Get Involved with an Offering of Letters, Women of the ELCA

What is an Offering of Letters?

One Spirit, One Will, Zero Poverty: An Offering of Letters

Members of a congregation write letters to Congress in support of hunger-fighting legislation during the coffee hour following their Sunday service. They later place the letters in the offering plate, dedicating the letters to God and saying special prayers for hungry people.

In Sunday school classrooms, both adults and children watch a short video about a family struggling with hunger. Afterwards, everyone — even the kids — write to their senators and representatives, asking them to keep their promises and support legislation increasing funding to fight hunger, poverty and disease in some of the poorest countries in the world.

On a college campus, student leaders encourage their peers to write letters to Congress after a hunger awareness event or a group meeting.

These examples are just a few of the forms that an Offering of Letters can take. But all offerings serve the same purpose: using the gift of citizenship to take steps toward ending hunger.

A movement of the Spirit is sweeping through nations of the world. In recent years — in churches, on campuses and in community groups across the United States — tens of thousands of Bread for the World members and other concerned people of faith and conscience have rallied together, raising their voices on behalf of hungry and poor people around the world. Those voices have been heard: Together we have helped win significant increases in effective development assistance to help reduce poverty globally.

We are not acting alone. People in Africa, Latin America and Asia are all working in their communities and through their governments to better their lives, to foster a more promising future for their children. We celebrate these successes.

With savings received from debt relief, Cameroon has been able to implement a comprehensive national HIV/AIDS strategy. The plan contains a set of highly focused emergency actions, including promoting behavior change among young people through information and education campaigns, making voluntary testing and counseling widely available throughout the country, and preventing HIV transmission from pregnant women to their babies.

In response to Cape Verde's success on poverty reduction, anti-corruption and the involvement of its citizens in these efforts, in June 2005 the country received a $110 million compact from the Millennium Challenge Corporation to build roads and bridges, increase trade, and improve water collection, storage and distribution.

Children in rural Honduras are now growing healthier and stronger thanks to nutritionist Vicky Alvarado and development assistance from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). In Honduras, 40 percent of children under age 5 are malnourished; in the poorest villages, that figure rises to 70 percent. Alvarado and other health workers are bringing nutrition education to rural areas, educating parents and monitoring their children's growth on charts posted in each community. Children who reach height and weight goals are awarded blue pins by their names; those who don't get red ones. The project is working. "The mothers can see the goal," Alvarado says. "They say, 'I don't want my child to have a red pin; I want him to grow.'" Time magazine recently named Alvarado a Global Health Hero, writing, "Well-spent aid dollars, it appears, can mean smarter parents. And smarter parents have the tools to save their kids."

We see the proof. The Spirit moves — boldly, not timidly. People find the power in themselves to take action. And meaningful change starts to happen.

Yet there remains much to do.

Our nation has committed to working with other countries, rich and poor, to achieve the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which aim to cut extreme hunger and poverty by half and to substantially improve health, education and livelihoods in developing countries by 2015. In fact, countries around the world, including the United States, have promised to significantly increase assistance. But this work will take more than promises. It will take substantial new resources and policy changes. It will take more and better federal assistance for the most effective anti-poverty programs that can best improve the lives of those most in need. Achieving these goals will require political courage and leadership — political will — reflecting the public's desire for our government to do more to help vulnerable people in the poorest parts of the world. Our promises will not be fulfilled unless Congress is willing to approve the funding needed to fulfill them.

That's why we need your voice. Through Bread for the World’s 2006 Offering of Letters, One Spirit. One Will. Zero Poverty., people of faith and conscience will join together to urge our leaders to fulfill their promises to the world’s hungry and poor people. This offering will seek significant increases in poverty-focused development assistance to meet the Millennium Development Goals.