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Every five years, Congress passes legislation called Child Nutrition Reauthorization that feeds millions of children in the US. CNR monitors and improves all federal child nutrition programs, such as summer meals, WIC (Women, Infants, and Children Supplemental Nutrition Program), CACFP (Child and Adult Care Food Program), and school breakfast and lunch. Locally, thousands of children benefit from these programs every day. Almost 200,000 children in Wisconsin live in poverty and half of all babies born in Wisconsin receive WIC benefits. About 600,000 children eat lunch at school and 120,000 children eat breakfast at school on a typical school day. Each summer in Milwaukee over a million meals are served to hungry kids through the Fueling Young Minds program. Year-round access to healthy meals is vital for a child’s growth and learning.

The Child Nutrition debate is happening now! Now is the time for you to weigh in and tell Congress that Child Nutrition Reauthorization needs to get done this summer!

On June 10, Representative George Miller, Chairman of the House Committee on Education and Labor, released the Improving Nutrition for America’s Children Act of 2010. This proposed legislation makes significant improvements over the Senate Agriculture Committee’s Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, including:

• significant investments in the school lunch and breakfast programs, such as competitive grants that assist schools with establishing or expanding breakfast programs; allowing children who receive Medicaid benefits to be directly certified for free school meals; and a six-cent per meal increase in the federal lunch reimbursement.
• new incentives for states to improve their direct certification performance.
• help for WIC projects to expand their breastfeeding outreach, allowing state agencies the option of certifying children for up to one year and enhancing nutrition education services. Investing in the WIC Program is a win for both program beneficiaries and the Wisconsin taxpayer – in fact, past studies have shown that every dollar invested on pregnant women in WIC produces anywhere from $2-$4 in Medicaid savings for newborns and their mothers.
• creation of a competitive grant program to challenge states to develop and implement innovative demonstration projects to end childhood hunger. This proposal would help states develop public-private partnerships that reduce childhood hunger by 2015. 

As deliberations on CNR continue, Hunger Task Force also encourages Congress to expand access to summer meals by reducing area eligibility from 50% to 40%. Lowering the area eligibility threshold from 50% to 40% would allow more communities to offer “open sites” and more children to be fed nutritious meals and snacks during the summertime.

A strong child nutrition policy can help reach President Obama’s goal of ending childhood hunger by 2015. It’s easy to tell Congress you support a strong Child Nutrition Reauthorization bill—just follow these steps:

1) Click on blue Take Action box
2) Read more information
3) Scroll down to "Take Action" section of the page
4) Keep the sample letter language or add a personal message
5) Enter your contact information
6) Click Send Message
7) Ask family, friends, and co-workers to send a message too!