Hunger to Harvest

Home

Index

Contacts

Directions

Schedule

Announcements

Trinity Episcopal Church
44 East Market St.
Bethlehem PA 18018-5989
610-867-4741

Hunger to Harvest Resolution Introduced

Rep. Jim Leach (R-IA) and Rep. Don Payne (D-NJ) have just introduced to the U.S. Congress a Concurrent Resolution. The "Hunger to Harvest Resolution: A Decade of Concern for Africa" (H.Con.Res. 102) places the U.S. response to hunger in sub-Saharan Africa within the broad context of development, economic growth, and AIDS. It would urge the President to work with other heads of advanced industrial countries and sub-Saharan African countries to lead a comprehensive program to cut hunger in half in sub-Saharan Africa. It would also urge the Congress to commit to increased levels of funding for effective, poverty-focused development assistance until significant progress is made toward reversing the current levels of hunger and poverty. The additional funding would be targeted towards poverty-focused development in the areas of health; education - especially for girls; agriculture, food systems, and infrastructure; micro-finance; and debt relief.

While a Concurrent Resolution does not have the force of law, it is a valuable vehicle for expressing the sense of the entire Congress on an issue. It requires dialogue between the two houses - dialogue which, in this case, focuses on hunger and poverty in sub-Saharan Africa. Because the problems of poverty and hunger cut across and interact with all other sectors, it is important that the challenges and opportunities in African development be dealt with as comprehensively as possible.

Bread for the World, a nonpartisan national Christian citizens' movement against hunger, is focusing its annual campaign on securing an additional billion dollars in poverty-focused development assistance for sub-Saharan Africa. Toward this end, Bread for the World's 45,000 grassroots activists across the country will be writing a quarter of a million personal letters to their Members of Congress, as they have done on behalf of the Jubilee 2000 international debt relief initiative and the 'Africa: Seeds of Hope Act' (which passed in 1998).

Bread for the World members will also be visiting local Congressional district offices, and generating letters to the editor and op-eds in hometown newspapers around the country.

The Africa: Hunger to Harvest campaign will simultaneously employ two parallel grassroots efforts: to gain broad-based support for this Congressional Resolution, and to urge key Congressional appropriators to increase funding for poverty-focused development assistance to Africa by at least one billion dollars.

As someone who is concerned about Africa, we hope that you will recognize the importance and urgency of this initiative and join us in our efforts. If you are part of an organization, we urge you to endorse this campaign. Broad nationwide endorsement is a powerful tool for showing our leaders the wide-ranging support for cutting hunger in Africa.

We look forward to working with you on this important effort to cut hunger in sub-Saharan Africa, and will update you on its progress.

For additional details, please contact:

Ray Almeida Bread for the World Tel: +1-202-639-9400 Ext. 232 mailto:ralmeida@bread.org

Send mail for the `AFRO-NETS' conference to afro-nets@usa.healthnet.org

Mail administrative requests to majordomo@usa.healthnet.org