433,000 More Kids Getting Off to a Better Start Each Day

“More low-income children than ever started their school day with a healthy breakfast in the 2015-16 school year” With this sentence, the Food Research and Action Committee’s annual breakfast scorecard released yesterday confirmed the historic progress that has been made over the past ten years, the period of time in which Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry campaign’s number one priority has been expanding school breakfast to all kids who need it.

433,000 more children were getting school breakfast last year than the year before, increasing the national average from 44% in 2006 to 56% in 2015-16, a clear majority of eligible kids getting the food they need to succeed.

433,000 kids, in your neighborhood and mine who are getting off to a better start each day. 433,000 kids making America stronger and more competitive thanks to government policies that enjoy bipartisan support and are both compassionate and pragmatic.

The progress described above did not come easily. Nor was it due to any one organization. Just the opposite.  Every time the larger anti-hunger community encountered an obstacle to kids getting breakfast, we worked together to knock it down. Thanks for the hard work and support that enabled our team to play such a meaningful role.

Poverty and food insecurity are still way too high in America. But by virtually every measure childhood hunger is decreasing. Childhood hunger is a solvable problem and the new breakfast scorecard is evidence that public-private partnerships are solving it.