Iowa Hunger Summit - Iowans United in Fighting Hunger at Home and Abroad

The Iowa Hunger Summit seeks 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 “Hunger Luncheon,” which features simple meals and an inspirational keynote speech on hunger-related issues. The keynote address in 2008 will be delivered by Eric Schockman, president of MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger.

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.”

With Governors Robert Ray, Terry Branstad, and Tom Vilsack serving as honorary co-chairs, the Iowa Hunger Summit draws inspiration from the legacy of statewide efforts like the Iowa CARES project to raise money to counter hunger in Ethiopia and the 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.”

For more information on the Iowa Hunger Summit, please contact Frank Swoboda at 515-245-3798 or fswoboda@worldfoodprize.org.