What is Advocacy?

Advocacy is asking effectively. We make “asks” to solve problems. Anyone can advocate for the issues they care about. You can advocate for your child’s school to serve more meals to children. You can advocate for a program to help food pantries meet the need. No matter the ask, advocacy happens every day. Your child may advocate to stay up late on a school night. You may advocate to have your friends help you move into a new home. But in our world, advocating means working with public agencies and stakeholders to improve access to some of the most effective anti-hunger programs in the country.

Why do we Advocate?

We cannot solve hunger alone. Feeding America Eastern Wisconsin is the largest food bank in Wisconsin, serving nearly 400 food pantries, meal programs, and shelters across 35 counties. We provide over 38 million pounds of food each year to our pantry partners, but the work does not stop at distribution!

How do we Advocate?

Feeding America Eastern Wisconsin engages and activates community partners, leaders, and organizations to help illustrate the need for strong public programs that help feed families. 

Citizen Engagement: Our Food Leaders Lab program works with resident leaders to identify a local problem with hunger and helps residents build an advocacy campaign of their own from scratch. Citizen leaders graduate Food Leaders Lab and have met with Congress, with our Governor, and local leaders to better tell the story of how to improve public nutrition programs that feed hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites. We work with our agency hunger relief partners to elevate stories of need to decision makers to ensure that programs like FoodShare, or commodity programs like The Emergency Food Assistance program can better meet the need and reach underserved communities. 

Scaling Power Through Coalitions: We co-lead the Healthy School Meals for All coalition which works with school districts, the Department of Public Instruction, and elected officials to find policy solutions to childhood hunger by improving the reach and quality of school meal programs. 

Leveraging Statewide Action Through Feeding Wisconsin: We collaborate with Feeding Wisconsin to ensure representatives at the state and federal level continue to fight for funding and resources for hunger relief in Wisconsin. 

We form innovative partnerships including:

Vital Hunger Advocacy Topics

  • Farm Bill
  • State Budget
  • Childhood Hunger
  • Senior Hunger
  • Fresh Food Access