By
Christine Woody

Date: March 4, 2024To: Lauren Arthur, Chair, and Members of the Senate Progress and Development CommitteeFrom: Christine Woody, Food Security Policy Manager, Empower MissouriRe: Our support for SB 973 Founded in 1901, Empower Missouri advocates for the well-being of Missourians through civic leadership, education, and research. As part of our work, we organize a statewide coalition...
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Date: March 4, 2024 To: Rep. Doug Richey, Chariman, and Members, Special Committee on Government AccountabilityFrom: Christine Woody, Food Security Policy Manager, Empower MissouriRe: Our opposition to HB 1560 Founded in 1901, Empower Missouri advocates for the well-being of Missourians through civic leadership, education, and research. As part of our work, we organize a statewide...
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Date: February 20th, 2024To: Chairman Thompson and The House Special Committee on Public PolicyFrom: Christine Woody, Food Security Policy Manager, Empower MissouriRe: Support for HB 1730 As the largest and oldest anti-poverty non-profit in our state, Empower Missouri is committed to improving the quality of life for all Missouri residents through advocacy. As part of...
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For kids in Missouri who receive a free or reduced price school meal, the summer can be one of the hungriest times of the year. During the summer months, these children do not have access to this free, healthy, and well-balanced meal each and every day. Instead, the families that rely on those meals, that...
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At Empower Missouri, our goal is to empower Missourians to end poverty and make our state a better and more equitable place to be. We strive to include people from communities across the state in everything we do; their voices are at the heart of our work. For the food security coalition specifically, that means...
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As advocates in Missouri much of our time is spent working the halls of Jefferson City, especially from January-May. Many of us use summer as a time to relax and take a breath. This summer, though, has not been a time of relaxation. Our work has merely shifted from Jefferson City to Washington DC.  This...
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Are we really debating whether it is worth spending money to feed our children? Missouri’s kids deserve three meals a day without demanding they prove they are poor enough to get fed. For most of the pandemic, the Federal Government covered the cost of school lunches for every child in a public school in America....
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Getting a raise or landing a better paying job sounds like great news, especially if your income is low enough that you need additional support to meet your family’s basic needs. But that pay increase comes with a big catch for families who use programs with income thresholds – programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition...
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Food Insecurity in the U.S. and Here at Home in Missouri More than 34 million people experience food insecurity in the United States. That includes 9 million children and more than 5 million adults aged 60 and older.   That is 10.2% of Americans in total.  Imagine a room of people randomly selected from any...
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The pandemic and its impact on our economy hit all of us hard, and illuminated the struggles low-wage workers face in ways that we had not seen for a long time. Workers with low incomes were less able to stay home, less likely to have sick leave to care for themselves and their families, and...
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