Throughout Nationwide College Lunch Week, we recommit to supporting the Nationwide College Lunch Program that gives tens of thousands and thousands of kids a 12 months entry to vitamin, dignity, and a fairer shot at brighter futures, and we have a good time its position supporting American farmers and meals producers, constructing a stronger America for future generations.
College meals stay an important lifeline, supplying well-balanced, free or low-cost meals to youngsters throughout the nation because the program started in 1946. Research present these are sometimes essentially the most nutritious — and generally the one — meals in a pupil’s day. They enhance pupil well being, making it simpler for college kids to be taught, and erode inequity whereas additionally advancing our battle in opposition to childhood weight problems.
My Administration is dedicated to ending starvation in the US by 2030, making wholesome college meals obtainable to much more youngsters, and supporting faculties that pioneer new methods to enhance dietary high quality, whether or not for breakfast, lunch, or summer time and afterschool meals. To that finish, this September, I convened the primary White Home Convention on Starvation, Diet, and Well being in over 50 years, bringing collectively anti-hunger, vitamin, and public well being advocates; meals corporations; well being care suppliers; native, State, and Tribal governments; and Federal businesses. We launched a nationwide technique to finish starvation and scale back diet-related ailments whereas easing disparities throughout underserved communities — beginning by increasing free college meals to 9 million extra youngsters by 2032. Offering wholesome meals is central to youngsters’s capacity to be taught and thrive, and no little one’s future needs to be decided by the zip code they have been born in or by the meals their households can afford.
This technique builds on my Administration’s work to supply emergency meals and vitamin help to these in want via our American Rescue Plan. It builds on our $60 million funding in Farm-to-College initiatives that profit American farmers, connecting them to native faculties which turn into dependable markets. We additionally made historic strides in slashing little one poverty to its lowest charge on document by increasing the Youngster Tax Credit score and thru different actions.
Mother and father throughout our nation need the identical issues for his or her youngsters: wholesome meals, clear water, good faculties, and alternatives to dream huge and entry all the probabilities America provides. This week and all the time, my Administration pledges to do every thing in its energy to finish little one starvation and to place the promise of America in each little one’s attain. We thank the farmers, farm employees, and ranchers, in addition to the educators and college vitamin professionals, who’ve gone above and past to maintain our children fed in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic and who work so laborious day-after-day to make them robust for the longer term.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., President of the US of America, by advantage of the authority vested in me by the Structure and the legal guidelines of the US, do hereby proclaim October 9 via October 15, 2022, as Nationwide College Lunch Week. I name upon all People to acknowledge and commemorate all those that function the Nationwide College Lunch Program with actions that elevate consciousness of the steadfast efforts in supporting the well being and well-being of our Nation’s youngsters.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I’ve hereunto set my hand this
seventh day of October, within the 12 months of our Lord two thousand twenty-two, and of the Independence of the US of America the 200 and forty-seventh.
JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR.