Why Should You Write a Letter to the Editor?

Children can be made vulnerable by a number of factors. One of the most obvious and tragic is when a young child loses a parent. By the end of 2003, 143 million children were orphaned worldwide.

The HIV/AIDS pandemic is a major factor in the growing crisis of orphans and other vulnerable children in sub-Saharan Africa; a child loses a parent to HIV/AIDS every 14 seconds. But upper respiratory infections, diarrhea, malaria, tuberculosis, water-born illnesses, maternal mortality, malnutrition, lack of education, poverty, economic exploitation, abuse and armed conflict also make children highly vulnerable.

In 2005, President Bush signed into law the Assistance for Orphans and Other Vulnerable Children in Developing Countries Act. This law was an important first step in ensuring that all children have access to health care, nutrition, education, and support services. Unfortunately, a full two years later, our government has not yet fully complied with the most important of its mandates.

Write a letter to the editor urging the President to appoint a high-level, full-time special advisor whose sole responsibility is to prioritize Highly Vulnerable Children and ensure compliance with the 2005 Orphans law.

Becoming an Advocate

Letters to the editor are an important advocacy tool. They are quick to write, relatively easy to have published, and are the most widely read section in the paper. Politicians and government agencies routinely clip and circulate letters to the editor as an indicator of what is important to their constituents.

Letters to the editor, while often "reactive" to news already reported, can keep the story alive and the debate raging. Journalism is one of the rare professions in which controversy is good. Reporters get "extra points" when their stories spark debate. A furious war on the letters-to-the-editor page warms the hearts of reporters and delights editors. Among other things, it means people are reading the paper.

Tips on Generating a Letter to the Editor (adapted from materials from RESULTS, http://www.results.org/)

Be Current: Responding to a recent article in the newspaper or to a very recent event is a great way to increase your odds of being published. Refer specifically to the article by using the name of the article and date, such as "In response to your recent article on child care . . .". Letters submitted the day a story appears stand the best chance of being published, though a window of a few days is often fine, too.

You can do a search on the newspaper’s website for recent articles, using search words like "global health," "HIV/AIDS," or "Vulnerable Children" for a few days before writing your letter, and then skim them looking for a "hook" that you can hang your response on, even if it is a stretch.

Be Clear and Concise: Keep your letter short and to the point. Stick to one subject and check your grammar. After you have written your letter, read it out loud and listen to it. Have you made your point clear? Can you shorten your letter and still get your point across?

Most papers will not print letters that are more than 250 words, or two to three paragraphs in length. The shorter the letter, the better chance it will be published. Check your paper’s guidelines for specific details.

Be Controversial: feel free to question or challenge what others have said or done, and even start your letter off with a feisty first sentence. However, be sure to avoid personal attacks. An argument based on merit rather than emotion tends to sway opinion.

Be Personal: Make sure you mention why this issue matters to you. Form letters don’t make it into the papers; editors are looking to see that people care about what they’re writing about.

Coordinate Your Efforts: Ask others you know to send in letters to the editor at the same time to maximize your odds of getting published and emphasize the importance of the issue. Whether they print your letters or not, you are letting the paper know what issues the community cares about.

Contact information: Include your address, e-mail and a daytime and evening phone number. They won’t print this information, but may use it to confirm that you indeed wrote that piece of art.

If your letter is printed, be sure to send a copy to Global Action for Children at 1413 K Street, NW, 6^th Floor, Washington, D.C. 20005.

Take Action! Write a Letter to the Editor on the Need for a High-Level Advisor on OVC.

1. Acknowledge (and "hook" your letter to) any recent global HIV/AIDS or children’s policy issue the newspaper has recently covered.
2. Inform your newspaper that since 1990 the number of orphans from all causes has risen by 50 percent in sub-Saharan Africa.
3. Let them know that, in response to this crisis, President Bush signed the Assistance for Orphans and Other Vulnerable Children in Developing Countries Act into law in 2005. This law authorized the U.S. government to provide the first thorough response to the needs of orphans and highly vulnerable children worldwide.
4. Explain that while there has been some progress over the past two years, the most important components of the law have not been met.
5. Remind the newspaper that this is an emergency and that too much time has lapsed already.
6. Call on President Bush to appoint a high-level, full-time OVC Special Advisor now who will devise and effectively implement and monitor a comprehensive strategy to address the critical needs of the developing world’s highly vulnerable children.

Include all of your contact information. Limit the length of your letter to 150-250 words.

Sample Letter

Thank you for your recent coverage of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. AIDS and other illnesses associated with poverty have taken a huge toll on children globally. Millions of them have lost one or both of their parents. In addition to the emotional suffering associated with losing a care-giver, orphaned and other vulnerable children are at a higher risk of missing out on school, going hungry, suffering abuse, and being exposed to HIV.

While the world has been taking concerted action to address the HIV/AIDS pandemic in recent years, the impact of the epidemic on children has not received the attention it deserves.

Action by our government could make a difference. One effective way would be for President Bush to appoint a high-level, full-time special advisor for Highly Vulnerable Children whose sole responsibility would be to prioritize this issue and ensure compliance with the 2005 Orphans law.

I am grateful to our President for his strong leadership against HIV/AIDS worldwide. I hope he will now take this next step to ensure that orphans and vulnerable children in some of the poorest countries on the planet, can grow up safe, healthy and well-educated, with the chance to achieve their true potential.

For more information, contact Leila Nimatallah, GAC Policy Director, at 202.589.0808 X223 or LNimatallah@globalactionforchildren.org

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