America’s foreign aid policy needs to change! We need coordination and efficiency to help FOCUS aid in the right place, to the right people, for the right reasons! Right now, 12 departments, 25 agencies, and 60 offices keep aid in a maze of tangles managing 250 directives in 75 different priority areas. An aid recipient could be required to fill out 2400 quarterly reports! There’s got to be a better way.

Bread for the World’s (www.bread.org) 2009 Offering of Letters give you and your church the opportunity to deliver handwritten letters to Congress and speak out! The website will give you all you need to know. The Offering doesn’t ask for money, only for a few minutes. You could do this on a Wednesday night prayer meeting or for a Sunday morning Bible Study. Children, Youth and Adults can participate. And, a handwritten letter gets noticed!

Ask Congress to pass the Child Nutrition Act. This will simplify the aid process, enhance economic development, and deliver more work in the area of clean water. In the time it takes you to read this, more than 100 children will die because they have no access to clean water.

Bring some blank paper and pens to your next small group gathering, show the video from the website, and then write two or three letters. Your advocacy matters, your voices will be heard.

Valencia, a 10 year old girl in Montgomery, AL, says, “The worst thing about being hungry is that it makes you feel like a spec of dirt!”

We can help Valencia and many others…with one or two simple handwritten letters. We cannot stand by silent!