Imagine—or remember—a world where a first-class stamp costs four cents. John F. Kennedy has just been inaugurated as president, the Berlin Wall has just been built, and a gallon of gas costs 27 cents.
That’s the way the world was in 1961.
Today a stamp costs 42 cents and gas costs a little bit more than 27 cents a gallon. The Berlin Wall fell 20 years ago. And we just inaugurated the first African-American president.
The world has changed.
As Christians and Americans we believe it’s the right thing to do to help hungry and poor people around our world. But we’re operating within a system created nearly 50 years ago.
We need to bring our country’s foreign aid system into the 21st century. Bread for the World’s 2009 Offering of Letters is asking our members of Congress to make foreign assistance more effective in reducing hunger and poverty in today’s world. We need a better coordinated, more efficient approach to providing aid. Fixing foreign aid will allow the money we spend to go further and help the people who need it the most.
We are urging Congress to make poverty reduction a primary goal of our foreign assistance, and elevate global development as an instrument of U.S. foreign policy alongside defense and diplomacy.
Development works. But we can make it work even better.
Today, children avoid contracting life-threatening malaria because they have received bed nets that protect them from mosquito bites.
Today, people with HIV and AIDS receive life-saving medication and are able to live productive lives and raise their children.
Today, farmers are learning modern skills to allow them to increase their yields and supplement their incomes to become self-reliant.
As Christians, we know that peace is more than the absence of war. It requires building strong, healthy relationships, supporting people and communities working hard to provide a better life for their children, and removing the barriers to human dignity and fulfillment. That’s the work of U.S. foreign assistance and the goal of global development. That’s our opportunity and our challenge.
