Sample Presentations

60-Second Version

Our world has made progress in fighting poverty. For the first time in decades, there are fewer than 1 billion people living on less than $1 a day. But that's still too many. Please join me in taking part in Bread for the World's 2008 Offering of Letters. Write to your members of Congress. Ask them to increase funding by at least $5 billion per year for programs that give people in developing countries the opportunity to work their way out of poverty. Also ask them to support the Global Poverty Act, which would focus U.S. development assistance on achieving the Millennium Development Goal of reducing extreme poverty and hunger by 2015. If we work together, we can turn the possibility of ending hunger and poverty into a reality.

photo by Jim Stipe

3-Minute Version

What do Africa, Asia and Latin America have in common?  If you answered that they all include extremely poor countries, you are only partially correct. The most important similarity is that they are places not only of poverty, but also of possibility.

For the first time in more than two decades, the number of people living on less than a dollar a day fell to under 1 billion. In Africa, countries like Malawi reduced its child mortality rate by nearly half. In parts of Asia, the female enrollment in technical schools rose from 5 percent to 45 percent. And in Latin America, 97 percent of children now attend primary school.

This is a year of possibility.

2008 is the first year past the critical halfway point to meeting the Millennium Development Goals to cut global poverty and hunger in half by 2015. The Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs, are a compact among the nations of the world to work together to alleviate poverty, hunger and disease.  The United States signed on to the MDGs, but we have not fully honored our commitment to the world's poor people. We contribute only one-half of 1 percent of our federal budget to programs that reduce poverty, hunger and disease around the world.

It is time for a change. 

Bread for the World's 2008 Offering of Letters is asking your members of Congress for an increase of at least $5 billion for programs that give poor people in developing countries the opportunity to work their way out of poverty. Also ask them to support the Global Poverty Act, which would focus U.S. development assistance on achieving the MDGs.

Seventy years ago, many thought that rebuilding war-torn Europe was impossible. Yet with the Marshall Plan's $20 billion in aid, the continent flourished. As Americans, it is time that we once again support our global neighbors as they pull themselves out of poverty. It can be done. As people of faith, we know that "with God, all things are possible" (Matthew 19:26).

Please join me in taking part in Bread for the World's 2008 Offering of Letters. Write your members of Congress. Tell them that this is the year that we will turn the possibility of ending poverty into a reality.