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Last Thursday, House Hunger Caucus Co-Chair Jim McGovern joined us for “Focus on Food,” a meeting of the Adams Hunger Initiative, at Johnson C. Smith University in West Charlotte.
Over 200 North Carolina leaders, activists, and residents joined us to hear about how the federal government and local agencies are addressing the hunger crisis in North Carolina and across the country.
In 2015, my first full year in Congress, I founded the Adams Hunger Initiative because food insecurity is a real problem in North Carolina. Rates of hunger in our state are much higher than the national average [ [link removed] ], and 1 in 5 North Carolina children will experience hunger at some point this year.
The pandemic has made the crisis even worse.
Since we started the Hunger Initiative, we’ve made progress. Congress established a permanent EBT program to address child hunger during the summer, and we’ve passed legislation to expand SNAP benefits. Thanks to federal programs like SNAP and local partners like JCSU’s Sustainability Village, we’ve made significant strides in closing the hunger gap, but we still have a long road ahead of us.
Congressman McGovern made a good point throughout the event - hunger is a political problem with a political solution. We have the resources to end hunger, and the United States alone grows enough food to feed everyone who is hungry. We simply lack the political will to make sure everyone has a good, healthy meal.
Jim made it even clearer when he said, “America is the richest country in the history of the world. I think it is an outrage that any single person could go hungry here.”
Amen to that.
Solving the hunger crisis won’t just happen at the federal level. One of the main reasons we started the Adams Hunger Initiative was to bring together stakeholders across North Carolina to address hunger and food insecurity in our community. Many of them participated in Thursday’s event.
Special thanks to Barbara Bleiweis, chair of the Mecklenburg Soil and Water Conservation District Board of Supervisors for emceeing the event, and to panelists and speakers including Fred Gilbert with Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools; Dr. Davida L. Haywood with JCSU; Kenya Joseph with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Food Policy Council; Ebone’ Lockett with Harvesting Humanity, LLC; Cherie Jzar with Deep Roots CPS Farm; Tina Postel with Loaves and Fishes/Friendship Trays; Tim Beard, North Carolina's State Conservationist; and Nancy Carter with the Mecklenburg Soil and Water Conservation District Board of Supervisors.
You can watch the entire event on Facebook [ [link removed] ], or below:
Thanks for reading, and for being engaged in our Democracy.
Sincerely,
Alma
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Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) awarded a grant to the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction under a 5-year cooperative agreement, “School-Based Interventions to Promote Equity and Improve Health, Academic Achievement, and Well-Being of Students CDC-RFA-DP-23-0002, [ https:/www.cdc.gov/healthyschools/about.htm ]” [ [link removed] ] to protect and improve the health and well-being of school-age children and adolescents in underserved and disproportionately affected communities. The organization will receive $390,000 this year to implement the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) model. [ [link removed] ]
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services awarded the Public Health Authority of Cabarrus County with a grant in the amount of $1,083,103 for Teenage Pregnancy Prevention Program.
Your story is America’s story.
On July 4, 2026, our nation will commemorate the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. The journey toward this historic milestone is an opportunity to pause and reflect on our nation’s past, honor the contributions of all Americans, and look ahead toward the future we want to create for the next generation and beyond.
For nearly 250 years, Americans from all walks of life and every corner of the country have had a hand in shaping our nation’s history. America’s Invitation is your opportunity to get involved in the countdown to 2026.
The U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission wants to hear from you—your reflections on our past, present, and future. We will use these stories to tell the American story on social media, through videos and to create the most inclusive commemoration in our history.
No story is too small. Share yours!
Click here to see how you can submit your story. [ [link removed] ]
Congress has been out of session due to the July 4 holiday, so there are no major votes this week or last. However, next week Congress returns to Washington to debate the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
The NDAA is the largest spending bill Congress considers on an annual basis. Last year (Fiscal Year 2023), the price tag for taxpayers was approximately $857,900,000,000 - almost a trillion dollars. This year’s NDAA will include a pay raise for the approximately 1.4 million members of the U.S. Armed Forces so that their pay keeps up with inflation, as well as aid to Ukraine as they oppose the Putin regime’s war of aggression.
As a stakeholder representative, your voice is important to me. Because the NDAA is the biggest spending bill Congress will consider this year, I want to hear from you. You can send my office a note via our website [ [link removed] ], or call us at 704.344.9950.
That’s where I’ll lay my hat for this week. Thanks for reading!
Sincerely,
Alma
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