wfn.org | GEORGE McGOVERN ADDRESSES CHURCH WORLD SERVICE CONFERENCE

["Carol Fouke" <carolf@ncccusa.org>]

National Council of Churches/Church World Service
Contact: NCC/CWS News, 212-870-2252
E-mail: news@ncccusa.org; Web: www.churchworldservice.org
and www.ncccusa.org
03/20/02 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

GEORGE McGOVERN ADDRESSES CHURCH WORLD SERVICE CONFERENCE

March 14, 2002, DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - George McGovern, United Nations
Ambassador to the Hungry and former Senator from South Dakota, shared his
lifelong concern for ending hunger worldwide with Church World Service
staff, meeting here March 12-17.

I hope someday we will be able to proclaim that we have banished hunger in
the United States, and that weve been able to bring nutrition and health to
the whole world, he said in his keynote address.  Expressing his high
regard for CWS work against hunger in the United States and around the
world, McGovern promoted a campaign to end hunger in the world by 2030.

McGovern is the author of the recent best-selling book, "The Third Freedom:
Ending Hunger in Our Time," in which he advances a five-point plan for
achieving this monumental goal.  Among the steps he advocates are:

7	A universal school lunch program, led by the United States within the
United Nations.
7	A supplemental nutrition program for low-income women, infants and
children worldwide, similar to WIC.
7	U.N.-established food reserves around the globe.
7	Improved farm production, food processing, and food distribution in
developing countries.
7	High-yielding, scientific agriculture, including the controversial
genetically modified crops.

Church World Service is a global humanitarian ministry of the 36 Protestant,
Orthodox and Anglican member communions of the National Council of Churches.
CWS carries out and support emergency response, development and refugee
assistance work in more than 80 countries, including the United States.

McGovern, who served by appointment as U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Food and
Agriculture Organization under the Clinton Administration, left that post
last October 1 and was subsequently appointed by the United Nations as its
international emissary to the hungry around the world.

A war hero during World War II, McGovern represented South Dakota in the
U.S. Senate for 22 years.  President John F. Kennedy appointed him as the
nation's first Food for Peace Director.

In his address here, McGovern questioned the Bush Administrations proposed
$48 billion increase in military spending and suggested we would be better
off investing half of it in nutrition, health, education and the
environment around the world.

He said that as one who flew 35 bombing missions in World War II, he does
not dispute that bombing is sometimes necessary.  (But) we arent going to
end terrorism simply by use of strategic bombers, McGovern said.

Ambassador McGovern was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the
White House on August 9, 2000.  On February 6, 2002, he and former Senator
Robert Dole were honored by the World Food Program of the United Nations,
for their lifetime commitments to the hungry.  McGovern and Dole played key
roles in the development of the school lunch program in the United States in
the 1970s and have co-authored bipartisan support for an international
version of that program.

His keynote address to Church World Service staff anticipated the
organization's plans for a five-year Campaign to End Child Malnutrition in
Africa, an effort that will be launched in 2003.

-end-