We included letter writing for Bread For the World at our Second Saturday Servants activities yesterday.  A few of us wrote letters to Congress encouraging changes to make food aide more effective.

Here is a link to information on how you can join the letter writing campaign:  http://bread.org/

Below I am repeating a blog about Bread for the World from last year.

Bread For the World Institute published an excellent series of papers, called Development Works, in 2012. The first paper, in March 2012, focused on some questions we often hear:

How can it help hungry people overseas?

But what exactly is development assistance?

And why should we support funding for it when many Americans are facing hard times?

I recommend reading the paper:

Click to access dw-1.pdf

The summary is:

• Development assistance enables
people in poor countries to build a
better life for themselves and their
children.

.In developing countries, investing
small amounts in training,
tools, or start-up costs can
yield significant improvements
because people make good use
of the resources available to
them. Development assistance
helps communities and nations
strengthen their economies and
create better living conditions—
for example, by enabling people to
buy seeds and fertilizers, establish
small businesses, or meet public
needs such as clean water.

• Countries develop successful
strategies against hunger by
using their own resources and
development assistance to
strengthen the essentials, such
as more productive farms and
access to nutritious food and
basic health care, particularly
for vulnerable groups such as
pregnant women and young
children.

• Effective development assistance
saves millions of lives every
year—and this is done through
programs that the United States
can afford. It is both the right
thing and the smart thing to do.

I learn regularly when I visit Bread For the World.

http://www.bread.org/institute/development-works/

Related articles

Bread For the World on the Farm Bill (tbolto.wordpress.com)
Rich countries are not keeping their promises on aid: new analysis from ONE (one.org)
Turkey becomes 4th donor of international assistance (en.trend.az)