Missouri Methodists advocate for worldwide hunger funds

June 24, 2004  

UMNS photo by Pat Rogers Advocates carrying letters in support of funding for worldwide hunger relief projects pose with Lindsey Neas (second from right), an aide to Sen. Jim Talent.

By Pat Rogers*

WASHINGTON (UMNS) -- The Missouri Conference of the United Methodist Church is lobbying Capitol Hill to keep federal funds flowing to poor and disease-ravaged countries around the world.

Carol Kreamer, coordinator of the conference’s “The Mozambique Initiative,” and Peggy Eshelman, the conference’s social justice coordinator, visited Washington June 22 to hand-deliver more than 700 letters to 11 Missouri lawmakers.
 
The letters were written by Missouri’s United Methodist congregations in an effort to influence their senators and representatives to help poor countries in Africa and the Caribbean.

The letters were delivered as part of Bread for the World’s “Offering of Letters,” where members of a church congregation or other entities write letters to Congress in support of hunger-fighting legislation. Bread for the World is a nonprofit, hunger-related organization and this was the first time that the Missouri Annual Conference participated in the letters campaign.

Kreamer and Eshelman – along with Tom Wehrman and Scott Benolkin from Bread for the World – met with legislative aides for each member of Missouri’s legislative delegation, including Republican Sen. Jim Talent’s aide, Lindsey Neas. June 22 was Bread for the World’s annual “Lobby Day.”

Neas listened to Kreamer and Eshelman’s pitch for more than 20 minutes and received 130 letters from Talent’s constituents. “The most effective way to get your voice heard,” he said, “is to come in with a strong, merit-based argument and to propose a specific solution to the problem.”

The pair used the letter-writing campaign to urge lawmakers to fully fund the Millennium Challenge Account, or MCA, and other HIV/AIDS spending. The Bush administration proposed the MCA in 2002 to help poor but developing countries in Africa and the Caribbean. The program calls for funding to those countries to climb to $5 billion by 2006 – a 50 percent increase over current U.S. core development assistance.

UMNS photo by Peter Williams World Council of Churches Villagers in Inhambane Chicome, Mozambique, carry water containers to the nearest well.

But, the MCA also requires the recipient countries to “rule justly, invest in their people, and encourage economic freedom” and 16 countries thus far have met those requirements. “It is a tough-love approach to foreign aid,” Neas said. “You have to have controls in place, there has to be efficacy and accountability.”

The MCA passed Congress with bipartisan support but Kreamer and Eshelman want to make sure lawmakers fully fund the project without taking money from other humanitarian aid programs to pay for it.
 
They also pushed for Congressional support for President Bush’s $15 billion, five-year plan to combat HIV/AIDS in Africa. “We just want to make sure that Congress helps President Bush fulfill the promises he made,” Eshelman told Neas.

Forty-two million people around the world are infected with HIV/AIDS and as many as 80 percent of them are in sub-Saharan Africa. “The average life expectancy is 45 years,” Kreamer said. “By 2010, it will be 35 years; by 2015, it will be 31 years if the HIV infection rate isn’t slowed.

“These countries need everything,” she added. “From clean water, to medicine to schools and infrastructure, they need our help and without it they are going to die.”

For Kreamer, a first-time Capitol Hill lobbyist, walking the halls of Congress and pressing her issue was somewhat unnerving. “I was a little intimidated,” she admitted. “You are going into offices of people you haven’t met.”

Others were walking the halls of Congress as well. The Missouri United Methodists were competing for face time and legislative commitments with far more powerful lobbyists representing wealthy corporations.

Despite the competition, Kreamer was not deterred. “Ordinary people can advocate, and we are advocates for those who don’t have power, who don’t have money, and we think we’ve been heard,” she said.

To learn more about Bread for the World or the Offering of Letters, visit the Website www.bread.org.

*Rogers is a writer and producer based in Washington.

News media contact can Linda Green (615) 742-5470 or e-mail newsdesk@umcom.org.

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