded McGovern-Dole Program provides about half of the funding in
the form of commodities for this nation-wide program, and directly
serves over one-third of these children. The Kenyan government, other
international donors -- like the UK and Japan, the private sector,
individual contributions from the US Friends of WFP, and contributions
from the local beneficiary communities provide the remaining funding for
the overall national program.

The first school I visited is the Mukuru Kayaba Primary School, a public
primary school situated in the Mukuru slums in Nairobi. The school
started in 1985 as a non-formal school, with only one shanty room, two
teachers and 10 pupils. It has grown to the current population of 1,300
children, including 653 girls and 647 boys, and became a public school
in 1990.

These children live under very poor conditions, in shanties, with no
regular food to eat, given that the majority of their parents are
without jobs. Girls are at great risk in the community. Sometimes they
are abducted on their way home from school, and their security is always
an issue. The school has about 70 children orphaned by HIV/AIDS who are
being taken care of by their relatives or well-wishers. I was told that
the school loses at least one parent every two weeks due to the HIV/AIDS
pandemic. But I'm pleased to inform the Committee that HIV/AIDS
education and prevention are provided at the school to all the pupils.
Finally, there are frequent fires in the slum community, which often
leaves many pupils homeless.

When school feeding was introduced, the school population increased
rapidly and allowed for the children to remain in school the whole day.
Mrs. Faith Wachira, the formidable woman who is the School Head Teacher,
wanted me to know that there has been a significant reduction in truancy
after the introduction of lunch, given that the majority of the pupils
were formerly from the streets. Despite the poor backgrounds of the
children and the community at large, the parents assist in the daily
preparation of the food and provide firewood, salt, water, feeding
utensils, and other essentials. Mrs. Wachira is rightfully proud of the
progress of her pupils and her staff.

I had the privilege to serve the children their lunch, and to join them
during lunchtime. It's a simple meal of corn and soy meal, maize and
yellow split peas, and vegetable oil -- cooked into a thick porridge.
One of the children I sat next to, I'm sad to say, was hoarding some of
his food, whether for himself to eat after school or for another family
member at home, I don't know.

The second school I visited is Kajiado Girls Primary School, run by the
African Inland Church. Located over two hours outside Nairobi in Maasai
country, the school originally began as a rescue center for Maasai girls
who were being forced into early marriage. Over the years, enrollment
has increased exponentially from the initial 20 girls to the current
total of 637 girls. The McGovern-Dole program began in 2001 and is
administered by WFP.

In the Maasai community, there exists a belief that girls don't deserve
an education and should remain at home doing chores. There is also a
tradition of arranged marriages between girls as young as age 12 and
much older men. At the Kajiado School, many of the girls actually board
at the school out of fear that if they return home, they will be forced
into marriage. During holidays and when school is not in session, over
100 of the girls remain at the school because they cannot safely return
to their homes and villages.

My guide at the school was Head Teacher Mr. Nicolas Muniu, who has been
with the school for the past 27 years. He told me that the McGovern-Dole
program has contributed significantly to a reduction in the school's
drop-out rate. The retention rate and daily attendance are both very
high. Given that the school is also a boarding school to many of its
students, the food provided contributes significantly to the daily
provision of both lunch and dinner. McGovern-Dole has also freed up
funds in the school's budget that were used to hire professional cooks,
improve the kitchen facilities, purchase local produce, and reduce or
eliminate the modest school fees for the neediest pupils.

I was particularly moved by a girl named Grace, who refused her father's
demand that she marry an older man when she was only 13.

In response, her father bought a sword with which to kill her, and
actually demanded she bring him the weapon to end her life. She fled --
and she is now at the school doing exceptionally well. She is the
prefect of her class -- or "head girl," and is the leading student in
mathematics. She is safe, healthy, well-fed, and with an education, will
have a bright future. When I talked with this modest, composed young
woman, I genuinely felt like I was seeing the potential of Kenya's
future.

The lunch I helped serve to Grace and several hundred other girls that
afternoon consisted of a split yellow pea soup and a heaping serving of
bulgur wheat. All provided through the bounty of our own farmers. I
tried some myself, and I must admit it was both filling and very tasty.

When I returned to Washington, I saw a report produced by the Center for
Global Development entitled, "Inexcusable Absence: Why 60 million girls
still aren't in school and what to do about it." One of the success
stories it reviewed is the universal education program in Kenya. And one
of the statistics cited said that "In Kenya, school feeding programs
raised attendance in program schools 30 percent relative to schools
without a free lunch; and test scores were also higher." From my brief
visits, I can certainly affirm the likelihood of these results.

Regrettably, since 2002, funding for the program has never come close to
its initial \$300 million budget. The last farm bill reauthorization
provided \$100 million for FY 2003, which was to serve as a funding
"bridge" for a smooth transition from the GFEI pilot program to the
McGovern-Dole Program. In FY 2004 it received only \$50 million; \$91
million in FY 2005, an increase due largely to strong bipartisan efforts
in the House and Senate to increase the funds; and it has been funded at
\$99 million in FY 2006 and FY 2007. The president's FY 2008 budget
proposal once again requests only \$100 million for the program.

Erratic funding levels are a serious concern. Even as the program's
budget increased from 2004, annual funding is still only a third of what
it was in the pilot phase. McGovern-Dole presently reaches less than
half the number of children as in the first year, and is operating in
less than half the original countries.

I have seen first-hand how devastating these cuts have been for some of
the poorest and most vulnerable children in Colombia and Ethiopia. Each
country received substantial GFEI projects in 2001 and 2002, but those
programs were eliminated when funding was cut to \$50 million in 2004
and have never returned. Luckily, in Colombia, USAID stepped in and
picked up the former GFEI school feeding programs that were addressing
the needs of internally displaced communities. I travel fairly
frequently to Colombia, and I still hear requests from the WFP, NGOs and
local communities for a return of McGovern-Dole funding and projects.
One mother thanked me and the United States for the meals and schooling
provided to her children. She told me that the school meals program not
only allowed her to send her children to school, but kept her son from
being recruited as a child soldier by the paramilitaries and the FARC
guerrillas.

Over the April recess, I traveled to Ethiopia to review food aid and
food security programs. Ethiopia also benefited from the GFEI pilot
program, receiving \$5.3 million over 3 years and reaching over 300,000
children. Ethiopia is one of the educationally least developed countries
in sub-Saharan Africa. Household food insecurity is a national problem,
with an estimated 90 percent of rural household affected either by
chronic or transitory food shortages. In food insecure areas of
Ethiopia, school children walk an average of three to four kilometers --
or one hour -- to reach school on an empty stomach each morning,
primarily due to food shortages at home. These nutritional and hunger
problems reduce the learning capacity of school children, weaken their
commitment to school, and hinder their active participation in
educational activities. In April, the WFP coordinator for Ethiopia told
me that he keeps submitting proposals to USDA for McGovern-Dole
programs, but they are not accepted. The reason is simple: the
McGovern-Dole Program lacks adequate funding.

Congresswoman Emerson and I have introduced legislation, H.R. 1616,
which we believe provides a blueprint for the Committee on how to
restore funding for the McGovern-Dole Program back to its original \$300
million level over a 5-year period. Currently, the bill has 111
bipartisan cosponsors. I encourage you to review its provisions as you
move to take up the farm bill reauthorization in the coming weeks.

Restoring such funding would allow for the McGovern-Dole Program to
award multi-year grants of 3-to-5 years in duration, which would greatly
increase local confidence in the program and strengthen the ability of
projects to build in self-sustaining elements. Such funding levels would
also allow for existing programs to expand their reach and for new
projects to be funded. And finally, it would allow for funding to be
awarded to projects focused on pre-K and early childhood education,
projects that are authorized under the McGovern-Dole but which the lack
of funds has prevented from moving forward.

I would simply like to conclude by saying that I have traveled to some
of the poorest areas of the world, city slums and remote rural areas.
Not once did anyone ever ask me for a bomb or a missile or a military
base. Instead, mothers and fathers literally beg for help simply to keep
their children alive, fed and in school.

When we provide young children with the health care and nutrition they
need, we invest in the future potential of every child. When we put a
meal in the belly and a book in the hand of a student, new dreams,
aspirations and opportunities are born. When we help a community sustain
its own school feeding program, then they have often worked out ways to
increase overall food production. And when educating girls becomes
valued by a community, then they inevitably marry later, have fewer,
healthier children, and generate greater income for their own families.

The 9/11 Commission Report recommended significantly greater investment
on the part of the United States in economic, social and development
programs as a critical part of winning the war against terrorism. Our
nation has not taken that recommendation to heart. I believe the
McGovern-Dole represents America's very best values, and I urge the
Committee to continue its support of this program and to authorize
increased funding during consideration of the farm bill reauthorization.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.