Show your support by signing onto a letter to Congress. After reading the letter below, you can electronically sign on to the letter. Your name will appear along with others to a print letter sent directly to the President and to Congress. Information will o nly be used for the purpose of this sign-on letter and is stored on a secure site. America must continue to provide hope for the world s poor, to do otherwise would be to fail in our moral responsibilities abroad.
Public dollars can go a long way when coupled with private effort.
We request that you prevent cuts to humanitarian programs, disaster relief, development assistance, refugee protection and resettlement programs , that, if cut, would do irreparable harm to literally millions of poor and afflicted people in developing countries. Over the years humanitarian and development assistance programs have laid the cornerstones of democracy, cut child mortality in half, protected the health of women, doubled literacy rates and educated millions of children, increased life expectancy from 46 to 63 years, immunized 80 percent of children under two, given more than 1 billion people access to safe drinking water, and allowed families to better plan for the future. Each year US humanitarian assistance provides relief for millions of refugees, internally displaced persons and other victims of natural and human-made disasters in need of immediate shelter, food, medical care and security. Therefore, we urge you, as you have done in the past, to highlight the importance of humanitarian and development assistance to maintaining our country's moral obligations in the world and to protecting our direct national interests. We help ourselves by helping others to prevent environmental degradation on and stem the spread of infectious diseases.