The capability exists to end child hunger at home and abroad. We just need to find the collective will to make this happen in 2020.

At home Congress should expand out-of-school feeding programs for impoverished kids. According to Feeding America, “For the 11 million kids in the U.S. facing hunger, getting the energy they need to learn and grow can be a daily challenge.” While many needy children receive free school lunch and breakfast, when class is out they become vulnerable to hunger again.

After-school feeding programs help fill in the hunger gap. If children are nourished they are less prone to illness and can perform better in school.

Jim Weill, president of the Food Research and Action Center says: “We know that poor nutrition can lead to poor academic and health outcomes for children. The federally funded Afterschool Supper Program reduces hunger and draws children into enrichment programs that keep them active and engaged.”

We need more of these after-school feeding initiatives. As Weill says, “Much more can be done to ensure low-income children who rely on school lunch also can access after-school supper.”

Weekend backpack programs and summer feeding also need expanding. As Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio says, “Children should have access to nutritious meals all year round, not just during the school year.”

American families would benefit tremendously from more child feeding programs. The whole country would benefit from eliminating child hunger and boosting the overall health of the nation. It’s a wise investment with big returns of healthier and more educated children.

Eliminating child hunger is also crucial to our foreign policy. Children in Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan and Africa and many other areas are struggling to get food because of war, drought and poverty.

As Dwight Eisenhower warned after World War II, “How can we expect children who are reduced almost to an animal-like level of existence, struggling each day for any kind of scrap that will keep them alive, how can we expect them to develop the ideas and the ideals that in the future will bring them to be apostles of peace?” Child hunger is a silent but extreme source of instability in the world.

The Congress should unite on fighting child hunger by passing the global nutrition resolution (H.Res 189, S. 260). We can do more to help children around the world through nutrition programs for infants.

Save the Children explains: “Malnutrition as a result of food insecurity is one of the biggest risks for children under 5, with severely wasted children 11 times more likely to die than those with a healthy weight. Undernourished children also catch infections more easily and have a harder time recovering because of weakened immune systems.”

Save the Children’s Claire Nicoll described how a mother in war-torn Yemen had already lost one child to hunger and another to cancer. Another child was malnourished but she could not afford transport costs to get her to a treatment center right away. The distraught mother asked, “What would you do – take one child to the hospital or feed the others?”

We need to increase funding for nutrition programs so all children in Yemen and other starving nations can receive treatment. Foods like the peanut paste Plumpynut, produced by Rhode Island based Edesia and others, can save children’s lives. The cost of child feeding programs is tiny when compared to the expenditures for armaments, especially nuclear weapons. It would not be taxing to increase the nutrition budget.

For older children, school lunches should be expanded. In Yemen, the World Food Program hopes to provide a million children with school feeding. We should support these efforts.

The U.S. McGovern-Dole global school lunch program should receive increased funding. The program has helped feed school children in Mali, Haiti, Ethiopia and other nations.

Feeding hungry children should be a top priority in 2020 both here at home and overseas. We have to keep sounding the alarm on the hunger and malnutrition crisis that threatens children.

(William Lambers is an author who partnered with the U.N. World Food Program and Catholic Relief Services on the book “Ending World Hunger.”)