IMPACT STORIES
Nonprofit Storytelling
CLIENT
Bread for the World is a faith-based nonprofit. They equip their members to advocate on policy and programs that end hunger. I was on staff as a senior manager for digital campaigns when I wrote these stories.
CHALLENGE
Write two stories for the 2021 Annual Report and show the impact of Bread for the World’s advocacy efforts. The audience consists of donors and members. No travel budget.
SOLUTION
For Escaping Malnutrition, USAID provided field reports from a nutrition program in Tanzania. I used internal quotes to flesh out the story.
For Engaging the Next Generation of Activists, our organizing department identified leader activists. The person I chose to interview was younger. One organizational goal was to recruit more young members that year.
Download the report or read the stories below.
Escaping Malnutrition
When her daughter died in 2020, Anna Nyikonde, a 45-year-old grandmother and community health worker from Tanzania, had a tough choice to make: care for her 9-month-old grandson or send him to an orphanage.
Caring for baby Samuel would not be easy. Anna’s husband Luke was concerned that they didn’t have the resources or knowledge to raise a growing boy. But Anna knew she had the knowledge and training to take care of Samuel and provide him with proper nutrition.
In 2019, Anna had trained as a community health worker with Lishe Endelevu (Swahili for “sustainable nutrition”), a U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) funded program, which provides nutrition education and training focused on the first 1,000 days of a child’s life.
Using what she had learned from this nutrition program, Anna started giving Samuel cow’s milk and supplementary food—giving him three main meals and two snacks between meals every day.
Unlike Anna, most Tanzanian parents do not have access to nutrition education to help their children grow and thrive.
Tanzania has one of the highest rates of undernutrition in the world. Over a third of children under age 5 are stunted—crippling both their physical and cognitive development. Roughly half of all pregnant and breastfeeding women are anemic. Even amid this, parents are doing all they can to nurture and feed their children.
At age 2, Samuel is now thriving. He’s one of the lucky ones—escaping the malnutrition that befalls many children in Tanzania. Anna is now a role model in her village and other women have joined support groups where nutrition education is being provided.
“Samuel’s story is one we should not only celebrate but we should also work to make sure is repeated for children all over the world,” said Jordan Teague, who directs policy analysis at Bread for the World.
“By scaling up what works, we can make progress in reducing malnutrition,” states Teague. In the four regions in Tanzania where USAID-funded programs are being implemented, thanks to the advocacy of Bread for the World members, the prevalence of childhood stunting has been reduced by more than 25 percent.
Bread for the World members continue to urge Congress to support increased funding for global nutrition programs that focus on the critical first 1,000 days of a child’s life. Supporting programs that prevent and treat malnutrition will save the lives of millions of children around the world—just like Samuel.
Engaging the Next Generation of Activists
Andrew Santos is a 30-year-old science researcher living in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he is a member of La Mesa Presbyterian Church. He had attended for about a year before Marlys Lesley, who organizes the church’s annual Bread for the World Offering of Letters, asked him to become a Bread leader.
“I was holding off getting involved in things until someone asked me. I wanted to do something the church needed,” he said.
In 2020, the pandemic forced La Mesa Presbyterian online. Their annual letter-writing had to go virtual, too, and Marlys needed help.
Marlys asked Andrew to get involved, and he jumped in with both feet.
Andrew created a letter-writing portal on the church’s website to make it easy for the members of the congregation to write more than 100 letters from their homes.
In 2021, the portal was used again to remarkable success. In 2022, again with Andrew’s help, La Mesa is combining digital and in-person letter-writing.
In addition to participating in Bread for the World’s regional leadership calls, Andrew met with his members of Congress to ask them to expand the Child Tax Credit. After a meeting with U.S. Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-NM), he learned that she agreed to cosponsor the Global Malnutrition Prevention and Treatment Act (H.R. 4693).
During the meeting with Rep. Stansbury, Andrew observed a collegiality between the congresswoman and two of the seasoned Bread leaders present. The experience taught him an important advocacy lesson: build relationships.
“It was really apparent they had a relationship with her,” he said. “That taught me a lot. Rep. Stansbury might have signed on anyway but knowing them clearly helped.”
Bread for the World’s continued effectiveness in advocating for an end to hunger depends on engaging the next generation of leaders like Andrew who can carry the work forward.
“It helps to have other people doing it who you can talk to and learn from,” he said about the leaders who laid the groundwork for advocacy in New Mexico. “I’m really grateful for all those people.”
