Right now Congress has the once-every-five-year opportunity to improve the quality of school, child-care and summer meals and make them available to more children.

The Seattle Times ran an oped by Linda Stone, senior food policy coordinator at the Children's Alliance, calling on Congress to listen to the call that President Obama and anti-hunger experts have made to reauthorize the Child Nutrition Act with an increase of $1 billion per year over 10 years.

KUOW reports on new findings from the Food Research and Action Center showing there are fewer summer meal programs available for low-income children while the need is rising. In Washington state there are 700 schools, parks and community centers that serve sack lunches — that's 23 fewer than last summer.

(June 29, 2010) — About 700 schools, parks, community centers, apartment complexes, trailer parks and other sites will be providing summer meals to hungry children across Washington this summer, down from 723 last summer.

Lawmakers in Olympia are considering establishing a Washington Food Policy Forum, currently sponsored by Sen. Ken Jacobson, Senate Bill 6343. Linda Stone, senior food policy coordinator of the Children's Alliance, and Jim Baird, a farmer in the Royal City area, discuss why the Forum would address food costs, access to healthy food and finding ways to support local farms. They write:

Senate and House lawmakers have rightly proposed budgets that raise substantial new revenue to protect some of the vital services that are helping children and families weather this punishing recession. But more revenue is needed to prevent devastating cuts to safety-net programs that, if enacted, would hurt families and pose serious threats to our state’s economic recovery.

A recent report by the Food Research and Action Center found that 18.8 respondents in the North Olympic Peninsula have had trouble affording enough
food.

Linda Stone, senior food policy coordinator for Washington's Children's Alliance, said the 6th Congressional District probably was high on the list because it is largely rural.

Almost one in five households across Washington state reported they didn’t have enough money to buy the food they needed in 2009. Families with kids are hurting even more, with 23 percent saying they struggled to put food on their tables, according to a new report released by the Food Research and Action Center.

January 13, 2010 — Gov. Chris Gregoire’s revised budget rightly protects Apple Health for Kids, Maternity Support Services and some other vital programs that are helping Washington families weather this grueling recession. But many critical investments remain in jeopardy.

The Seattle Times invited the Children's Alliance and a handful of other organizations to write an oped giving state lawmakers advice for the upcoming session.

We urged them not to turn their backs on the children and families who need them most. "If we do," Executive Director Paola Maranan wrote, "we would only create problems that become costlier to solve down the road."