The Marshall Plan still inspires peace

When President Harry Truman signed the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe on April 3, 1948 the American people were already taking action. This was just 3 years after World War II and Europe was in ruins, suffering from hunger and drought.

Citizens across America sent food to Europe via the Friendship Train which collected donations in numerous states in the autumn of 1947. A sign on the Friendship Train read "Your Chance to Contribute to World Peace." Additional Friendship Trains and ships collected more donations in the months leading up to the Marshall Plan.

As the Secretary of State George Marshall said in 1947 "food is a vital factor in our foreign policy. And the attitude of Americans toward food can make or break our efforts to achieve peace and security throughout the world."

Marshall appealed to the American people for help in getting his European Recovery Program to succeed. Americans reduced food waste and the Citizen's Food Committee, formed in 1947, supported the Friendship Train to feed Europe’s hungry.

The Friendship Train became a powerful foreign policy tool, and encouraged Congress to approve interim food aid for Europe in late 1947. As columnist Drew Pearson wrote “The American people now have come to realize that food is a most important means of American foreign policy and that they can participate in it. In fact, food can be more important than tanks and guns, more constructive than the atomic bomb.”

Today, American food aid is also vital to saving lives overseas from hunger and building peace. But with the Trump administration’s funding cuts and shutting down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), American global food aid is being diminished. This is a tragic mistake.

The need for hunger relief is massive. There is famine in Sudan while Gaza, the D.R. of the Congo, Ethiopia, Haiti, Syria, Mali, Burkina Faso, Yemen, Lebanon and many other nations are also facing extreme hunger. There is severe drought in Southern Africa causing food shortages too.

USAID Food for Peace is a major supporter of the U.N. World Food Program (WFP), which leads hunger relief in these crisis areas. Food for Peace also supports lifesaving nutrition programs for malnourished infants worldwide. With so much hunger right now because of wars and climate change, WFP and partners are struggling to keep pace. A cutback in U.S. Food for Peace and other aid programs is devastating.

Each of us can take action. You can raise donations for charities fighting hunger like WFP, Save the Children, UNICEF, CARE, Mercy Corps, Mary's Meals, Edesia, Catholic Relief Services and many others. We each can write to our elected officials asking them to increase funding for Food for Peace and other global food aid programs.

Your actions make a difference. When you hold a fundraiser for a charity fighting hunger you are making a statement that the issue is important. That message must be delivered to your elected officials so they too will realize the importance of fighting hunger.

It’s alarming to hear from charities about how the closing of USAID and budget cuts are harming their programs. Each of us can take action to save global food aid and carry on the Spirit of the Marshall Plan.

William Lambers partnered with the U.N. World Food Program on the book “Ending World Hunger.”