Iowa Hunger Summit - Iowans United in Fighting Hunger at Home and Abroad
Building Awareness of Food Insecurity in One State as part of the
“Most Significant Observance of World Food Day Anywhere Around the Globe”
The Iowa Hunger Summit aims to gather leaders from across Iowa representing community organizations, business and industry, state and local government, social agencies, churches and religious communities, schools and universities, and other groups that lead or participate in projects to confront hunger.
The specific goals of the Hunger Summit are:
• To celebrate the many outstanding efforts of Iowans toward ensuring adequate food for all;
• To encourage Iowans to continue and expand these efforts; and
• To increase statewide awareness of hunger, poverty, and related issues.
Leading up to the 2008 Iowa Hunger Summit, which will take place on Tuesday, October 14, the World Food Prize is contacting organizations and individuals around Iowa to gather information on anti-hunger projects held in the past year and tabulate the total amount that Iowans have donated, collected, or contributed toward fighting hunger.
This amount is announced at the Summit, which features a simple lunch and an inspirational keynote speech on the importance of hunger-related issues.
The Iowa Hunger Summit is held annually on or around October 16, which is celebrated globally as UN World Food Day and is marked in Iowa by the World Food Prize events. In past years, the World Food Prize has attracted more than 700 participants from more than 65 countries annually, with many global leaders referring to the award as “the Nobel Prize for Food and Agriculture.”
The Hunger Summit also draws inspiration from the legacy of statewide efforts like the Iowa CARES project to raise money to counter hunger in Ethiopia and Governor Robert Ray’s Iowa SHARES campaign to feed starving Cambodians, as well as from the ecumenical visit of Pope John Paul II to Des Moines in 1979, at which time he told rural Americans, “You are the stewards of the earth, with an obligation to feed all mankind.”
In addition, several side events and exhibits focused on issues related to hunger and poverty will take place. With planned media coverage to bring the Hunger Summit’s themes and activities statewide, a large impact is anticipated across Iowa in terms of heightened awareness of hunger and increased action to counter it.
For more information on the Iowa Hunger Summit, please contact Frank Swoboda at 515-245-3798 or fswoboda@worldfoodprize.org.