United States of America
Requests for classroom materials on world hunger to be used on World Food Day began with the first observance in 1981. Due to the nationwide response, a pilot manual of lessons collected from 20 countries was prepared for distribution to teachers. Growing interest led to the participation of the U.S. World Food Day National Committee in the development of the Feeding Minds Fighting Hunger global initiative. The FMFH founding partners and collaborators launched the English version of the initiative on the Internet on World Food Day 2000, with a symbolic introduction of the lessons at a school in downtown Washington DC.
Since then, requests for the materials for classroom use have been received from teachers and school systems in every state. The materials have also been used in a number of ways by college professors in their World Food Day observances, including giving special academic credit for developing a college level version of the Feeding Minds lessons. A number of World Food Day sponsors have included FMFH as a resource in their hunger materials.
Examples of the broad variety of response and activities include:
- The U.S. Department of Agriculture "Ag in the Classroom program" publicizes the materials to all schools nationwide.
- The General Federation of Women's Clubs, as a special President's Project, has adopted FMFH for hundreds of GFWC clubs in communities across the country.
- The American School Food Service Association has incorporated the lessons into their Going Global Project Activity Guide.
- The Presbyterian Church Hunger Program has distributed the materials to their nationwide Hunger Action Enabler Network.
- The International Agriculture Department of Pennsylvania State University has used the FMFH materials in their training program for nearly 500 classroom teachers.
- The teacher's magazine "Creative Classroom" carried an article on the FMFH initiative, resulting in hundreds of requests for the materials.
- The Education World website providing resources for schools has featured FMFH on their home page.
- The Newspaper Association of America distributed information on FMFH and over 700 newspapers featured these materials as part of their school/community outreach program.
- The Seattle, Washington FAO TeleFood Committee distributed copies of the FMFH materials to every school in the Seattle area in 2001.
- FMFH is being incorporated into the curriculum of the social studies programme for grades 5 to 9 in North Carolina Schools.
