Giving Our Offering of Letters a New Mexico Focus

Bread for the World's 2018 Offering of Letters, entitled For Such a Time as This, urges people of faith and conscience to raise our collective voices to urge Congress to invest in and protect key programs that help improve the lives of men, women, and children facing hunger and poverty in the United States and around the world.

For our Offering of Letters Workshop in Albuquerque on March 17, 2018, we decided to give the event a New Mexico focus. With our high rates of hunger and poverty, what federal program helps low-income families in our state most? That would be the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

Sarah Lucero, Jason Riggs, Sovereign Hager

Three guest speakers offered great perspectives on how the program benefits people in our state, Sovereign Hager, supervising attorney at the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty. presented an overview on the economic and personal benefits of the program. She also spoke of how budget cuts proposed by President Trump, would be very harmful to our state.

Jason Riggs, who manages the SNAP Outreach Program at Roadrunner Food Bank, spoke of why outreach efforts are important to bring as many eligible people

Sara Lucero, program specialist at the New Mexico Farmers Marketing Association, spoke about the importance of making nutritious items available to SNAP recipients. This is accomplished in New Mexico through the Double Up Food Bucks program.

The information presented at the workshop will help our churches bring the issue more relevant to letter writers in the pews.

Representatives from a dozen congregations attended the workshop, including Albuquerque Mennonite Church,  All Saints Lutheran Church,  Annunciation Catholic Church, Central United Methodist Church, Feeding Santa Fe, Immaculate Conception Catholic Church, Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary Catholic Community, St. Andrew Presbyterian Church, St. John XXIII Catholic Community, St. Michael and St. Paul Lutheran Church.

Stay tuned for videos of our speakers to be posted in this blog in the next couple of days.

Also, local professional photographer Allan Emord snapped photographs for Bread for the World. Watch for those photos in Bread publications and online in the near future.