Get Involved

Act Now

Offering of Letters

• Call (800-826-3688) or email your representative and urge them to invest in and protect key programs that will reduce hunger and poverty—including WIC, summer meals, and poverty-focused development aid—as they finalize the fiscal year 2019 budget and spending bills.
• Congress approved a spending bill before going on recess for the midterm elections. However, they only accomplished part of their job and will need to approve additional spending bills after the elections. Making funding decision that help end hunger is more important than ever. After a decade of progress, global hunger is increasing. The economic recovery is not reaching the poorest Americans.

For more information on this issue:

• 2018 Offering of Letters: For Such a Time as This
• Economic Recovery Fails to Reach the Poorest Americans

Watch for action alerts. For additional talking points, contact organizing@bread.org or call 800-822-7323.

Offering of Letters Feedback

Have you completed an Offering of Letters this year? Let us know your results by filling out the online form at bread.org/evaluation. We use your feedback to follow up with members of Congress and measure the impact of this campaign, as well as in the planning of future campaigns.

Activists in Action

Bread Hosts Faith and Global Nutrition Consultation

Even before he started first grade, Joshua Williams was already fighting global poverty through a nonprofit he founded – Joshua’s Heart Foundation.

A teenager now, he continues to educate and engage his peers in anti-hunger advocacy. Williams says to end hunger we must engage advocates of his generation—including listening to them and their vision for the future. They need to know that they have power and can make an impact.

“Bringing my generation in and teaching them is going to be key,” Williams says.

Williams was one of several speakers at the Bread for the World’s Faith and Global Nutrition Consultation in September, in partnership with Food for the Hungry. The event, held at Bread’s Washington, D.C., office, brought together 33 grassroots and faith leaders for a conversation about global nutrition.

Participants followed a day of learning with a day of action by visiting their members of Congress on Capitol Hill, urging robust investments in global nutrition.

The goal of the consultation was for participants to learn about global nutrition challenges and to develop grassroots strategies that will lead the United States to renew its commitment to ending malnutrition globally. Malnutrition is responsible for millions of preventable deaths each year.

Rev. David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World, opened the consultation by urging  participants to “shape and propel a campaign that God has put in our hearts.”  

During the consultation, participants heard from House Appropriations Committee staff member Susan Adams, and notable leaders in the fight against global malnutrition including Alma Golden, senior deputy assistant administrator in USAID’s Bureau for Global Health; Beth Dunford, Deputy Coordinator for Development for Feed the Future—USAID’s global hunger and food security initiative; and senior fellow for global agriculture and food policy for the Chicago Council on Global Affairs Roger Thurow.

Thurow, who has authored several books on hunger, encouraged the leaders gathered to use storytelling as a strategy to build awareness. He spoke passionately about seeing malnutrition in the eyes of a father and his son and how it changed his life.

“Both were on the doorstep of starvation,” Thurow says.

A foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal at the time, the experience of reporting from an emergency feeding camp in Africa never left him. “That was a moment of great disruption in my life,” he added.

Since then, the former journalist has committed to ending global malnutrition by using storytelling to “outrage and inspire” others to act. Each participant received a copy of his book, “The First 1,000 Days: A Crucial Time for Mothers and Children—And the World.”

But perhaps the most inspiring speakers at the consultant were the participants themselves, who told stories about how they create change in their local communities.

ELCA Pastor Dan Fugate of Indiana spoke about how the faith community in Indiana has built an intentional relationship with Republican Sen. Todd Young. Kansas farmer Doug Keesling also stressed the importance of relationship building as a key strategy for anti-hunger advocacy, but also a basic tenant for Christian living.

And Margarita Romo made the connection between global and local food insecurity when she talked about her work in Florida with Farm Workers Self-Help Inc.

It was an eye-opening event for the Romo, who founded her non-profit nearly four decades ago and is no stranger to anti-hunger work. “After so many years I realize there is still so much to learn,” she says.  “After today, I feel rejuvenated to continue doing work on behalf of the poor and the hungry.”  

More Resources: Activist Tool Kit

The Activist Tool Kit is intended for new and current Bread grassroots hunger activists. It provides a set of how-to sheets for carrying out advocacy and fact sheets on the current issues Bread for the World is working on.

It's ideal as a starter toolkit for new Bread activists or as a set of updates for current activists. Form your own toolkit by printing out some or all of the sheets in the kit.

How-tos:

• How to Conduct an In-District Meeting with a Member of Congress (or the Staff)
• Effectively Using Public Meetings to Engage with Members of Congress
• Writing a Letter to the Editor of Your Local Newspaper
• #ForSuchATime Social Media Kit
• Conducting an Offering of Letters

Issues-related pieces:

• Hunger and Poverty State Fact Sheets
• Hunger by the Numbers (2016)
• Fact Sheet: Get the Facts About SNAP
• Budget 101
• Fact Sheet: Do Work Requirements in Public Programs Work?
• Budget Reconciliation 101
• Budget 101: Block Grants, Flexibility, and Per Capita Caps
• Immigration as a hunger issue
• Poverty-Focused Development Assistance (PFDA) 101
• The McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program
• Fact Sheet: The Hunger-Medicaid Connection
• The Affordable Care Act 101
• Mass Incarceration and Over-Policing Fact Sheet
• Fact Sheet: Latino Community Hit Hard by Budget Cuts
• Hunger and Poverty in the Latino Community
• Hunger and Poverty in the African-American Community

Biblical resources:

• The Biblical Basis for Advocacy to End Hunger
• The Bible and Immigration Reform
• The Bible and Poverty-Focused Development Assistance
• The Bible and Mass Incarceration
• The Bible on Health as a Hunger Issue