Seattle Times, January 27, 2009
by Larry Donohue
"Our economic troubles are serious, shaking our confidence in ourselves and in our institutions. In the midst of shrinking retirement portfolios, disappearing jobs and vaporizing dreams of college, our energies can be consumed by thoughts of self.
The statistics on the world's peoples are difficult to internalize. UNICEF reports more than 25,000 children die every day because they lack clean water, adequate nutrition and the basic immunizations that we take for granted. A quarter of developing-world children are undernourished.
Our foreign aid needs to be refocused on reducing poverty. We have the opportunity to change our foreign aid with the focus based on proven methods that worked so well with the Microcredit Summit Campaign:
• Focus on the poorest of the poor;
• Set targets to achieve bold and measurable outcomes such as the Millennium Development Goals and those of the Microcredit Summit;
• Monitor progress to ensure we achieve results.
The price and the promise of our citizenship is to get involved. Write to your senators and representative to make foreign-aid reform a legislative priority that will bring hope and opportunity to the poorest of the poor, not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good."
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http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2008673363_opinb27global.html