NEWS FROM
LUTHERAN WORLD RELIEF
November 13, 2000
For more information contact Jonathan Frerichs at (410) 230-2802.
In this news release:
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Debt Relief for Poor Countries Finally Gets US Funding
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Solid Private Support Earns National Rating for Lutheran World Relief
Debt Relief for Poor Countries Finally Gets U.S. Funding
Baltimore, November 13, 2000 - While election week coverage swamped all else there was good news for the poor last week from Washington: The U.S. government funded international debt relief. Final action on a $435 million appropriation puts the world?s richest nation behind a plan that is already relieving the debts of some of the world?s poorest countries and brightening prospects for their poorest citizens.
At a White House gathering of religious leaders, Members of Congress, labor unions and non-governmental organizations, President Clinton signed a long-delayed debt cancellation measure. It had ultimately gathered broad and bipartisan support.
?The mindset that came together in that room is important,? said Jim Bowman, Lutheran World Relief?s public policy director who represented LWR at the ceremony. ?There was a recognition of the moral responsibility and financial opportunity to really make a difference. It transcended partisanship.? The international debt relief campaign Jubilee 2000 was instrumental in pressing for action on the issue.
Each dollar devoted to the plan will support $30 of debt relief. Now that the U.S. has acted, contributions from rich nations and international monetary institutions will lift as much as $90 billion of debt payments from 33 countries in the years ahead. Eleven of these countries have qualified for relief already. LWR has projects and partners in nine of them - Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Honduras, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Senegal, Tanzania and Uganda - and works among the kind of people who stand to benefit.
In recent years poor countries with heavy debts have been spending more money on repayment than on education and health care combined. The global debt relief plan requires that monies that would have gone to repay debts be redirected toward poverty programs, with citizen involvement. In Mozambique, for example, despite two-thirds of the population living in poverty and serious flooding earlier this year, infant mortality has dropped, school enrollment has increased and inflation has all but disappeared since $3.2 billion out of $4.2 billion in debts were cancelled during the last two years.
Bowman noted that the Jubilee 2000 campaign is not going to disappear. Members will monitor progress toward the goals of the debt relief plan and work to ensure that the U.S. funds the balance of its pledge, $375 million, during the next two years.
The campaign was begun with church leadership in the mid-1990s. Its inspiration is an Old Testament call for the redress of economic injustices every 50 years. LWR is a member. In recent weeks support for U.S. funding became so broad that Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, a main opponent in Congress, remarked recently that not since the early church gathered at the Council of Nicaea has there been "a larger gathering of holy people in one place than the people who came to see me about debt forgiveness."
(See www.lwr.org/action/advocacy/debtrelief.html for more information.)
Solid Private Support Earns National Rating for Lutheran World Relief
Baltimore, November 13, 2000 - Lutheran World Relief is one of four Lutheran organizations listed in a national review of charities that attract the most private support. LWR was 370th on the Chronicle of Philanthropy?s annual listing of 400 charities. For the fiscal year of 1999 LWR received $28,115,392 in private support, the periodical noted, just behind the International Lutheran Layman?s League and the ELCA Foundation.
Lutheran Services in America, an umbrella grouping of nearly 300 domestic social service agencies, is No. 6 on the newspaper?s list. The Salvation Army, with $1.3 billion in private donations, is No. 1.
