1. Instructions to the Offering of Letters event organizer or presenter:
This PowerPoint presentation is one of several tools in the Offering of Letters toolkit that are provided to help you introduce the 2016 Offering of Letters campaign to your church, campus, or group. Use this presentation to support the way YOU want to present Bread for the World’s Offering of Letters. Feel free to add or remove slides as you like. Also, remember Bread is here to help. As you plan your Offering of Letters, feel free to reach out to your regional organizer for additional tips, updates on legislation relating to the campaign, and additional support.
Talking points for the presentation are provided in the notes section with each slide—suggestions for what to say while that slide is projected on the screen. Instructions to you, which should not be read aloud, are in brackets in the notes section.
For ideas on how to use this PowerPoint, see page 11 of the Conducting an Offering of Letters booklet (one of the inserts in the toolkit). Note that slides 2 through 4 are an optional introduction to Bread for the World and the grassroots advocacy it does. If the participants in your forum already know about Bread or you have limited time, you can skip the next three slides and go directly to slide 5 to discuss the Offering of Letters.
Be sure to review this PowerPoint file—both the slides and the notes—before delivering your presentation. Rehearse delivering your spoken part, using the notes with each slide, as necessary. You may want to print out the slides and notes (an option in the print menu of PowerPoint) so you have a document to refer to as only the slide content (and not the notes) will be shown to your audience during the showing of the PowerPoint presentation.
* * * BEGINNING OF TALKING POINTS FOR FIRST SLIDE * * *
Welcome to this discussion of Bread for the World’s 2016 Offering of Letters, which focuses on the nutrition of mothers and children around the world.
[Option 1: Go on to slide 2 to speak about Bread for the World and the important grassroots advocacy work it does on hunger issues.]
[Option 2: Skip to slide 5 to speak about Bread for the World’s campaign in 2015 on child feeding and nutrition programs in the United States.]

2. What is Bread for the World?
Bread for the World is a collective Christian voice urging our nation’s decision makers to end hunger at home and abroad. By changing policies, programs, and conditions that allow hunger and poverty to persist, we provide help and opportunity far beyond the communities in which we live.
[This is a good opportunity for you to briefly tell how you became involved with Bread for the World and why as a volunteer you contribute your time and talent to its advocacy work. You can also ask for a show of hands of people who are Bread members or who have participated in advocacy with Bread.]
[Depending on your audience’s familiarity with Bread for the World and your time for this presentation, you may want to show the video “We are Bread for the World” (7-minute version at or 1-minute version at The 1-minute version is included on the DVD with this PowerPoint presentation.)]

3. Bread for the World is: Ecumenical Bipartisan About advocacy
About justice
Years of experience and success
Personalized letters and s
Possible talking points:
Today we want to take action as part of Bread for the World’s mission to end hunger.
Every year, Bread identifies one aspect of hunger that people across the nation will write letters about. The goal is to flood the offices of our elected officials in Washington, D.C., with letters and s on that single issue so that they know that we as Christians and as their constituents care about issues that affect people living in poverty and hunger.
Bread is committed to being ecumenical and bipartisan – no specific denomination or political party has the monopoly on speaking about issues of hunger and poverty.

4. Our Work Makes a Difference!
[Before you deliver this presentation, look at the back cover of your Offering of Letters toolkit at our recent successes. Which ones would you like to lift up during your presentation? Would domestic or international issues speak best to your audience? Choose an example or two to illustrate how letters as part of Bread’s Offering of Letters campaigns have made a difference in the past.]

5. Progress against hunger, but still more work to do
Since 1990, the number of people who are hungry in the world has fallen by over 200 million.
795 million people do not have enough food to lead a healthy, active life.
This is the reason we’re here today:
Worldwide, especially in developing countries, there has been great progress toward ending hunger in the last few decades.
Since 1990, the number of people who are hungry in the world has fallen by over 200 million, even while the world’s population has increased.
Now is not the time to relax. The nations of the world can finish the job and end extreme hunger once and for all. We can do it by 2030 – within a generation.
There remain 795 million people around the world who do not have enough food to lead a healthy, active life. That's about one in nine people on earth.
The groups most vulnerable to hunger are women and children. The majority of subsistence farmers in developing countries are women, and children are vulnerable because they need to be cared for by others.
Focusing on the nutrition of mothers and children is a way to tackle a large part of the overall hunger problem. Addressing hunger means not only providing enough food (the quantity) but the right types of food – the quality of the food. In other words, nutrition is important.
We all know how important it is for children to get vitamins and minerals in their diet in order to have healthy bodies and minds as they grow up. And women who have had babies know that it’s important to be healthy before, during, and after a pregnancy. In developing countries, getting enough food and enough nutrition is often a challenge. Smallholder farmers face challenges like a strong dependence on the weather, a limited variety of crops and diet, and limited arable land.

6. Our goal:
Congress should support robust funding for nutrition and health for mothers, newborns, and young children. Congress can also pass the Global Food Security Act and reform the ways it provides food aid.
Congress plays a critical role in setting the policies and funding levels that will enable the U.S. government to do its part to improve nutrition and health among mothers and children overseas. Through this Offering of Letters, you can help Congress summon the political will to do this.
Congress must support robust funding for nutrition and health for mothers, newborns, and young children. It can do this by:
passing the Global Food Security Act
reforming the ways it provides food aid
The Global Food Security Act will ensure continued U.S. investments in agriculture, thus improving nutrition and increasing the productivity of smallholder farmers. Reforming food aid will also allow the U.S. to provide humanitarian assistance in a timely and more effective way. This means of providing food will benefit women and children, who need the right kind of nutrition in the 1,000-day window between pregnancy and age 2.

7. What can this achieve? Better nutrition means:
More children surviving childhood into adulthood
Fewer mothers dying in childbirth
Fewer children who are stunted
We’ve already made great progress in the areas of child survival and preventing the deaths of mothers in childbirth through improved nutrition and other means:
This year compared to 1990:
17,000 more children will live every day
650 more mothers will survive childbirth every day
Stunting is caused by malnutrition during childhood. It is a disruption to a child’s physical and cognitive growth. It can cause lifelong problems with education, productivity, and earning potential.
It all adds up to mothers and children surviving and thriving with healthy, active lives.

8. Now let’s write!
Writing is the first step in this process – a chain reaction that starts with you:
Step 1: You and people in thousands of churches and faith communities across the U.S. write letters to their members of Congress, urging their support of programs that end hunger and poverty.
Step 2: Congress determines funding and policy for U.S. government programs that address hunger and poverty.
Step 3: The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the main agency in the federal government responsible for humanitarian aid overseas, operates programs across the globe.
Step 4: Partners of USAID, including church-related agencies, implement the work on the ground.
Step 5: Hungry people living in poverty get the help they need and take life-changing action.
As part of this year’s Offering of Letters, we want to write to Congress to ask them to increase funding to at least $230 million in the nutrition programs of the global health account in the State Department foreign operations appropriations bill. In other words, we are asking Congress to make sure the government has adequate funds in its account for its nutrition-related work.

9. Key components of a letter to Congress
Make it personal. What motivates you to write?
Make your request clear.
Include your address in the letter.
[Your Offering of Letters kit contains a sample letter, including addresses for your members of Congress (page 10 in the bound part). For up-to-date sample letters or more background information, contact your regional organizer or visit Bread’s Offering of Letters website at

10. Dear Congress:
I urge you to increase funding to at least $230 million in the nutrition programs of the global health account in the State Department foreign operations appropriations bill.
Sincerely,
Your Constituent
[Be sure to have the names and spellings of your area’s members of Congress on hand; you don’t want people not to participate simply because they’re not sure to whom they should write.]

11. Get involved! Become a Bread member Join/start a local Bread Team
Visit your member of Congress
Become a Bread Covenant Church
Visit
[After you write your letters, consider ways you can do more in advocacy through Bread for the World maximize your impact.]

12. Thank you! www.bread.org/OL
[After the letter writing, thank those who helped to organize it and those who participated. If you had a small number of people writing letters, assure them that for most members of Congress it takes only about 10 letters for the office to notice the topic and assign a legislative aide to research it and form an opinion.]
[Finally, don’t forget to report your Offering of Letters to Bread for the World – the paper report form and the link to the online report form are available in the kit.]
Thank you for speaking to Congress about helping mothers and children survive and thrive!