Bread for the World Founder Arthur Simon Reflects on His Life and Mission - washingtonpost.com
August 13, 2009
From Pulpit to Policy, Souls to Stomachs
Bread for the World Founder Reflects On Life, MissionIn Mississippi, the Rev. Arthur Simon met a 2-year-old girl whose parents could give her milk only a couple of times a month. In Florida, a family that lived on a diet of bread, syrup and beans left a lasting impression on him.
And amid the broken-down tenements of New York's Lower East Side, Simon watched members of his own congregation endure hardships most people can hardly imagine.
It was the early 1960s. Simon was a young man, but he knew something had to be done beyond dispensing food -- something that attacked hunger at the roots and attempted to prevent it. Eventually, he created Bread for the World, which has grown into the country's foremost citizens lobby on the issue. Its 61,000 members and their annual letter-writing campaign have helped to generate billions for the cause at home and abroad.
In his new book, "The Rising of Bread for the World: An Outcry of Citizens Against Hunger," Simon, 79, who lives in Bowie, reflects on his life's work.
The book, released last month, chronicles Bread's rise from a shoestring operation run out of a parish building in Manhattan to a Capitol Hill mainstay that leverages $1.2 billion annually for hunger prevention. Its philosophy, taken from an adage Simon's father often shared with him, is the same today as then: that it is better to build a fence at the top of a cliff than to have an ambulance at the bottom.
"I realized that I was driving the ambulance all the time," Simon said of his early efforts to stem hunger and poverty. "Bread for the World then emerged over a series of several years as a way of building a fence."
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Bread for the World has had one mission for its entire history: making food available for all people so that hunger will cease. Specifically it is "Have faith. End Hunger."
So, they seek to influence policy and create awareness.
In their own words:
"Enabling hungry people to feed themselves means dealing with the root causes of hunger. That requires us to help shape government policies, for U.S. policies often vitally affect the world's hungry."
It is good to read the founder's story. I remember reading one of his books years ago and it catalyzed my commitment to the cause of world hunger. For Simon, it was not a book, but pastoral encounter.
I look forward to reading the entire book.
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