Hunger Action Day 2023 was certainly one to remember! Along with other food banks, community organizations, and other advocates in the Anti-Hunger & Nutrition Coalition, members of Food Lifeline staff went down to Olympia to advocate for several anti-hunger and anti-poverty measures.
This year, we focused our advocacy efforts on these priorities: providing school meals at no cost for all students in Washington, Hunger Free Campuses to ensure that college and community college students meet their basic needs for food and other essential needs, investing more funding in the Fruit & Vegetable Incentives Program to increase affordability of nutritious food, and increasing support for We Feed Washington and our emergency food system.
This day at the capitol served as an opportunity for hunger advocates from across the state to come together and meet with legislators to talk about support for policy and budget investments on the Anti-Hunger & Nutrition Coalition agenda. The coalition and our friends at Northwest Harvest did such an amazing job at organizing the days activities, prepping all attendees for meetings with legislators, and serving as great hosts! Hunger Action Day is a big effort, and the day ran so smoothly!
Several of our Food Lifeline staff were in attendance, and our very own Marketing and Communications Strategist, David Jefferson, live-tweeted some of the days activities over on our Twitter account. Check us out on Twitter @FoodLifeline to see how his day went. Members of our Food Lifeline staff had meetings with several legislators including Senator Nguyen, Senator Dhingra, Senator Nobles, Representative Alvarado, Representative Fitzgibbon, and Representative Fosse, among others. Overall, it was a great opportunity to encourage the support of our elected officials to join our movement to end hunger not just in all of Western Washington but throughout our entire state.
The policies that we support prioritizes recommendations informed by people experiencing food insecurity and hunger, where hunger intersects with the major determinants of well-being such as health, race, gender, legal status, food systems, and related government revenue or budget.
For more information on our advocacy agenda, visit here: https://bit.ly/FLL_advocacy_agenda
