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Campaign For Children

Be a voice for kids

Introducing the First Focus Ambassadors for Children Network: a movement of committed advocates who serve as a voice for children in the United States

Thank you for being a First Focus Ambassador for Children. Here you can find the monthly action for May 2024.

Every Spring, the annual appropriations, or funding, process begins in Congress to keep our government running the following year. One of the smallest funding bills is the State, Foreign Operations Appropriations bill, which includes humanitarian and development resources to address disease and suffering in some of the poorest places on the planet. (Although Americans when polled estimate that foreign aid makes up 25 percent of the federal budget, in reality just 1 percent of the federal budget goes towards foreign assistance—and within that, less than half is devoted to poverty-focused development and humanitarian programs.)

Download the action sheet

The United States provides poverty-focused foreign assistance to poor countries to promote global health, security, and democracy, to reduce the worst aspects of poverty and to respond to disasters and crises. This type of foreign assistance is not only the right thing to do, and represents the best of our American values, but it is the smart thing to do. It promotes national security, global stability, and international trade while reinforcing our diplomatic and strategic priorities by boosting goodwill.

Thanks in part to U.S. investment in poverty-focused development and humanitarian assistance over the past three-and-a-half decades, the deaths of children under five years old due to preventable disease and malnutrition have fallen from more than 12 million a year in 1990 to roughly 5 million today. Further, over the past 20 years, U.S. investment in global HIV programs through the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR for short, has enabled 5.5 million babies to be born HIV-free, and for 25 million men, women, and children to be saved from HIV.

While these are huge triumphs to be celebrated, recent global setbacks including the COVID-19 pandemic, advancing climate change, new and ongoing conflicts, and mounting global food insecurity are putting these achievements at risk and heightening the urgency of refining our efforts. It is critical that the U.S. do all it can to ensure maximum impact of the limited pot of money spent on foreign assistance, especially the dollars spent on behalf of the most vulnerable children.

The fact is, like elsewhere in the U.S. budget, children have never received the attention or share of foreign assistance resources they deserve. Children have specific developmental needs and investing in them delivers an outsized return on investment. Yet our spending on kids is minuscule. First Focus on Children’s 2023 Children’s Budget documents that just 9 cents of every $1 of U.S. foreign assistance goes to babies and kids worldwide despite the fact that they make up a third to nearly half of the population globally.

Take action now

This month, we will write to our Senators to urge that they speak or write to two of the most powerful decision-makers when it comes to foreign assistance: State, Foreign Operations Chairman Chris Coons (D-DE) and if your Senator is a Republican, also to Ranking Senator, Lindsey Graham (R-SC), in support of the prioritization of children’s needs in their Fiscal year 2025 foreign aid funding bill.

Pull from the information in the background section above and if you would like more specifics, urge that the foreign aid programs below be protected and expanded in 2025:

  • Vulnerable Children
  • HIV/AIDS
  • Maternal and Child Health
  • Nutrition
  • Basic Education                                             
  • Malaria
  • Clean Water & Sanitation
  • The U.S. contribution to UNICEF
  • International Disaster Assistance
  • Lead Exposure/Toxic Chemicals

NOTE: If you are from Delaware or South Carolina, you would write directly to Senator Coons or
Senator Graham instead.

Fill out the form below and draft your letter urging your Senator to ensure continued leadership in this area and to prioritize children going forward.