Foreign Aid: A Study in Pie Charts

Something about me...I like pie and I like pie charts. I especially like pies that can easily be cut up to into mathematical representations (not the sloppy berry ones...nice firm custards, chocolates, and pumpkins). 

I was on a webinar with Shot@Life champions and they had some great pie charts I want to share with everyone! Consider it a primer for federal budget season.

A common complaint heard from Main Street to Capitol Hill is, "We send too much money away to take care of poor people in other countries when we have Americans in need right here." If you ever hear this, ask the person how much they think the United States government spends on poverty-focused foreign aid. Even among people who care a lot (like the new Shot@Life champions participating on the webinar), the guesses are often that we send 3% or 5% or even 10% to fight poverty abroad. The reality is that number is less than 1%... approximately 0.07%.

Now, I could stop right there. But...pie charts!!!

In the first chart, we see the big hunks of pie. Social security and U.S. health programs are sizable chunks that actually DO help low-income Americans. On the right, though, check out the sliver labelled International Affairs at < 1%. That's where our global poverty programs are, but we're not even narrowing it down to my favorite global health stuff yet...  

Okay, the second chart expands that sliver (I'm not sure why it's labelled 1.6% here, but it's still small, so go with it for now) and shows that only 18% of that tiny amount is used for global health initiatives. This is the part that protects mothers and babies in poverty from starving, fights infectious diseases to prevent an epidemic of drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) showing up in the U.S., and a host of other vital programs.

The last chart expands that little bit and shows how much goes to various diseases (like TB, AIDS, and malaria), nutrition, and other health-related programs. Even if I had a key lime pie to sit and dissect with you today, there's no way we could slice it that thinly to even show you!

Now, note that vaccines are less than 5% of that tiny slice!

So, when I go with my fellow champions to Capitol Hill this month, we'll be advocating to defend that little green sliver of pie. In real dollars, that amounts to $290 million...which sounds like a lot taken out of context. But now, you're savvy enough to know that it's a very small portion of our budget that we can well afford in order to control diseases and save lives. Committing to keep up a pledge up of $290 million for four years would provide immunizations for 300 million additional children and save up to 8 million more lives. When you consider that 1.5 million children still die annually from vaccine preventable diseases each year, that sounds like a great investment!

If YOU would like to help protect life-saving vaccination programs, call your members of Congress today and ask them to support funding for Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance at the level of $290 Million in the fiscal year 2021 budget!

Mom-Advocate Life: Andrea Riley

In advocacy as well as motherhood, sometimes things don't go according to plan.  When illness or unexpected surprises pop up, you just have to gather up your dignity and roll with it! 

Andrea Riley is a Shot@Life Champion from Lincoln, Nebraska. As a dedicated activist for vaccines to prevent global child deaths, she knows the value of building great relationships with aides in district offices. For many of us, it can be common to drop by casually with a delivery or a message for a local staffer since local district offices can be a lot less formal than Washington D.C. But when Congressman Jeff Fortenberry unexpectedly dropped in on her 2016 meeting...well, read on with Andrea's story!

"As a mother you pick up so much from your kids; however, sometimes you just seem to pick up their germs more than anything. It was October, I was working and my 11-month-old daughter was in child care, and we had been catching every bug imaginable. I had made an appointment at my U.S. Representative's office to talk to them about keeping kids healthy worldwide through global vaccination, but had to cancel and reschedule twice due to illness - the irony was not lost on me. Fortunately, the germs we managed to catch were not life-threatening and we had great medical care. Others around the world are not so lucky, which is why I am a Shot@Life Champion and advocate for funds to provide life-saving vaccines for children in developing countries where they are most needed.  

"I had rescheduled my appointment with an aide at the local office of my Representative for a Friday afternoon.  It was casual Friday where I worked - which was only a block from my Representative's office - and I still wasn't feeling great, so I went to work and the meeting in my casual clothes and a Shot@Life lapel pin. I had a friend join me and luckily she was dressed like a professional. I just didn't have enough energy that day to look fancy. I'd met with this aide before and didn't think she would mind. I really wanted the meeting before World Polio Day (held every year at the end of October), so it would have to do. We walked over to the office and checked in.  As we were waiting for the aide, much to my surprise and horror, our Congressman walks in. Here I am wearing what I call my "Husker pajamas" and I see, for the first time, my member of Congress in the flesh. We had no idea he was even in town!  He sees me and my friend and was immediately embarrassed. 

"Yes, you read that right, he was embarrassed. The first thing he said was, 'If I would have known I'd be seeing constituents I'd be wearing better shoes! I'm so sorry, I'm caught off-guard and I've got my old shoes on!' I didn't find his shoes to be bad at all! I just couldn't believe that he was embarrassed for being underdressed when I was the one who was mortified! I was relieved he didn't seem to notice my completely unprofessional attire and took the opportunity to tell him briefly about what I was there for and then I asked him for a picture. He politely agreed, but instructed his aide to take it horizontally because he didn't want his shoes in the shot.  :)"

Andrea Riley and her colleague Elizabeth Esseks meet with
Congressman Jeff Fortenberry in his district office

Andrea knew that this experience was just one of many she would continue to have with this particular office. Of course, we always want to make a good impression, but a chance encounter like this can help to remind everyone how human we are whether we hold an elected position or not. If find yourself in an odd situation, just hold your head up high and speak out for the people you represent!

"Don't Waste My Time!": Keeping Volunteers Engaged

The poster you see in the picture hangs in my local Starbucks and it earns a grunt of annoyance from me every time I see it. I feel like the person who designed it has never done volunteer organizing at all! I swear to you that most volunteers have thought that quote to themselves at one point or another. Truly, I think it myself every time I attend a poorly-run meeting.

Volunteers are wonderful people. They give freely of their time to make the world a better place whether they are citizen lobbyists or soup kitchen servers. Parents who volunteer are doubly special because they take time away from swiftly-growing children for causes they believe in. Therefore, as organizers, we need to value the precious hours they give us by providing enriching and rewarding experiences! Without that, volunteers will drift away looking for the next thing that will give meaning to the work.

Here are my four best ideas for about volunteers engaged in your group:

1. Empower Your Volunteers
Don't think of your volunteers merely as minions carrying out tasks. Nobody likes to feel ordered around! Cultivate leaders by giving them full ownership of their responsibilities. Help them to see their part in your shared vision and decide the best way they can accomplish the goal themselves. In this way, teammates can share their creativity and personal strengths with one another.

This is remarkably similar to the parenting technique where you give kids the responsibility for picking up their rooms by a certain time, but don't micro-manage how it gets done. They can sing while they do it, they can clean alphabetically, they can clean by color...it's up to them!

2. Find new activities and goals for your group

Girl Scouts make a poster for their U.S. Representative

Doing the same thing over and over gets stale. Luckily, there are infinite ways to advocate! Breathe new life into your activism by involving different kinds of people or learning skills together. If the group seems tired of just writing letters to Congress together or burned out from prepping for congressional meetings, try teaching a girl scout group to take action with you by making posters! Or, take letter writing to the next level by writing a letter to the editor for print in your local newspaper. Take your whole group out to birddog a candidate at a town hall. Creative outreach events and fundraisers to attract new supporters are also great opportunities for all sorts of memorable interactions. 

3. Celebrate the results of your work together
It's incredibly important that we specifically tell volunteers how their efforts have helped change the world or helped an individual person. RESULTS founder Sam Daley-Harris wrote in an op-ed in the South Florida Sun Sentinel about our need to know our time is well spent. He was lecturing at a university about advocacy to tackle huge world problems like climate change or global health when a student asked him: “What if we don’t have time to get involved in big issues?” Sam wrote, "I told her that if she was holding down two or three jobs just to put food on the table, I’d agree with the 'not enough time' excuse. But in a country that binges on TV shows and spends hours on Facebook, I say most people do have enough time. We just don’t have time for things we don’t think will make a difference. We’re not willing to play Don Quixote, dreaming the impossible dream, if we think we’ll wake up only to find it was a nightmare."

The Shot@Life logo is especially
easy for cupcakes!

So, find a way to help your group see the impact of their efforts! It can be as small as surprise logo cupcakes and bubbly at a meeting while discussing a legislative win and what it means for people in poverty. (Since my RESULTS team is 50% middle and high schoolers, bubbly for that group is sparkling apple cider) But when we finally got the Education for All global education bill passed after 10 years, we held a celebratory brunch to recap all our efforts and think about the ways it will transform lives. Heck, yeah, that deserved a brunch! 

4. Appreciate and recognize effort
Sometimes it's a simple "Way to go!" given in private. Other times, public recognition on social media or a heartfelt, hand-written note are better ways to show your appreciation for volunteer efforts big and small. Teresa Rugg is the Advocacy Teams Training Consultant for the Friends Committee on National Legislation. She knows that being cognizant of where volunteers are in their own life journeys and what gifts they can share in the moment is so important. She shared, “We are always careful that we celebrate all of the actions that the teammates can bring, whether they brought the salad or took down names at an event. Every single contribution is important to the team. Someone opened up their home. Someone shared a story in a lobby visit that no one else could tell. This attitude is omnipresent when I’m training teams.” 

How are you keeping your team engaged? I'd love to learn from you!

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