Thanksgiving | Be a Seed for Change

CARE -- Help Abebu and other mothers feed their families and escape poverty -- Make a gift today

You hold the power to bring an end to chronic hunget and poverty. -- Make a gift today

As you count your blessings this Thanksgiving, please don’t forget Abebu. I know I’ll be thinking about her as I gather around the table with my family and friends on Thursday.

Abebu is a 25-year-old mother of five in Ethiopia. Earlier this year, she planted wheat, corn and sorghum on her small plot, but most of her seeds didn’t survive the scalding drought that gripped her land. She says: “We really don’t have anything to eat. At night my children cry a lot and go to sleep early to avoid more hunger pain.”

Last month, health workers visited Abebu’s home and found that her baby, Desta, was malnourished, an all too common problem in their poor community. CARE helped supplement the family’s diet and now Desta and the rest of the family are doing well.

The good news is that Abebu’s 10-year-old daughter persevered and stayed in school, despite being hungry. And now with CARE’s help, if she can stick with her education she’ll be able to create a brighter future for herself and her family one day.

The other good news is that you can help people like Abebu when you make a tax-deductible gift to CARE.

When women like Abebu are empowered to fulfill their potential, they invest in their families and work for lasting change. That’s why CARE works side-by-side with women in the fight against hunger and poverty in more than 70 countries around the world.

Your gift to CARE today will help sustain our programs that help people like Abebu and her children grow healthy and strong, stay in school, earn an income and, ultimately, escape hunger and poverty — for good.

Thank you and happy Thanksgiving from all of us at CARE.

Sincerely,

Helene D. Gayle, MD, MPH
President and CEO, CARE

EMERGENCY PETITION

If Congress breaks for Thanksgiving without extending emergency unemployment benefits, every day of inaction will cause more of the 14.8 million people who are willing and able to work but can’t find a job to lose their lifeline—and possibly even their homes.

Sign the petition: Tell Congress to extend long-term unemployment insurance now.

Across the nation, jobs just aren’t there. Many workers are in the job search of their lives.

In October, 14.8 million people were unemployed. A shocking 41.8 percent of them were jobless for 27 weeks or longer.*

But get this: Some lawmakers—many of the same ones who want to pass tax cuts for people who make more than $250,000 per year—want to cut off emergency unemployment benefits.

Sign the petition: Tell Congress to extend emergency unemployment insurance now.

Congress is coming back next week, and we need our lawmakers to take dramatic action. Congress has never let unemployment benefits expire when this many people have been out of work—and if it happens, economists predict catastrophic results. More parents who can’t put food on the table. Families losing their homes…real estate values sinking further, faster….And devastation for local businesses as pockets are empty during the critical holiday shopping season.

Sign the petition: Tell Congress to extend unemployment insurance now.

This is serious. The number of people out of work for more than six months is the longest on record. The National Employment Law Project estimates that—if Congress fails to act soon—800,000 people nationally will immediately lose unemployment benefits in the coming weeks. Two million workers will lose their benefits by the end of December. And the longer Congress delays extending benefits after that, the worse things will get for people who are out of work.

Please sign our petition today: Tell Congress unemployed people aren’t invisible.

Time is running out for Congress to take action without causing massive pain—and even homelessness—for long-term job-seekers. Our society, and our government, must not ignore our friends, family and neighbors who are unemployed through no fault of their own. These people have kids to feed, heat to keep on and homes to keep out of foreclosure—and you and I could easily be in their shoes.

Sign the petition: Make sure Congress doesn’t look the other way.

Thanks for standing in solidarity with your unemployed friends, family members and neighbors.

Manny Herrmann
Online Mobilization Coordinator, AFL-CIO

P.S. Next week, the same Congress that’s been in power for the past two years will be coming back for its “lame duck” session. But time is short. And an extension of unemployment faces an uphill battle in the Senate—Republicans may try to block extending unemployment so they can use it as political leverage.

Demand Congress take urgent action to renew emergency unemployment insurance now.

* “The Employment Situation – October 2010,” Bureau of Labor Statistics