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Cathedral Dean Samuel T. Lloyd III hosts a “truly international agent for change,” Ambassador Tony Hall, in a discussion about world hunger.

Years ago, Hall was a state official in Ohio (and not a person of faith) when he attended a prayer breakfast, admittedly to meet constituents. At that meeting, Charles Colson, who founded a prison ministry in the aftermath of his Watergate conviction, delivered a message that inspired Hall to consider Christianity more seriously. After Hall was elected to the U.S. Congress, he began to attend weekly prayer sessions organized by and for Congress members. Hall became a Christian. His friend, Rep. Frank Wolf, encouraged and challenged Hall to bring his faith into his work, but Hall hesitated to proselytize.

Then Hall traveled to Ethiopia during a time of famine.

“One day I remember walking… 50,000 people had been walking across this plateau. They had heard that there was going to be food at this site, and they just had to get there, and some had been walking over a hundred miles, and they had sold everything to get there. And to make a long story short, when they got there, there was nobody there” to feed them. “There were no blankets, there was no water, there was no food.”

“I began to hear this moaning…I began to see children just fall away from their mothers, just plop down and die,” Hall recollects. “I never got over that.”

“I came home thinking, this is what I can do in Congress. I have found the way I can bring God into my workplace without preaching about him,” Hall says. Since that time, Hall has witnessed hunger around the world, seeking to shed light on the problem and bring about public action. He talks of seeing people in North Korea cook and eat grass to make hunger pangs go away momentarily, even though the grass will make them ill.

Hall himself fasted “unto God” as a protest against Congress itself, when funding of his committee against hunger was cut. Students in a Roman Catholic high school in his congressional district learned of the fast and decided to fast along with Hall. Word spread. As a result of the fast, the World Bank committed hundreds of millions of dollars to alleviate poverty through micro-credit and other means.

To address the problem of hunger, “what’s possible for our country and what’s possible for us?” asks Dean Lloyd. Hall notes that “37 million people in this country that go to bed hungry” two or three times each month. He keeps as a watchword the advice of Mother Teresa of Calcutta: “Do the thing that’s in front of you.” Hall asserts, “If we all did that, we’d solve most of the…problems when it comes to poverty.”

Three times nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, Ambassador Tony P. Hall is a leading advocate for hunger relief programs and improving human rights conditions in the world. In February 2002, President George W. Bush asked him to serve as the United States Ambassador to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture. He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate and sworn in by Secretary of State Colin Powell in September 2002 and retired in April 2005. He retired from official diplomatic service in April, 2006, and is currently engaged by the State Department in Track II diplomatic efforts to prepare the way for peace in the Holy Land.

Prior to his diplomatic service, Ambassador Hall represented the Third District of Ohio in the U.S. Congress for almost twenty-four years, their longest serving representative in history. During his tenure, he was chairman of the House Select Committee on Hunger and the Democratic Caucus Task Force on Hunger. He founded the Congressional Friends of Human Rights Monitors, and authored legislation that supported food aid, child survival, basic education, primary health care, micro-enterprise, and development assistance in the world’s poorest countries. Ambassador Hall also founded and chaired the Congressional Hunger Center, a non-governmental organization committed to ending hunger through training and educational programs for emerging leaders.

A founding member of the Select Committee on Hunger, Mr. Hall served as its chairman from 1989 to 1993. During this time, he initiated legislation enacted into law to fight hunger-related diseases in developing nations, helped to establish a clearinghouse that provided food through gleaning, and has worked to promote micro-enterprise to reduce joblessness. In response to the abolishment of the Hunger Committee in April 1993, he fasted for 22 days to draw attention to the needs of hungry people in the United States and around the world.

In his efforts to witness the plight of the poor and hungry first-hand, he has visited poverty-stricken and war-torn regions in more than 100 countries. He was the first Member of Congress to visit Ethiopia during the great famine of 1984–5, has visited North Korea seven times since 1995, and was one of the first Western officials to see the famine outside of the capital, Pyongyang. In 2000, he became the first Member of Congress to visit Iraq to investigate the humanitarian situation.

Ambassador Hall has worked actively to improve human rights conditions around the world, especially in the Philippines, East Timor, Paraguay, South Korea, Romania, and the former Soviet Union. In 2000, he introduced legislation to end the importation of conflict diamonds mined in regions of Sierra Leone, Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo. In 1997 and 2000, Mr. Hall introduced legislation calling on Congress to apologize for slavery. He also has worked at promoting reconciliation among diverse peoples through a number of private initiatives.

In 1964 Mr. Hall graduated from Denison University in Granville, Ohio where he was a Little All-American football player. During 1966 and 1967, Mr. Hall taught English in Thailand as a Peace Corps Volunteer. He returned to Dayton to work as a realtor and he was a small businessman for several years. Mr. Hall and his wife Janet raised two children.

Mr. Hall served in the Ohio House of Representatives from 1969 to 1972, and in the Ohio Senate from 1973 to 1978. On November 7, 1978, Mr. Hall was elected to the 96th Congress. He served on the Foreign Affairs and Small Business Committees before being appointed to the Rules Committee at the beginning of the 97th Congress.

Ambassador Hall was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for 1998, 1999 and 2001 for his humanitarian and hunger-related work. For his hunger legislation and for his proposal for a Humanitarian Summit in the Horn of Africa, Mr. Hall and the Hunger Committee received the 1992 Silver World Food Day Medal from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. Mr. Hall is a recipient of the United States Committee for UNICEF 1995 Children's Legislative Advocate Award, U.S. AID Presidential End Hunger Award, 1992 Oxfam America Partners Award, Bread for the World Distinguished Service Against Hunger Award, and NCAA Silver Anniversary Award. He received honorary Doctor of Laws degrees from Asbury College, Antioch College and Eastern College and a Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Loyola College in Baltimore. In 1994, President Clinton nominated Mr. Hall for the position of UNICEF Executive Director.

• Order Ambassador Hall’s 2006 book Changing the Face of Hunger: The Story of How Liberals, Conservatives, Republicans, Democrats, and People of Faith are Joining Forces in a New Movement to Help the Hungry, the Poor, and the Oppressed from Amazon.com.
• Watch an interview with Ambassador Hall on PBS’ “Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly.”
• Watch Ambassador Hall speaking about “Changing the Face of Hunger” on C-Span television.
• Listen to an NPR interview with Hall upon his leaving Congress to become ambassador to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Agency.
• Visit the website of the Food and Agriculture Agency of the United Nations.
• Read statistics and articles on worldwide hunger.
• Get statistics and resources from the World Food Program.
• Links to organizations fighting hunger.