Bread for the World Institute

Description

Bread for the World is a collective Christian voice urging our nation’s decision makers to end hunger at home and abroad. Bread equips people to write personal letters and emails, meet with their members of Congress, and to work with others to end hunger. Working through churches, campuses, and other organizations, they engage people in organized advocacy.

History

In the 1970s, Rev. Art Simon, the pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church on New York City’s Lower East Side, often found himself responding to emergency situations caused by hunger and poverty in his neighborhood.

Simon, along with a dozen other church leaders in the area — Roman Catholics, Presbyterians, and Lutherans — began meeting to explore how they might address the local and global root causes of hunger. They saw a place for Christians to try to prevent hunger from happening in the first place rather than just reacting to it. In 1974, this group founded Bread for the World with the mission of ending hunger in the world by speaking out to their elected officials in Washington, D.C.