Jewish Reconstructionist Federation

The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 (S.3307) passed the House of Representatives Thursday December 2, 2010.
http://www.jta.org/news/article/2010/12/03/2742001/groups-praise-child-nutrition-law-with-qualms.

For Passover, the JCPA along with MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger, is once again offering a phenomenal mobilizing event through which JRF communities, congregations from every Jewish stream and local JCRCs can engage community members in meaningful anti-poverty advocacy: The Child Nutrition Seder
.

If you have any questions on the Child Nutrition Reauthorization and mobilizing your community around the legislation, or questions on implementing the Seder in your community and/or how to best partner with your local Jewish Community Relations Council, please contact Becky Eisen

The Seder will be an opportunity to:

• Educate the Jewish community and its partners about the prevalence of hunger and malnutrition in the US, its life-long impacts on children, and the solutions to address this growing problem;
• Enable the Jewish community to play a leading role in advocating for a strong Child Nutrition Reauthorization;
• Create a cadre of informed activists to supply a continuous stream of strong Jewish voices on the issue of domestic hunger;
• Strengthen relations between JCRCs, JRF communities and other Jewish organizations, as well as other local partners; and
• Mobilize towards the national goal of ending childhood hunger by 2015.

Background:

Psalm 82 calls on us to "Defend the poor and the orphan; deal justly with the poor and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy" (Psalm 82:3-4). In September of 2007, the American Jewish community responded to that call by participating in and promoting the Food Stamp Challenge in the week between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, in order to raise the profile of hunger and poverty issues in the United States. Individuals took a pledge to subsist on the budget of the average food stamp recipient: $1 per meal per day ($21 for the week).

In September, 2008 the JCPA co-chaired and promoted Fighting Poverty with Faith - a week long interfaith initiative with 21 national partner organizations and nearly 100 participating communities, designed to elevate the issue of poverty in the 2008 elections. Through participation in these large national actions, communities that had not previously been involved in hunger and poverty issues began to advocate for effective poverty relief measures. Jewish communities and their partners became involved in the debate over national legislation concerning domestic hunger and poverty in a meaningful and united way.

In 2009- a year in which legislative decisions were be made that affect the provision of social services and poverty reduction programs for the initiative focused on the Child Nutrition Bill that was re-authorized.

Logistics and Resources:

We are urging JRF Communities to hold the Child Nutrition Seders around the nation during the week before and during Passover, March and April 2011. There will be a JCPA National Seder held in the Nation's capital. The JCPA has secured the commitment of a number of Jewish denominational movements and youth groups to promote participation in these Seders to their local affiliates.

We recognize that putting together a Child Nutrition Seder is a big commitment. The JCPA has tried to anticipate the resources that you and your community will need to participate. In addition to the resources provided in this memo, we will be sending out sample op-eds and letters to the editor, legislative updates, and will arrange best practice sharing calls in the months to come in order to help facilitate your community's engagement.

The JCPA will also provide a Seder template in the coming weeks that can be adapted to the needs of the local groups with whom you are working. The template content will include Jewish texts on hunger, educational resources on the Child Nutrition Reauthorization, and action steps that can mobilize Seder participants.

The Seder will focus on educating younger participants on the general state of hunger in America and older participants on legislation that helps to combat childhood hunger. It will follow a typical Seder format (though we do not expect local partners to provide a full meal), but the emphasis will be on how it is our responsibility as Jews to let all who are hungry come and eat. The Seder will end with children and parents making calls and writing letters to legislators in support of a strong Child Nutrition Reauthorization Bill to put us on a path towards the reachable goal of ending child hunger by 2015. Specifically, the Jewish community will be joining with our other partners in the anti-hunger community to ask for $1 billion in new funding for Child Nutrition over the next 5 years. Participants will then discuss how they can remain informed and active on this issue and become a strong voice in their communities to end childhood hunger.

This program presents a unique opportunity to engage the parents of young and pre-teen children, who are often hard to reach because of scheduling conflicts and time constraints. By reaching out to parents through their children, the Child Nutrition Seder can be a particularly effective means by which to get these members of the Jewish community involved in a significant and ongoing way.

Though the Seder is a one-time event, it is meant to serve as a gateway to engage participants in more sustained anti-poverty advocacy. Part of the planning process will also be to develop structures and relationships through which future advocacy and activism can be more easily planned and more quickly implemented.

Child Nutrition Seder Resources.
On a National Level:

The JCPA, with JRF as a member organization, hosts a national Child Nutrition Seder in the nation's capitol during the same time that local JCRCs will be hosting their own Child Nutrition Seders and JRF congregations are encouraged to do so as well. The JCPA invites legislators to attend the Seder and ask for their cooperation and support in pursuing a Child Nutrition Reauthorization Act that provides adequate tools and funding to end childhood hunger by 2015. JCRCs and JRF congregations can invite local and state legislators, school principals, school board members, and other political figures to attend local Seders, urging them to weigh in with national legislators to make the same ask. This will show that the individual activism in each community is linked to a larger Jewish movement in support of Child Nutrition Reauthorization, and will allow for maximum publicity opportunities for the Child Nutrition Seder.

We are so excited to work with you to create a strong and united Jewish voice on the issue of child hunger in America. If you have any questions on implementing the Seder in your community or conducting outreach, please contact Becky Eisen at beisen@thejcpa.org.

JRF Anti-Hunger and Poverty Initiatives:

http://www.jrf.org/hunger
http://www.jrf.org/omer2008-hunger
http://jrf.org/omer/2006/intro