Urge Your Senators and Representative to Prioritize Children in Fiscal Year 2009 Foreign Aid Funding Bill

Write letters to both of your Senators and to your Representative, urging them to speak personally and write to the key decisionmakers who determine foreign aid funding priorities for next year: the Chair and highest ranking Republican member of the House and Senate Foreign Operations Subcommittees of the Appropriations Committees. Ask for their support for key global health and education priorities for the fiscal year 2009 (FY09) foreign aid spending bill.

How to Write a Letter to Your Senators and Representative

• Introduce yourself as a constituent. Acknowledge any actions that your member of Congress has already taken to support children or poverty alleviation and thank him/her.
• Urge him/her to write a personal letter to the chair and ranking member of the Foreign Operations Subcommittee (there is one in both the House and Senate; Senators would write to the Senate Subcommittee and Representatives would write to the House subcommittee) in support of key programs that benefit children living in poor countries in the FY09 foreign aid funding bill (see sample letter and background information below).
• Remind your members of Congress of the importance of these investments in the fight against extreme poverty and how necessary this funding is to reach the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Request a reply and include all of your contact information. Please fax your letter if possible. Call and make sure the aide that handles these issues received your letter. For contact information, go to http://www.house.gov/ or http://www.senate.gov/.

Click here to see a sample letter.

Why Appropriations are So Important and What Congress Should Do

The Foreign Operations Appropriations bill (foreign aid spending bill) is the most important annual opportunity to increase resources for programs that benefit children living in poor countries. It is the primary source of funding for lifesaving international health programs, basic education, and other development assistance. All members of Congress can have an important voice in shaping this bill by writing to and speaking with the leaders on the House or Senate Foreign Operations Subcommittees before they finalize funding levels in the 2009 bill. If members express support for prioritizing children, it will help build momentum and allow Subcommittee decisionmakers to be more bold in their investments benefitting children. Personal communications between members of Congress is an extremely powerful way to influence decisions that will impact millions of lives.

At the Millennium Summit in 2000, the United States pledged support for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to cut extreme poverty and hunger in half by 2015. Congress must act now to demonstrate the U.S. commitment to the MDGs by investing in proven and effective interventions that 1) support orphans and vulnerable children in poor countries and 2) fight major child killers.

Programs that Support and Protect Orphans and Vulnerable Children

Disease, conflict, violence, natural disaster, and severe economic strife leave millions of the world’s youngest people orphaned or otherwise vulnerable. Globally, an estimated 132 million children in the developing world have lost one or both parents, while an additional, larger number of children are highly vulnerable, facing serious risks to their survival and wellbeing. According to UNAIDS, by 2010, 25 million children could be orphaned by HIV/AIDS alone.

According to the U.S. Agency for International Development, highly vulnerable children include those who receive inadequate adult support because of abandonment, economic distress, or chronic illness; have HIV/AIDS or are suspected of having HIV; are directly affected by armed conflict; live outside of family care; or in some other way have suffered from a collapse of traditional social safety nets in their communities. 

These children face a number of challenges, including finding money for school fees, food, clothing, and access to basic healthcare. Their desperation makes them more vulnerable to abuse and exploitation, ultimately making them more susceptible to contracting HIV. Less than 10 percent of orphaned and vulnerable children (OVC) receive any kind of international support, and the majority of the support they do receive comes from their own communities. Effective responses to the challenges facing these children must strengthen the capacity of families and communities to continue providing care, protection, and assistance to them in, at minimum, meeting their basic needs.

According to UNAIDS, an $800 million U.S. investment in 2009 is needed to provide universal HIV treatment, care, support, and prevention services by 2015 to 19 million orphans and vulnerable children. Historically, within the United States Leadership against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Act of 2003, now Public Law 108-25 (the reauthorization of which is currently underway in Congress), 10 percent of all resources devoted to HIV/AIDS have been designated for programs to meet the needs of orphans and vulnerable children. Congress must fully fund the percentage of overall global HIV/AIDS funding authorized for orphans and vulnerable children programming within the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief or "PEPFAR" (at present, the House has authorized a level of nearly $4 billion over five years for OVC and the Senate is expected to take similar action in the near future).

In November 2005, Congress passed and President Bush signed into law Public Law 109-95, The Assistance for Orphans and Other Vulnerable Children in Developing Countries Act of 2005. This law requires the U.S. government to develop a comprehensive strategy for coordinated action to meet the needs of orphans and vulnerable children in the developing world. It also requires a Special Advisor for Assistance to OVC to coordinate all U.S. programs that involve orphans and vulnerable children. PEPFAR, which is part of the bill currently being reauthorized by Congress, is one of several programs that provide significant funding for services for orphans and vulnerable children. However, the administrative support needed to effectively coordinate U.S. government funding and programs for orphans and vulnerable children and properly evaluate coverage and impact of those programs is lacking.  Because PEPFAR is the source of the largest contribution directly for orphans and vulnerable children programming, support for the administration of this coordination and evaluation should be funded by PEPFAR. Even a small amount of $5 million from the 10 percent set aside for OVC could have a huge impact on the ground.

Child Survival and UNICEF’S Accelerated Child Survival and Development Initiative

Each and every day, a huge tragedy occurs: nearly 27,000 children die, mostly from preventable diseases and malnutrition. This needless suffering goes hidden from world view because it occurs in some of the most destitute places on the planet.

Pneumonia, treatable with 27 cents’ worth of antibiotics, accounts for almost one of every five deaths among children under age five each year. Diarrhea, treatable with 6 cents’ worth of oral rehydration salts, causes 17 percent of young children’s deaths. More than one third of child deaths result from complications related to birth, a cluster of causes that includes tetanus (preventable with a $1.20 tetanus vaccine for the mother during pregnancy) and failure to breathe at birth (correctable with a simple mask and plastic bag device that can cost as little as $10).

• Child Survival programs are inexpensive, proven interventions that prevent and treat the biggest child killers, such as pneumonia, diarrheal dehydration, vitamin A deficiency, and malnutrition.
• Maternal Health programs are cost-effective interventions feasible for implementation in resource-poor environments, such as birth preparation through antenatal care and household practices, safe delivery, postpartum and newborn care, and treatment of complications.

The Foreign Operations Subcommittee should expand U.S. investment in Child Survival and Maternal Health programs to $900 million in fiscal year 2009 in order to save the lives of children and mothers, and to promote development. The United States has funded successful interventions over the past two decades that have had a major impact: oral rehydration therapy (ORT) and zinc supplementation to treat diarrhea; basic immunizations for common ailments; micronutrient supplementation to treat malnutrition; and more. These interventions save the lives of approximately 6 million children under age five each year. Unfortunately, while U.S. investments in other key health interventions, such as AIDS or malaria, have expanded greatly in recent years, Child Survival funding has remained stagnant, despite the great need and low cost of these interventions.

Further, while infant and child mortality in the developing world has declined in recent decades, there has been insufficient progress in reducing death rates for mothers and newborns, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. In some developing countries, a mother’s death in childbirth means almost certain death for her newborn infant.

The Foreign Operations Subcommittee should direct an additional $100 million from the U.S. foreign aid budget to support a highly-effective child survival strategy called the Accelerated Child Survival and Development Initiative (ACSD), pioneered by UNICEF. ACSD focuses on scaling up access to a package of integrated, high-impact interventions for communities and families. The package of interventions depends on a community’s needs, and may include insecticide-treated bed nets for malaria prevention, vitamin A tablets to strengthen a child’s immune system, oral rehydration salts to combat diarrheal dehydration, immunizations, anti-retroviral drugs for HIV-infected mothers and children, antibiotics to treat opportunistic AIDS-related illnesses, and drugs to prevent transmission of the HIV virus from mothers to children during birth. In parts of West and Central Africa where UNICEF piloted this initiative, child mortality rates dropped by an average of 20 percent in three years, at a cost of only $500 to $1,000 per child life saved. The African Union has endorsed this child survival strategy, and UNICEF plans to expand this initiative to other countries in Africa and Asia - but these countries will need targeted funding in order to scale up this integrated, community-level approach.

My Own Monsters: Designed by children to benefit children