Congress finally passed, and the President signed into law, the final spending bill for the fiscal year 2012 that includes funding for poverty-focused international assistance. In an extraordinary turn-about, funding levels for these lifesaving and life-changing accounts increased by nearly 3% over fiscal year 2011 levels. You did it! Your advocacy, along with efforts from many Catholics and others across the United States, helped restore some of the deep cuts made to poverty-focused international humanitarian and development assistance last year.

This outcome means that our nation will continue to do its part to feed the hungry, vaccinate children from deadly diseases, shelter refugees fleeing conflict, and provide clean water to impoverished communities around the world. This is a significant accomplishment in such a difficult economic environment. Read more about the impact of this development in the Catholic Relief Services press release.

There is some bad news, though. The Emergency Migration and Refugee Assistance and Debt Restructuring accounts unfortunately suffered significant cuts this year. And we expect these budget battles to continue next year, with more at stake and more serious cuts to poverty-focused international assistance looming. Your voice will be needed more than ever before to keep the momentum going!

To learn more about what your advocacy efforts accomplished this year, make sure to join our conference call on December 20, 1:00-2:00 p.m. EDT.

Thanks to the time you took to raise your voice with your elected officials, children and families across the globe will enjoy special gifts this Christmas: desperately needed assistance amidst difficult challenges in their lives.

By Martha J. Wyatt

I lived in San Francisco in 1989 and experienced the Loma Prieta earthquake. Feeling my home here in Tulsa rattle and shake, I was again reminded of how a natural disaster brings a community together to repair the damage to structures and psyches.

In September, I was a member of an advocacy group sponsored by Catholic Relief Services that traveled to Kenya and saw first hand the positive work our shared foreign development aid was doing to alleviate another natural disaster – drought. Near the Dadaab refugee camp, I saw for myself that digging wells, providing agricultural access for good crops, working with communities literally to grow their own futures will impact directly our own good here.

Read the full letter to the editor in the Tulsa World.

“We’re talking about lives — great numbers of lives that are saved with minimal input on our part,” said the Most Rev. Denis Madden, the Roman Catholic auxiliary bishop of Baltimore and vice chair of Catholic Relief Services, on Wednesday (Nov. 2).

Madden affirmed that poverty-focused international aid makes up just 0.6 percent of the federal budget, but that amount feeds more than 46 million people and saves 3 million lives through immunizations each year.

Read more about the battle over foreign aid in The Washington Post.

Deacon Joseph R. Symkowick, Partnerships & Advocacy Officer, Catholic Relief Services, West Region recently visited east Africa and filed this related report.

The U.S. Senate is expected to consider a range of appropriations bills this week that could include funding levels for poverty-focused international assistance. Life-saving poverty-focused international assistance that fights hunger, disease and poverty makes up less than 1 percent of the U.S. federal budget. However, proposals in Congress would drastically cut this assistance to people in dire need. Join the urgent call to protect poor and vulnerable communities around the world

Urge your Senators to maintain the Senate Appropriations Committee-proposed funding levels for international humanitarian and development assistance in the FY 2012 State and Foreign Operations Appropriations bill and to oppose any amendments that would cut poverty-focused international assistance. Your action is particularly important because the funding levels for FY 2012 will set the stage for funding levels over the next decade. Poverty-focused international assistance doesn’t have a large, vocal constituency unless you speak up now. Cutting less than 1% of the federal budget will not balance the budget or solve the deficit but it will cost lives.

Call 1-866-596-7030 or send an e-mail now.

He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives…to let the oppressed go free…” (Lk 4:18-19)

Human trafficking is considered modern day slavery. It begins with a lure–a promise of something so much better than what a high school graduate in Moldova, a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, or a child laborer in India might find in their own desperately poor villages.  Employment. Education. Opportunity. That’s the bait.

Then there’s the switch. The woman answers an ad to work overseas and arrives in a new country only to have her passport confiscated by people who force her into prostitution. The child is taken far from family and forced to work on a farm without pay, without protection, without schooling.

Human trafficking is the illegal trade of human beings for the purposes of forced labor, sexual exploitation and even the sale of organs.  And it’s lucrative, annually generating $32 billion a year worldwide. That’s why it’s one of the fastest growing criminal industries in the world, exceeded only by the illegal arms industry and second only to the drug trade.

Viewed through the lens of Catholic social teaching, human trafficking is a crime against the most basic aspects of human dignity and human rights. It preys on the poor and vulnerable and exploits their labor.  Under threat and often in isolated conditions, trafficked people have no community support, no recourse, no voice. Largely hidden from view, the scope of human trafficking has long gone unnoticed by the developed world, which often benefits from the cheap labor and economic, though illicit, gain. But that is changing. Use these prayer resources to pray for an end human trafficking.

The Catholic Church in the United States and around the world has called on people of faith to respond by creating tougher international laws that punish those who benefit economically from trafficking, protecting and providing services to those who have become its victims, and eliminating the conditions of poverty and social vulnerability that place people at-risk. Download and share this Catholics Confront Global Poverty human trafficking overview with your parish, students, friends and family.

In the United States, Catholic Relief Services and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops have been advocating before the U.S. Congress to reauthorize the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA). The TVPRA establishes the United States’ efforts and leadership to combat the multi-billion dollar human trafficking industry through prevention efforts, prosecution of those who profit from it, and protection of its victims.  However, the Congress allowed the TVPRA to expire on September 30. Read this recent Catholic Relief Services op-ed in the Huffington Post detailing why the TVPRA must move forward in Congress without delay.

Raise your voice to end human trafficking!

Last week, the TVPRA overcame a first hurdle when it was passed by the House Foreign Affairs Committee.  Check out the webcast of the proceedings. The Senate Judiciary Committee is supposed to consider its version of the TVPRA-which CRS and the USCCB have strongly endorsed-this week. The bill faces several more hurdles as it makes its way through the legislative process. Let your Senators know that you support S. 1301, the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act. Read the action alert and share with others.

Why now? Congress and the President are now negotiating and making decisions about final funding levels for the FY 2012 federal budget, which began on October 1 and how to deal with our nation’s deficits in the long-term. Your action is particularly important now because the funding levels for FY 2012 will become the template for decisions about how much the U.S. invests in life-saving poverty-focused assistance for the next decade. Poverty-focused international assistance doesn’t have a large, vocal constituency unless you speak up now. Don’t make this lifesaving assistance one of the easiest areas for your elected officials to cut in the federal budget even though it’s less than 1% of the budget.

Will my one action make a difference? Yes! Your voice made a difference earlier this year when we limited cuts to these life-saving accounts. Congress and the President respond to the input of their constituents. Your voice, along with many others in support of our brothers and sisters around the world, can and will protect poverty-focused international assistance.

What Else Can I Do?
• E-mail your friends and family members and ask them to make a call.
• Spread the word via Twitter using the common hashtag #cutscostlives. Visit our blog for sample tweets.
• Spread the word via Facebook by posting a message on your Facebook page. Visit our blog for sample posts.
• Write a letter to the editor in your diocesan and local newspaper. Call your diocesan communications department or the CRS communications office for assistance.
• Visit your members of Congress’ local office to talk about these issues. Call your CRS regional office for assistance.

Samples for Twitter

Spread the world via Twitter using the common hashtag #cutscostlives.

• I just told my members of Congress that careless cuts to poverty-focused international assistance costs lives. Join me to SAY NO to budget cuts that will hurt the world’s poor & to SAY YES to shared sacrifice. Will you? #cutscostlives  @CatholicRelief
• URGENT: Tell Congress that Careless Cuts Cost Lives! Stop disproportionate cuts to poverty-focused international assistance that helps fights poverty, disease, and hunger #cutscostlives @CatholicRelief  Tell Congress to stop careless cuts to poverty-focused international assistance that saves lives and lifts people out of poverty. #cutscostlives @CatholicRelief
• <1% of US budget saves millions of lives around the world and lifts up the world’s poor. DON’T let Congress take that away! #cutscostlives @CatholicRelief
• Protect human life and dignity! Tell Congress NO to careless cuts to poverty-focused international assistance that saves lives. #cutscostlives @CatholicRelief
• Poverty-focused international assistance was cut by 8% last year and the House wants to cut another 13% this year. Tell Congress: these careless cuts cost lives. #cutscostlives @CatholicRelief

Samples for Facebook

Spread the word via Facebook by posting a message on your Facebook page.

• Take Action Now: Tell Congress not to cut poverty-focused international assistance that saves millions of lives, and helps lift people out of crushing poverty.
• Lives will be lost if Congress votes to cut funding for poverty-focused international assistance that fights disease and hunger. Please tell your members of Congress to stop these disproportionate and careless budget cuts!
• URGENT: Tell your members of Congress to SAY NO to careless budget cuts that will cost lives among the world’s poor and to SAY YES to shared sacrifice:
• Less than 1% of the US budget goes to poverty-focused international assistance, saving lives and lifting people out of poverty. Don’t let Congress make disproportionate and careless cuts that cost lives!

What is the issue? After decades of war between the north and south, the people of southern Sudan voted to become the world’s newest nation on July 9, 2011. However, the long-term peace and stability in all of Sudan is at a critical juncture.

With only weeks to independence, many of the key issues of the peace agreement that brought an end to the north-south civil war in 2005, known as the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), remain unsettled. These include border demarcation, citizenship, wealth sharing, and the security and rights of minorities, particularly of those remaining in the north. In response to recent fighting in Abyei, a disputed border area, the northern army attacked and has occupied the town, while tensions in Southern Kordofan, and Blue Nile continue to escalate. This violence threatens the CPA. The suffering and insecurity of the people in Darfur must also be resolved

Go here for the rest of the story and to email President Obama.

Congress recently passed and the President signed into law the budget that funds U.S. government activities through September 30, 2011. The FY 2011 budget cut poverty-focused international assistance by more than 8 percent. We are bracing for more drastic cuts in the next budget cycle now that Congress has begun working on the FY 2012 budget that will fund U.S. government activities from October 1, 2011 until September 30, 2012. Watch the recording of the webcast, originally aired on April 27, 2011 to learn more about what this agreement means for our brothers and sisters who are poor and vulnerable overseas.

For more information, read a Letter to the House on FY 2012 Budget Resolution by Bishop Stephen E. Blaire and Bishop Howard J. Hubbard, and read “Taking a Moral Stand on the Budget” by the USCCB and CRS staff.

A new peace initiative by a group of former Israeli government, intelligence and security officials along with the Arab Peace Initiative, and the Geneva Accord, offer key principles and ideas for negotiations to achieve comprehensive Arab-Israeli-Palestinian peace. Achieving peace is urgent given the current stalemate in negotiations and the threat of escalating violence between Israelis and Palestinians.

What do you want me to do?

Contact President Obama now and urge him to exercise strong U.S. leadership for Holy Land peace.

Ask him to coordinate with the other members of the “Quartet” (the United Nations, European Union, Russia) to support the main elements being addressed in the various peace negotiations, including:

• Creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, based on the 1967 borders with possible limited land swaps as mutually agreed;

• A fair negotiated resolution of the issue of refugees that does not threaten the demography of Israel;

• The sharing of Jerusalem by Israel and the Palestinian state with both having their capitals in the city;

• Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights as part of a peace agreement with Syria; and

• Guarantees for free access to Jewish, Christian and Muslim holy places.

Learn more about:

• A recent letter signed by Catholic and other Christian, Jewish, and Muslim leaders to President Obama in support of Holy Land peace negotiations;

• The conflict in the Holy Land, its connection to our Catholic faith and how USCCB proposes to resolve it;

• How CRS is responding to the needs of the Palestinians and promoting peace in the Holy Land.

Take Action Now!

• E-mail, fax or print and mail President Obama from our Action Center http://actioncenter.crs.org;

• Call 1-702-577-2339 for talking points and to be connected to the White House.