SEC. ED SCHAFER: Speaker Hein, thank you for the warm welcome here today. It's a great day in America, and I'm really honored to be with you here. I am proud to be a part of this program and congratulate you all for being with us.

You know, I see that they're having lunch. I can hear the silverware clanking and the glasses being raised. Please continue to do so. Get up and get seconds, visit with your neighbor, do whatever you want. As the former governor of North Dakota, I'm used to speaking to the Legislature.

[Laughter]

Thank you all. I see that we have Ambassador Mark Dybul with us here today, the U.S. Global AIDS coordinator. Thanks, Mark, for being with us.

You know, it's kind of fun to be up here at the podium today. The President is speaking shortly. It kind of feels like I'm at a concert. You know, you have to have a warm up act?

[Laughter]

I have to tell you that in my first times in the office when I appeared on the same stage with the President, I just was to stand there. I didn't say anything. I didn't have a speaking role. So I guess that I have passed that probation period now.

[Laughter]

And I'm glad to be here, with some comments for this important issue. I really am pleased to join you for our faith based and community initiatives, and how they help the United States Department of Agriculture provide food to Americans in need. This National Conference on Research Evaluation and Outcomes is clearly a partner, and we want to recognize your efforts here at USDA.

You know, last week I had the honor to tour Iowa with President Bush. The floods have devastated many people there, and it reminded me of the situation we faced in my state after the Red River flood of 1997. And by the way it's North Dakota, 50 percent right is great!

[Laughter]

It reminded me when we were in the flood waters about the devastation in North Dakota 1997. That was the largest forced evacuation in the thousand year flood event, the biggest flood event in the history of the United States of America before Katrina.

I was governor at the time, and I remember the frustrations of being there and knowing that there's only so much you can do. You know, the state provided some money to help with recovery efforts. The federal government weighed in with dollars and resources. And the money certainly is important. It pays for the new sheetrock, the new carpeting, pays for people to stay in the location where they've been flooded out and their homes have been destroyed.

But so much of the really critical work is done by Faith Based and Community organizations. They are the ones that send the people, the hands that come in and lug out the waterlogged carpets, muck out the mud that's left after the waters recede, and who lovingly clean off the photos and the keepsakes of the families and help bring that family back together. They provide the human touch that helps people get back on their feet.

And that's why we in government need you as partners. Working together, we can address people's needs in their entirety so that we're not only looking at one aspect of the problem, but all. At USDA our Faith Based and Community Initiatives have clearly helped us address the many challenges that we face today. Fighting hunger in America is one of our core missions. Roughly two-thirds, or $62 billion out of our $95 billion budget, is set aside for nutrition assistance programs.

We believe that no one in this country should go hungry. Since 2001 our funding for nutrition assistance in the United States has nearly doubled. We have 15 nutrition assistance programs that provide children and low income Americans access to food, to healthy diets and to nutrition education. All told our programs serve one in nearly five Americans.

Our Women, Infants and Children's program should benefit well over 8 million participants this year, and our School Lunch program provides meals for more than 32 million of our youngsters. And our Food Stamp program reaches 27 million people each month. Another part of our Food Stamp program importantly these days is our disaster assistance Food Stamp program where we can go into disaster areas and provide opportunities to buy food even to those that have previously not qualified for the Food Stamp program.

Our partnership with Faith Based and Community Organizations are critical to the success of nutrition programs. For instance, many Americans who are eligible for Food Stamp assistance don't take advantage of the program, often because they aren't aware of the Food Stamps, where you get them or how you use them. The last three years USDA has awarded nearly $4 million to 43 Faith Based and Community Organizations to help reach out to these people. Outreach efforts with partnerships with your organizations helped us boost participation in the Food Stamp program by 11 percent between 2000 and 2005.

And that's a success that must be celebrated. But still as always there is much work to be done, both here at home and abroad. Along with our domestic nutrition programs, USDA has a wide array of programs to provide food aid to people in need it overseas. The United States is the world's largest provider of food aid. We consistently provide more than half of the food aid distributed in the world today, helping feed about 68 million people. The generosity of our country is astounding, and I'm proud to represent our country when we see the impact of how the food aid is given across the world today.

Our Food for Progress Programs donates commodities to people in developing countries that support democracy, and our Food for Education Program helps support education and nutrition for nearly 1.5 million of the world's poorest children. Both programs are distributed with the help of faith based and non profit organizations.

With the world's population growing by around 50 million people every year, this assistance is only going to grow more critical for all of this. What I find most inspiring is how much people really want to help each other. In fact, I find it pretty awesome. The biggest barriers that are keeping Americans from helping their neighbors in need isn't a lack of desire that's there, but it's a lack of know-how.

That's why I'm pleased to announce today that USDA is launching a new program called the Fight Hunger Initiative in order to help all Americans join USDA in the battle against hunger.

[Applause]

Right before I left North Dakota to come to Washington, D.C., quite a change, mind you – but right before I left there was a group of high school students who visited the food bank; and for some reason they were profoundly impacted by that visit. They saw people getting food that needed it; they saw the effort that it took to collect the food, to get it, to assemble it, to distribute it. They decided they wanted to get involved, and they went back and talked to their classmates. They traveled around and knocked on doors in the community; they went to their church congregations and encouraged them to participate. They put a program together called Fill the Dome. They had access to a big covered sports dome, and they started a program called Fill the Dome with Food. And they did a terrific job.

When I came out – you know, we need to learn how to do that from those students, how to get involved in the community and leverage the assets that we have to feed hungry people.

So we've created this program based on the work that those students did, and our Fight Hunger Initiative is now being launched today. We created an on-line tool kit that contains a step by step guide to start projects in your communities, anything from food drives to planting community gardens. We're also encouraging people to share their ideas on how to make a difference. You can nominate someone in your community doing the good work for the Fight Hunger Initiative Award. It used to be called the Secretary's Award when we started it, but I think the lawyers got involved, so it's now the Fight Hunger Initiative.

[Laughter]

But we really hope that this tool serves as an inspiration and a guide for communities of people to get involved in the nutrition and nutrition needs of the people in their neighborhood and in our communities across the nation. It was created in the same spirit as the faith based and the community initiatives.

You know, I'm a mechanic by nature. I grew up building automobile engines, and I like building things and getting moving parts together to create this kind of functional whole. When I look at the food problem, the hunger problem that way, I look at it kind of as a mechanical problem. There are jobs that need big tools, that need big things. The government is good at doing that, providing the resources and the dollars that will have an impact on the larger picture.

But that's not only the work that needs to be done. To really fine-tune things you need those smaller tools as well, the precision tools that get right to heart of the work. We need to get local and personal, and that's where Faith Based and Community Organizations can help so much. You provide that diligent work, the fine tuning and detailed knowledge.

All together we can make things run out there. I'm proud to work with Faith Based and Community Organizations, and I hope that we can continue to expand and improve our partnerships in the future. Thank you very much for your time today. I wish you Godspeed.

[Applause]