Now is a key time to hold Offerings of Letters for Bread for the World's 2006 campaign, One Spirit. One Will. Zero Poverty. As Congress focuses simultaneously on passing a broad budget resolution for 2007 and deciding on appropriations for specific programs, your members of Congress need to hear from people of faith and conscience about national budget priorities.
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Kenyan farmers can grow much more food with modest investment in training and supplies.
Photo by Jim Stipe |
The ONE Campaign works to persuade our nation's leaders to dedicate an additional one percent of the U.S. budget to fight global hunger, poverty and disease and help meet the U.N. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Last year the president promised to double aid to Africa and the developing world by 2010. Bread for the World's One Spirit effort, an important part of the ONE Campaign, seeks an additional $5 billion in poverty-focused development assistance for next year in order to get the United States on track to fulfill these commitments to hungry and poor people
The MDGs sound ambitious – cutting hunger and extreme poverty in half, reducing maternal mortality by three-fourths, ensuring that every child completes elementary school, and more. Can they really be met by 2015?
The Millennium Villages Initiative, a project of The Earth Institute at Columbia University, set out to demonstrate, one village at a time, that the MDGs are feasible. Modest funding and an integrated approach can start a community on its way to sustainable development – even a small village facing seemingly overwhelming problems.
The first community chosen as a Millennium Village is Sauri, Kenya. Sauri suffers high rates of malnutrition and child mortality, widespread malaria and HIV infection, poor or even nonexistent harvests, no local health care. But like people everywhere, Sauri's 5,200 residents are eager to improve their lives. The local community and the Kenyan government provided more than half the funding for Sauri's first year as a Millennium Village. International assistance came to just $250,000.
A year later, Sauri had already seen many improvements:
- Harvests quadrupled once farmers learned fallow farming techniques and received assistance in using complementary crops and fertilizer to enrich the soil.
- The local health clinic has been rebuilt and can treat up to 200 people per day. The Kenyan government now supplies a doctor two days per week; in contrast, only one doctor is available for 97,000 people in the surrounding area.
- Local women have been trained as health workers and are making regular visits to households, checking on children and helping families understand how to prevent malaria and use their medications.
- The principal and teachers at Sauri's primary school, using their own resources, had already begun a school meals program. Now the program has been expanded and school enrollment has doubled.
- People in the village meet each week to discuss progress and difficulties, and to generate new ideas.
Other Millennium Villages face different problems. But there is great potential for progress in each of them. An ad from a few years ago pointed out: "For the cost of a cup of coffee, you can see that a child has enough to eat and a chance to go to school." The progress made in Sauri and other Millennium Villages proves the point once again.
As the congressional appropriations process gathers steam, our letters and visits with senators and representatives can help win additional resources to help hungry and poor people build a better future. We know that our advocacy in One Spirit and the ONE Campaign is worthwhile, because it changes human lives.
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Young Christians Search for Justice
by Dr. Sandra Fullerton Joireman
Let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream. Amos 5:24
One of the privileges of being a college professor is watching a new group of students graduate every May to begin their independent lives. Teaching at a small Christian college I have the pleasure of watching the intellectual and spiritual development of students over four years and observing changes that are often profound.
In the past few years I have been witnessing something new around graduation time – a hunger and thirst for justice among the graduating seniors. They are choosing different kinds of jobs, applying to graduate programs that will engage them in the pursuit of justice, and making plans that will enable them to effect change in this world. This desire to see a more just world has been fueled in theology classes, in their seminars in economics and biology and, increasingly, in their encounters with the developing world.
One of the benefits of globalization is that our world has become smaller. The internet, the growth of non-governmental organizations and the proliferation of educational experiences overseas means that more students have the opportunity to hear the stories of those in the developing world. Young Christians encountering their faith and exploring it on their own for the first time have the chance to ask for themselves. "Who is my neighbor?" They find that their neighbor is a Christian, living in the Global South and struggling to find her daily bread.
As the geographic center of the church shifts to the Southern Hemisphere and our world becomes ever more connected, the experiences of our brothers and sisters in Christ are more obvious and their need is before us. It is an encouragement indeed to see students taking on the challenge of addressing these needs. Not all of them choose this path, but more and more do so every year. The foot soldiers are here.
If I am moved at graduation it is not just at seeing these young adults leaving to go find their way in the world. It is also knowing that so many of them are moving out to build the church and seek justice in this broken world.
Dr. Sandra Fullerton Joireman is associate professor in the department of politics and international relations at Wheaton College and a Bread for he World board member.
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Longtime Activist Sees Progress, More Opportunities
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Beth Lepinski (third from left) plays the role of a member of Congress during an Offering of Letters at Memorial Presbyterian Church in Appleton, WI.
Photo courtesty of Beth Lepinski |
"It's encouraging just knowing that when I started working on hunger issues, there were 40,000 children dying every day, and now we're down to 30,000," said Bread for the World activist Beth Lepinski. "Immunizations, child survival initiatives, and all the other efforts really have led to progress."
Lepinski first learned about Bread for the World at a church conference on hunger in 1975. After moving to Appleton, WI in 1976, she helped start a BFW chapter there. Since then, she has worked faithfully on many anti-hunger fronts – everything from regular volunteer work at the Salvation Army's food program and collecting food for local food pantries, to serving two terms on the BFW board of directors and supporting our work financially, to conducting a community food security survey using a BFW resource. She works actively in her church, Memorial Presbyterian in Appleton, a longtime Covenant Church which has held Offerings of Letters every year since 1979.
One of Lepinski's most memorable Bread for the World experiences came in 1997, when she was part of a team visiting South Africa and Uganda. "Seeing poverty is one thing, but seeing people working to help themselves is quite another. In a poor area on the outskirts of Cape Town, a community agency had signs on the wall talking about how to set "smart objectives," just like where I worked in Wisconsin…. Women were making rugs and wall hangings using scraps from a T-shirt factory. Everywhere in South Africa there were small self-help groups – the transition to democracy was underway and people were excited to be able to meet and make plans without police crackdowns…. Uganda had just begun to offer universal primary education, so all the schools were packed full of kids wanting to learn."
Lepinski is an effective ambassador for Bread for the World – a number of people have become activists and donors after hearing her talk about our work. "I'm confident when I promote Bread for the World to others, because I know that it's an organization that gets the facts straight. But I was surprised when I started seeing names I knew on the donor lists," she said.
"I've taken early retirement – I was a chemist – and I want to spend more time working with Bread for the World. I hope to learn more about fundraising and also to help strengthen Bread for the World's efforts in Wisconsin." Thank you to Beth Lepinski for her stalwart work on behalf of hungry and poor people, no matter where they live!
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Let's Pass the Hunger-Free Communities Act
The Hunger-Free Communities Act, the legislation for Bread for the World's 2005 Offering of Letters, Make Hunger History, has attracted 43 senators and 160 representatives as cosponsors. Listed below are the members of Congress who have agreed to support the bill, which recommits Congress to the goal of ending hunger in our country and helps organizations work together to fight hunger in their local communities.
If your senators and representative are on the list of cosponsors, (check here for House and here for the Senate) please write or call to thank them for their support and ask them to urge congressional leadership to bring the Hunger-Free Communities Act up for a vote. If they are not on the list, urge your members of Congress to take action on behalf of hungry and poor people by cosponsoring the legislation.
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For the complete newsletter in its print version, please contact:
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Publications, Bread for the World
50 F Street, NW, Suite 500
Washington, DC 20001
| Telephone: 202-639-9400
Fax: 202-639-9401
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