Get Involved

Act Now

2019 Offering of Letters

• Call (800-826-3688) or email your members of Congress and urge them to cosponsor the Global Nutrition Resolution (H.Res.189/S.Res.260). If your member of Congress has already cosponsored the resolution, thank them. You can view a current list of House cosponsors (H.Res.189) here, and a list of Senate cosponsors (S.Res.260) here.
• The bipartisan Global Nutrition Resolution acknowledges that progress has been made, thanks to strong U.S. leadership and a bipartisan commitment, but more needs to be done if we are going to eliminate malnutrition. This includes support for the U.S. global nutrition strategy and increased efforts to scale up maternal and child nutrition.

For more information on this issue:

• Global Nutrition Resolution Recognizes Importance of U.S. Leadership
• The 2019 Offering of Letters: Better Nutrition, Better Tomorrow

Watch for action alerts. For additional talking points, contact organizing@bread.org or call 800-822-7323.

New 2019 Offering of Letters Resources

Find the most up-to-date sample letter here (DOCX).

If you are looking for a video to introduce the 2019 Offering of Letters to your church or organization, consider using a video short from Rev. David Beckmann of his recent trip to Ethiopia. You can find the video here, or view all of the video shorts from his travels in Ethiopia and Guatemala here. You can also view “Accelerating Global Nutrition: Lessons from Nepal,” which is a short video that lays out the crisis of malnutrition and how your advocacy is making a difference.

Many of you have been asking where you should report your Offering of Letters events. You can report letters here with the online feedback form.

For leaders interested in conducting an Offering of Letters workshop or adult forum on global nutrition, the organizing department has developed a PowerPoint presentation that you can be accessed here or in the Offering of Letters toolkit.

Publishing a letter-to-the-editor (LTE) helps educate members of Congress about hunger issues. If you would like to write an LTE on global nutrition, find a template here.

Success at the 2019 Advocacy Summit

Bread members visited roughly 200 congressional offices and delivered more than 50,000 petitions from our "Honor Mothers" campaign asking Congress to co-sponsor resolutions in both the House and Senate that will make the United States a leader in advancing global nutrition. Bipartisan support for the Global Nutrition Resolution in the House and Senate (H.Res.189/S.Res.260) has been building, thanks to your advocacy. Let’s carry the momentum into August Recess.

August Recess

August recess means opportunities to engage with your members of Congress. You can invite them to your local event or to take a tour of your church pantry. You can schedule an in-district visit with them or attend one of their town hall meetings.

Regardless of your plans, it’s never too early to start. The Senate begins its August recess the first week of August. The House is scheduled to break for August recess July 26.

Your members will be in their home districts and states and looking to hear from constituents all month. Make sure ending hunger is part of the conversation. Contact your organizer for more ideas and talking points.

Activists in Action

Advocating for Global Nutrition on Capitol Hill

Note: This article first appeared on the University of St. Francis website.

Who’s for hunger?

Hopefully no one. Ending hunger is a real possibility and a good place to start for bipartisan support. It’s pretty easy to reach agreement that food is a basic human need and a human right and that increasing food security is one of the cheapest and most sensible ways to address a number of other issues we see in our world, from migration to healthcare to decreasing criminal activity. These facts made it pretty easy and exciting to go on legislative visits on Capitol Hill to advocate for global nutrition with Bread for the World.

Bread for the World is a national Christian collective that urges our nation’s decision makers to end hunger at home and abroad. This year, USF participated for the first time with Bread for the World’s largest campaign, the Offering of Letters. Student leaders developed a campus campaign to encourage their peers, professors, and others in the USF community to write and sign letters to our US Congress that would strengthen our commitment to global nutrition. This year, Bread for the World’s Offering of Letters campaign focused on the concerns of maternal and child malnutrition as science has shown that the first 1,000 days in a child’s life are the most important for their development and that malnutrition can have lifelong consequences of stunting.

After a week of tabling and advocacy, the University collected 288 letters for Senators Duckworth and Durbin. These letters will be collected with other letters from the Diocese of Joliet’s collection of almost 6,000 total letters and delivered at in-district congressional visits later this summer. This campaign provided students with the opportunity to see how important their voices are in changing national policies that can have far-reaching effects in our communities and around the world. In continuing to put pressure on national leaders to commit themselves to this cause, Bread for the World hosted its annual Advocacy Summit in Washington, D.C., on June 10-11, 2019. I was blessed to be invited to join the Diocese of Joliet’s delegation and live out our commitment to Catholic Social Teaching by recognizing our call to family, community, and participation in serving the common good and speaking up for the poor and the vulnerable.

For anyone who might be afraid about the idea of speaking with your representatives, my advice: do not be afraid! Our congress members are people too and their job is to work on our behalf in making policies that serving our needs and values. We must make our needs and voices heard so that they can best work for us. Moreover, you might well be meeting with their staff, who are often young college graduates. Students, these are your peers! If you are worried that you won’t sound intelligent, remember you are talking with your peer who is learning about the issues just like you are.

This lobby day was my first congressional visit and it has empowered me to do even more political advocacy. It’s amazing how an honest and passionate conversation about important issues can move one person who has the power to take action. And this one person could be a catalyst for legislative policies that could save millions of lives. This should empower all of us to know that our choices and our voices do have an impact! And not everyone might be able to go to Washington, D.C., for a face-to-face visit, but we can all make a call, send a letter, or sign an online campaign.

In my [social] actions, I am St. Francis.

This post was written by Jessica Peek, University of St. Francis Director of University Ministry.

More Resources: Activist Tool Kit

The Activist Tool Kit is intended for new and current Bread grassroots hunger activists. It provides a set of how-to sheets for carrying out advocacy and fact sheets on the current issues Bread for the World is working on.

It's ideal as a starter toolkit for new Bread activists or as a set of updates for current activists. Form your own toolkit by printing out some or all of the sheets in the kit.

How-tos:

• How to Conduct an In-District Meeting with a Member of Congress (or the Staff)
• Effectively Using Public Meetings to Engage with Members of Congress
• Writing a Letter to the Editor of Your Local Newspaper
• Conducting an Offering of Letters

Issues-related pieces:

• Hunger and Poverty State Fact Sheets
• Fact Sheet: Why We Need $250 Million for Global Nutrition Programs
• Hunger by the Numbers (2017)
• Fact Sheet: Fortified for Life. How the U.S. Government Supports Global Nutrition
• Briefing Paper: A Multi-Sectoral Approach to Nutrition. Assessing USAID’s Progress
• Poverty-Focused Development Assistance (PFDA) 101
• The McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program
• Getting to Zero Hunger by 2030: Race, Poverty, and Hunger
• Mass Incarceration: A Major Cause of Hunger
• Border Policy: Addressing Root Causes of Hunger and Immigration
• Fact Sheet: Hunger and Poverty in the Indigenous Community
• Fact Sheet: Hunger and Poverty in the African American Community
• Fact Sheet: Hunger and Poverty in the Latino Community

Biblical resources:

• The Biblical Basis for Advocacy to End Hunger
• The Bible and Immigration Reform
• The Bible and Poverty-Focused Development Assistance
• The Bible and Mass Incarceration
• The Bible on Health as a Hunger Issue