Progress is being made! You’ll recall that last April, Highland members participated in an Offering of Letters with Bread for the World, a Christian organization that seeks to reduce hunger and poverty by changing policies that hinder improvement. Last year’s initiative was to advocate for systemic change to the way that our foreign aid is handled—better oversight, more aid to agricultural development, etc.

A post from Bread for the World reports that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved S.1524, the Foreign Assistance Revitalization and Accountability Act of 2009, with fourteen of the seventeen committee members voting in favor. Kay Hagan is one of the co-sponsors. In the house, H.R. 2139, the Initiating Foreign Assistance Reform Act of 2009 now has 121 cosponsors, up from just a few when we began writing
letters. Among them are Brad Miller and David Price. Consider another letter to Senator Burr. Then we will have all our elected officials working on reform.