About Bread for the World 40th Anniversary Commemorative Book | Page 14

to increase its funding. Every year, the fund helps
immunize more than 100 million children in the
developing world, and since its inception, the number of children dying daily from malnutrition and
preventable diseases has fallen by 50 percent.
As Bread has grown, the political climate has
changed, and as our members’ knowledge has
deepened, our campaigns have become more
complex.

Bread for the World staff in 2000.

In 1999, Bread led the legislative coalition of the
Jubilee Campaign. As part of this worldwide movement, we convinced Congress to forgive the debts
of some of the world’s poorest countries. Debt relief
helped many countries expand basic education and
health services. Today, this relief has reduced the
debts of 36 of the world’s poorest countries by 90
percent.

In 2003 and 2004, Bread successfully urged
Congress to establish and appropriate funds for the Millennium Challenge Corporation
(MCC), a new way of administering U.S. foreign aid. The MCC, which is focused on good
governance, accountability, and poverty reduction, is crucial in helping achieve the Millennium Development Goals. Since then, MCC has disbursed over $8.5 billion in aid.
Bread and many religious bodies joined forces with environmental and tax groups to
campaign for reform of the farm bill in 2007. The farm bill is the major source of funding
for national nutrition programs. We won the largest funding increase ever for such programs. But more importantly, we have shaken up traditional farm bill politics and made
the House and Senate farm bills better than they would have otherwise been.
In 2008, we began to take on one of our most challenging campaigns yet: making foreign assistance more effective in reducing hunger and poverty. Our legislative vehicle was
the 1961 U.S. Foreign Assistance Act. Unfortunately, we did not succeed in overhauling the
bill, but we did convince the government to elevate development as a priority. By late 2010,
President Barack Obama had outlined his Global Development Policy, which promised
better coordination between its development and diplomacy programs. The State Department also initiated its first Quadrrienial Development and Diplomacy Review, which set
12 Bread for the World