World Food Prize praises Iowa ONE Vote

Organization’s mission to end world hunger and suffering receives World Food Prize praise

June 28, 2007

(Des Moines, IA) –  Iowa ONE Vote, a bipartisan effort to bring world hunger and poverty issues to the forefront of the 2008 presidential race, will launch today at the Iowa Historical Building in Des Moines.

   The initiative, a program of the nationwide organization ONE, hopes to tap the state’s humanitarian spirit to raise federal government support of five key international initiatives:

• Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria;
• Reduce child mortality and death during childbirth due to malnutrition and other highly preventable causes;
• Provide access to primary education for all the world’s children—particularly young women;
• Improve living conditions by providing such things as clean water and basic sanitation; and
• Reduce by half the number of people in the world who suffer from hunger.

   These issues have historically been of great importance to Iowans according to Ambassador Kenneth Quinn, President of the Des Moines-based World Food Prize Foundation, an organization dedicated to improving the quality, quantity and availability of food in the world. “ONE shares the philosophy of the World Food Prize that no matter our party, ethnicity, religion or ideology, saving children and families from hunger and preventable diseases is the right thing to do,” Quinn said. “Iowans have also embraced this philosophy and our moral obligation to help.”

Iowa’s humanitarian legacy is perhaps most evident in the work of World Food Prize Founder and Iowa native Dr. Norman Borlaug, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his advances in agriculture that have saved as many as 1 billion people from starvation. Iowa was also home to former President Herbert Hoover , who arranged life-saving food aid to Europe during World War I, and former Vice-President Henry Wallace, whose agricultural innovations fed millions more. Additionally, Iowa led the nation in supporting thousands of Thai and Cambodian refugees after the Khmer Rouge genocide in 1979, providing aid and welcoming thousands of refugees into communities across the state through the Iowa SHARES program.   

Learn more about ONE Vote here: http://www.onevote08.org.