Bread for the World President Reflects On Our Work in 2007
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Farmers of modest means would benefit from an improved farm bill.
Richard Lord photo |
Dear Bread for the World members,
As Christmas draws near, I want to share with you some reasons why I am profoundly encouraged about the mission we share: ending hunger in God's world.
The source of much of my optimism is Bread for the World members, and I am thankful for each of you. All year, activists around the country have been pushing to reform the U.S. farm bill in ways that will reduce hunger and poverty. As I write, the farm bill is still before the U.S. Senate, and Bread for the World members are still working hard to win reforms in farm policy.
The farm bill passed this summer by the House of Representatives adds more funding for food stamps, conservation, minority farmers and school meals in poor countries. The draft of the Senate bill also contains improvements. But so far, Congress has not mustered the will to curtail subsidies to affluent landowners. Those subsidies should be redirected to rural people who really need help and to families struggling to put food on the table. That shift would be better for our own country and would also reduce the extent to which U.S. farm policies depress prices and earning opportunities for many farmers in Africa and other poor parts of the world.
We have shaken up traditional farm bill politics. In hundreds of churches and hundreds of newspapers, the abuses of the current system have been exposed.
The 2007 farm bill that is signed into law is likely to be better than the current system, and we have set the stage for deeper reforms over the next few years.
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Children all over Africa have greater opportunities for education and better health through their countries' partnership with the United States and other donor nations.
Margaret W. Nea photo |
Our advocacy also continues to win increases in poverty-focused development assistance. For fiscal year 2008, we are poised to win an increase of about $1.5 billion for programs that fight poverty. Both the House and the Senate have approved bills that contain increases on that scale. Now, Congressional leadership and the president need to finish the job.
Bread for the World members' past work helped persuade the U.S. government to triple funding for poverty-focused aid programs in less than a decade. That increase has helped to make the situation in some regions of Africa more hopeful. While parts of Africa are still torn by violence, many African countries are building democratic institutions and enjoying economic progress.
The number of African children in school is up by 20 million. The death rate for children under five is going down in Africa and worldwide. Today, 1.2 million Africans are on life-saving medications for HIV/AIDS, up from only a few in 2000. Africans are doing most of the work to overcome poverty themselves, but U.S. aid programs have also been critical.
Our work and our prayers are having an impact – in the developing world and in the United States. We are helping to build a broader anti-hunger movement, and that movement is bearing fruit far beyond our expectations. Who would have expected that ending global poverty would receive so much attention from the U.S. public and the media? Or that Time magazine would publish a 5,000-word article on U.S. farm bill inequities? God is indeed moving in our time to liberate millions of people from hunger and poverty.
To keep the momentum going, Bread for the World has an ambitious agenda for 2008. Our Offering of Letters will push for legislation that makes reducing global poverty a goal of the U.S. government and includes the necessary funding to make this happen. 2008 is also a presidential election year. Bread for the World is working to get candidates to address the problems of hunger and poverty and to make hunger an issue in congressional races. We will continue to work on farm policy reform, and we plan to expand our work with young activists.
Bread for the World is able to be a strong voice because members like you are committed and generous. We work for justice for our hungry neighbors, whether they are in the next house or on the next continent.
Bread for the World members are moved by God's grace in Jesus Christ.
And we draw strength from the knowledge that we do not work alone. Once again, in this Advent and Christmas season, we rejoice that Christ comes into our lives and our world.
Each year, Bread for the World receives a quarter of our income in November and December. Year-end gifts determine how much we are able to undertake in the coming year. So I ask that during this season, you consider making a generous contribution to Bread for the World's work to end hunger in God's world.
Thank you again for your faithful commitment to hungry and poor people.
With peace,
David Beckmann
President
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Patience and Persistence
By Gary Cook
I am intrigued by the relationship between the biblical traits of "patience" and "persistence." At first glance, they seem to represent very different orientations to life. Patience seems passive; persistence is active. Patience is Job. Persistence is the widow who would not let the judge get any sleep. But the two are connected by their mutual confidence that we await something good, something that God has promised, something that God will deliver.
The season of Advent calls Christians to discipline ourselves to live with the "not yet" of our lives. Even while we have confidence in God's coming into the world in Jesus Christ, we live with the realities of life that still do not reflect his redeeming presence. We live with the pain of a broken world, with the wounds of warfare and the hunger pangs of starving children. While we know that Jesus' coming is good news to all who suffer; we also know Christmas will come and go, and the suffering will continue.
In this reality, we realize again that both patience and persistence are Christian virtues – that both are required responses in a world that does not yet fully reflect Christ's coming. We wait for God's promised future, and we work for it. We pray "Come, Lord Jesus;" as we work to relieve the suffering.
During Advent, we hear, with Joseph, the promise that in Jesus "God is with us." God is with us in our patient waiting. God is with us in our persistent working for justice. And we trust that there will come a day when God will be with us around a banquet table where no one will be hungry.
Bread for the World members are familiar with the virtues of patience and persistence. Advocacy on behalf of hungry people, like Advent, requires both. With Mary, we declare that God is always in the business of "filling the hungry with good things" and turning things around. So even as we await Christ's coming again, we join in God's ongoing work, patiently and persistently urging our nation's decision makers to end hunger. And always trusting that God is with us.
It’s Advent. Be patient. Be persistent. God is with us.
Gary Cook is Director of Church Relations at Bread for the World.
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Lifting Up Hunger and Poverty in the 2008 Elections
Bread for the World works as a collective Christian voice to urge our nation's decision makers to end hunger, and one of the best times to reach decision makers is while they are candidates for election or re-election. This is when they are formulating or recalibrating their positions and priorities for the next term. We are seizing the opportunity to put hunger and poverty high on the agendas of both presidential and congressional candidates.
Bread for the World has already begun working with our partners, such as the Alliance to End Hunger and the ONE Campaign, to engage with presidential candidates and urge them to develop and publicize their plans to reduce hunger and poverty in the United States and around the world. Working with the Alliance to End Hunger, we started communicating with all the potential candidates for president at the start of 2007. The Alliance did another national poll in April and published data that show widespread and growing voter support for effective efforts to reduce hunger and poverty.
In October, we participated in a World Food Day event in Iowa (an early primary state) at which representatives of nine presidential campaigns presented their plans for reducing global poverty.
Later that month, the Alliance to End Hunger helped launch the Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity in America, an initiative which seeks to engage candidates in substantive discussions about U.S. poverty and to keep these issues in the forefront as a new administration sets its agenda. [For more information, visit www.spotlightonpoverty.com].
As the 2008 campaigns heat up, Bread for the World national staff will meet with presidential campaign advisors, briefing them on hunger and poverty issues. We will also offer up-to-date resources, such as an advocacy guide, to help Bread for the World members make hunger a higher priority in all of the 2008 elections. For example, activists can help people in the community learn about candidates' positions on hunger and poverty, submit letters to the editor and opinion pieces to local media, ensure that low-income people have the opportunity to register to vote, and take advantage of opportunities to ask questions at campaign forums or other public events.
In 2008, we will focus more of our efforts on congressional candidates. Activists have already begun forming Bread for the World Election Action Teams -- BEAT Hunger '08. If you would like to work with others in your community and get information from Bread for the World about candidate forums and other opportunities to engage with those running for office, please contact your regional organizer to join the BEAT Hunger '08 efforts.
This fall, Bread for the World member and BEAT Hunger '08 activist Ellen Fisher made numerous visits to presidential candidate events in Iowa. At one such recent event, she talked for several minutes with one of the presidential candidates, thanking him for sponsoring the Jubilee Debt Relief Act that has been introduced in the Senate and asking him to support farm bill reform.
The results of the 2008 elections are important to hungry and poor people.
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From left, Rep. Jack Kemp, Rep. Jim McGovern, E.J. Dionne, Jim McLaughlin and Rep. Harold Ford discuss making hunger and poverty a priority in the 2008 elections at the launch of the Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity in America.
Jim Burger photo |
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2008 Development Assistance Bill in the Final Stages
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Development assistance provides essentials like clean water to villages like Kampekete in Zambia.
Margaret W. Nea photo |
Funding for poverty-focused development assistance in fiscal year 2008 has been approved by the House and the Senate, but it has not yet been finalized. Designated senators and representatives must now meet to negotiate a compromise bill that both chambers can approve. These negotiations have not yet been scheduled.
Both the House and Senate international spending bills include an increase for poverty-focused development assistance. The House bill would make available an additional $1.9 billion over fiscal year 2007 and the Senate bill an additional $1.4 billion. Bread for the World urges Congress to finalize a minimum of $1.9 billion in additional assistance. This will better enable the United States to honor its commitments to developing countries, such as doing our share to achieve the U.N. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Our help is needed if poor countries are to meet the MDGs. Since 1999, the United States has tripled federal funding for effective development assistance to the world's poorest countries. More children are being immunized, new wells give people access to clean water for the first time, and 1.2 million Africans receive life-saving medication for HIV/AIDS.
Yet even with that tripling of funding, the United States currently gives less than 1 percent of our federal budget to programs that fight poverty worldwide. The world still has nearly a billion people living on less than one U.S. dollar per day. This kind of poverty forces families to spend most of their income on food – with little left over for shelter, clothing, medical care and education. And very often, they still face hunger and malnutrition.
When a family has so few financial resources, parents and children must do without many of the things we would consider basic necessities. For example, in Zambia, a small country in southern Africa, malaria is the number one killer of children under the age of five. In Kampekete, a rural area about 30 miles outside the capital, 200 women and their children gather under the only tree large enough to provide a bit of shade from the glaring noonday sun. As a woman and her baby lie on a table serving as a bed, community health volunteers demonstrate how to use a bed net to keep mosquitoes away as they sleep. People are also advised to wear long sleeves and skirts for coverage, especially in the evenings. Then packages of bed nets—purchased with U.S. development assistance funding—are distributed to the mothers. Since this type of distribution has begun, local health clinic reports show that the incidence of malaria is decreasing.
This is a simple example of the tremendous good that U.S. development assistance accomplishes around the world. Bread for the World urges Congress to finalize a generous increase in funding for such poverty-focused programs for 2008. Lives literally hang in the balance.
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Advocacy and Creative Stewardship
Several years ago, Bread for the World member Barbara Kingston had a generous idea: when she sold her home in New Mexico, she gave 10 percent of the gains she realized to Bread for the World. This year, when she sold that home and moved to North Carolina, Ms. Kingston again donated 10 percent of her earnings from the sale to help Bread for the World in our work on behalf of hungry and poor people.
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Gifts like those of Barbara Kingston help improve nutrition and education programs for children and families.
Rick Reinhard photo |
"When I first started contributing to Bread for the World, it was really a modest amount – $10 per month," said Ms. Kingston. "A little later I decided that since I was part of the Baker's Dozen program, my contribution should at least be a "baker's dozen," so I started giving $13 each month. But when I was able to contribute money from the sales of the houses, that seemed a little closer to the scale of the hunger problem."
Ms. Kingston first became interested in hunger issues on a local level, working to protect the Food Stamp Program and other safety nets for families in need. "I surely think that hunger is a basic issue, and we have to find a way to respond," she said. "Giving hungry people food is necessary, and I've worked on that too, but the more basic problem has to do with our legislation and our foreign policy. I really think that taking care of hungry people is a much better way of projecting our country's leadership image in the world [than our military policy]."
Ms. Kingston keeps abreast of Bread for the World issues on the Internet. She said, "Even though I'm no longer young, once the Internet became available I really found that it's a very helpful way of staying in touch. I can find out what's going on – locally, nationally and globally -- and respond to the various action alerts with letters and calls."
While Ms. Kingston is new to her community and church in North Carolina, she plans to meet with the church's social impact committee to lift up hunger issues. "I think that besides influencing legislation, which of course is very important, the Offering of Letters is also helpful in raising the consciousness of the congregation," she said. "Even people who don't write a letter will have heard about hunger one more time, and that could lead them to be more active down the line. Hopefully, we have reached a tipping point where more people can see the vision of ending hunger and will take action."
Bread for the World appreciates both Ms. Kingston's steadfast advocacy for hungry people and her creativity in locating financial resources to contribute to our work. Thank you!
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A Sampling of Successes
Bread for the World's victories for hungry and poor people are a credit to our grassroots advocates. Your hard work and persistence have preserved, reformed and strengthened our government's policies that affect hungry and poor people – from U.S. national nutrition programs and farm policy to poverty-focused development assistance overseas. Here we feature three "samplings" of what our many committed activists have been doing this year.
- George Aman is a Bread for the World advocate from the Philadelphia area. He organized several Offering of Letters sessions at his church this spring. When he attended Lobby Day in June, he began to educate his newly-elected representative on hunger and poverty, in addition to meeting with both his senators. In July, he responded when Bread for the World needed activists who were comfortable talking about the details of the farm bill to call congressional aides and explain what we were hoping to achieve. In August, he met with key Senate staff members locally to respond to their questions and concerns.
"George understands his calling as a Bread for the World activist to be a year-long effort with many dimensions – mobilizing his church, making vital personal calls, sitting down for face-to-face meetings in DC and at home," said Bread for the World regional organizer Larry Hollar. "His versatility is a huge asset, and what a blessing he is!"
- Thanks to the efforts of activists like Elaine Davies, Bread for the World has a new local group in Atlanta. Elaine moved to Atlanta three years ago and has been working there since then to raise awareness of U.S. policies that affect hungry and poor people. "Sometimes I find that people need an event that will move them to action. For example, when we were trying to start our group, we invited Art Simon to speak, and that drew about 60 people. Some are now joining us for a monthly meeting at Café 458, a feeding center for homeless people that is open to everyone on the weekends. If you keep persisting and are faithful with it, even a few people can keep a group going and eventually you build up a critical mass."
"Elaine deserves a lot of credit," said Bread for the World Director of Organizing Kathy Pomroy. "She is committed to building active local groups wherever she lives. When she was in Indianapolis, the group there was strengthened by her contributions, and her efforts to get a group started in Atlanta are equally inspiring."
- Megan Marsh of Colorado first learned about the connection between the U.S. farm bill's commodity payment policies and the struggles of farming families in poor countries when she attended a training session for activists this past March. Since then, she has co-hosted a house party to introduce friends to Bread for the World and the ONE Campaign, participated in The Gathering 2007 and Lobby Day in Washington, DC, and later shared her knowledge with local activist groups.
Megan writes on Bread for the World’s blog, “As an advocate, I made a goal that if Bread for the World or the ONE Campaign asked me to do something, and it was an easy thing for me to do, I would just do it. Attending the training in March was an easy thing to do. Writing letters to my congressmen and visiting their local offices is an easy thing to do. Calling them on the phone and leaving messages with their staffers is an easy thing to do. If so many easy things I can do add up to significant impact for the lives of farmers and their families around the world, I really have no excuse not to act.”
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New Communications Help Achieve Our Mission
Bread for the World will soon feature a refreshed logo and look, designed to help us reach out to a broader audience while remaining true to our mission of ending hunger in God's world.
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Bread for the World members can listen to a monthly podcast directly on their computers or by downloading it from iTunes.
Brian Duss photo |
Breadcast is Bread for the World's free monthly podcast -- an audio program to download or listen to on the Internet. It began in September and already has more than 700 subscribers. Here's what one listener had to say: "I am so excited Bread for the World is doing podcasts! It is very inspiring to hear what motivates activists across the country. I am inspired to take action." Breadcast most recently featured poetry written by Church Relations staff member Kathleen O'Toole during her trip to Kenya; reflections from Bishop Don Williams on two decades of advocacy in African-American churches; and interviews with members. Coming up: a description of the Millennium Development Goals and original music from Zambia.
For a couple of years, Bread for the World has had a lively blog (an online diary with comments from readers) at www.breadblog.org. Participants share information about local and national events, discuss Bread for the World's action items, point each other to other good blogs and resources, and debate issues that are hunger-related but not necessarily part of Bread for the World's immediate action agenda. A recent post on breadblog described a survey done by students at the University of New Mexico which showed that there was both hunger in the university community and enthusiasm for anti-hunger initiatives.
We have just begun a second blog, hosted by Bread for the World Institute. The new blog, Bread for the World Institute Notes: A Dialogue on Overcoming Hunger and Poverty, is at www.institutenotes.org. It's a forum on current news and research on U.S. and international poverty issues. Policy analysts at the Institute submit blog entries regularly, offering perspectives and insights on hunger in the news and sharing information and resources. Two of the most recent topics: a new way for ordinary citizens to track their country's progress on the Millennium Development Goals, and a discussion of the implications for poor people of the new data on soaring global food prices.
Try something new – listen to breadcast, or read breadblog and Bread for the World Institute Notes.
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In this season of hope, please send Christmas cards to your senators and representatives in Congress. Let them know of your concern for hungry and poor people, in the United States and around the world, and urge them to support policies that will reduce hunger and poverty.
Points to make:
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As we begin a new year, please keep in your hearts the hungry and poor people in our country and around the world.
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Worldwide, more than 850 million people are chronically hungry in a world that has enough food for everyone. In the United States, more than 35 million people live in households that struggle to put food on the table.
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There are effective ways to fight hunger and poverty. More than 20 million additional children have been able to start school in Africa, and 1.2 million Africans now receive lifesaving HIV/AIDS medication so that they can continue to work and care for their families.
U.S. Senate
Washington, DC 20510
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515
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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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