How much of America's federal budget goes to humanitarian assistance? 25%? Maybe a little more or a little less?

Yeah, try less than 1%. The United States spends roughly $30 million a year on foreign aid, while at the same time, spends $663 billion on military spending.

Along with interning with this website, I am also interning with an organization called The Borgen Project. The Borgen Project is a non profit organization that addresses global poverty and hunger and tries to do whatever it can to end it. The main ways we do that are by informing the public about global poverty and pressuring our leaders in Washington to do something about it.

Essentially, my job as a Political Affairs Intern is to rally my friends, family, classmates, and whoever I can to contact their leaders in Washington to tell them how important addressing global poverty is to them. Ideally, if enough people contact their leaders, they will see how important this issue is, and want to meet with people like me from the Borgen Project. Through emails, letters, phone calls, and my hopeful eventual meeting with them, I will try to push them to cosponsor current bills in the House or Senate that address global poverty.

Here's a little informational video about what the overall organization does.

Here is a list of the success The Borgen Project has had in its short 12 year history.

There are many questions that people ask when it comes to global poverty. Some people ask "Isn't global poverty too big of a problem to address?"

The answer to that is a simple NO.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that $30 billion a year is needed to end global poverty. While I don't believe that the United States should ever have to pay all $30 billion, we spend more on our largest defense contractor and spend $663 billion a year in self defense, which is more than the rest of the world combined. Clearly, we have the money needed to make a difference.

Shouldn't we be more focused on poverty here in America? This isn't a yes or no answer. While we should focus more on domestic poverty than we currently do, we should focus our foreign policy budget on addressing global poverty.

Regardless of the money, isn't it hard to downsize global poverty? No. The Borgen Project lists a 6-step method for ending global poverty.

1. Install a well.

2. Teach poor farmers how to grow more food.

3. Provide shelter.

4. Build schools.

5. Provide vaccines against diseases.

6. Build small medical clinics.

It's that easy.

Now what can you do?

1. Call your two Senators and one Representative and tell them you want them to support the The Borgen Project, the international affairs budget, etc. It literally takes no more than 10 seconds. Their staffer will write the subject of your call on a call log that will be given to the Senator/Representative at the end of the week. The more calls they see about The Borgen Project, the more they will realize this issue is important to their constituents.

2. Email or write your leaders. Same basic thing. If you go to this link-

http://borgenproject.org/action-center/

you can pick the topic you want to email about, put in your basic information, and the website will email your three leaders for you (you'll be able to see the email before you send it of course).

3. Donate. We work as hard as we can to downsize global poverty. But it can't be done without your help. Your donations can help us reach out to other people, groups, Congressional leaders, and the world.

If you have any other questions about The Borgen Project, please visit the organizations website.

http://borgenproject.org/

Thank you for your help. Together, we can end global poverty.

“The Borgen Project is an incredible nonprofit organization that is addressing poverty and hunger and working towards ending them.” – The Huffington Post