RESULTS is a U.S. national organization which encourages everyday people to take action in contacting members of congress to prevent cuts for anti-poverty and global development programs. Currently, global protections and foreign aid account for only about one percent of the federal budget, despite the fact that without global funding, there is little growth potential for children in poverty around the world sometimes struggling with the painful effects of malnutrition and overcoming disease sickness with little to no health care access. 40 percent of the world's primary aged children can't read, and 2010 data suggests over seven million children around the world die every year before age five, with 70 percent of those lives lost to preventable causes. This means cutting vital funding for these programs makes already scarce resources even more hard to come by with essential access to healthcare and education, which without essentially takes away the only basic chance they have of survival and to one day be able to experience overcoming poverty.

With the help of programs like Global Partnership for Education, donors have been able to help give education access to tens of million of children in struggling countries with school fees. However, around 75 million children are still waiting on vital funding, sometimes facing gruesomely strenuous wear and tear effects of poverty's breeding stress in violent war environments or the aftermath of a widespread loss of jobs and desperately low access to resources. Congress has been receiving many letters and phone calls, as right now is a very crucial time to get involved. Trump's foreign aid budget is trying to execute major 37 percent cuts when the U.S. contributed 50.1 billion last year, which as I previously mentioned is a meager portion of the total budget. So it's not like we're really asking for much, just a promise to make the morally right decision in continuing to make contributions towards ending poverty and allow everyone who is less fortunate to have a chance of life. Over time, with the establishment of programs like the Reach Every Mother and Child Act and Global Partnership for Education, the number of people living in extreme poverty has been halved just over a generation globally. So we can see the programs work, why are we essentially considering to stop giving help to dependent children, the largest segment of poverty and struggling individuals who can't get healthcare? These are the people who truly need it the most. As long as foreign aid remains protected, we can predict to see the end of preventable deaths in mothers and children by 2035.

The next Huntsville meeting will be held at 12:30 PM Saturday, April 8. We will be watching and interacting in a live conference with RESULTS volunteers nationwide to provide legislative updates, share real stories of positive change around the world, and discuss steps of action in convincing members of Congress to value global and U.S poverty impacts. Depending on the amount of interest, we will most likely be meeting in the Salmon Library at UAH.

However please feel free to contact me, Jordan Searcy, at js0115@uah.edu if you have questions about the meeting or Global Grassroots Organizer Misty Novich at mnovich@results.org for more in-depth information about RESULTS.

Every voice counts!