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Global Concerns

My Sisters' Keeper

Please click here for our My Sisters' Keeper advocacy toolkit. It can be downloaded for your use.

Please click here for a petition for increased U.S. support for family planning and reproductive health services. (You can enlarge the petition and print out as many as you need!) Congregations and individuals can use this petition at conferences, meetings, study sessions, etc. Please return it by mail or fax to:

RCRC, 1413 K Street NW, 14th Floor, Washington DC 20005, or (fax) 202-628-7716.

We would appreciate hearing your comments and suggestions about our toolkit at info@rcrc.org

Every year in developing countries in Africa and Asia:

• more than half-a-million women die from pregnancy-related causes,
• millions of women suffer serious health complications from pregnancy or childbirth,
• 4 million newborns die in the first month of life.

This tragic toll from pregnancy and childbirth tests our sense of justice. Whereas in the most developed countries, one in 5,900 women dies during pregnancy or childbirth, in Sub-Saharan Africa one in 22 dies and in Asia, one in 110 dies.

How can we justify this neglect of life when the causes are known: poverty, lack of health care, cultural practices, women's inequality, to name some. Only about half of the 123 million women who give birth each year in developing countries receive antenatal, delivery and newborn services. More than three in four women who needed care for obstetric complications in 2008 did not receive it.

What can we – here in the United States – do? As people of faith, we can make a difference, here at home.  That is the premise of My Sisters’ Keeper—RCRC’s initiative to increase U.S. support for international family planning —and the reason we are asking you to join us.

RCRC is bringing people of faith together to speak out about this injustice and to seek action. By becoming advocates for increased U.S. funding for family planning and reproductive health services globally, we are helping to save the lives of women and infants, improve women’s health, and empower women, men and families to have a better life.

With your participation, voices will be raised in congregations of every denomination and every tradition. Those voices will be heard by decision-makers in Washington, DC, who will understand the urgency of saving women’s lives and will restore the United States to its position of leadership in women's health.

We have prepared a "toolkit" of resources for congregations and individuals to become faith-informed advocates on behalf of women and families in the poorest nations of the world:

• Facts About The Need for International Family Planning and Reproductive Health Services
• A one-page fact sheet for displays, posting in your congregation, etc.
• Sermon seeds
• Brief, action-oriented items for internet communications (websites, monthly and weekly bulletins, blogs, etc)
• Denominational and individual statements

We ask you to undertake whatever activities you can – studying the issues, delivering a sermon, including a prayer in a service, posting information on a congregation bulletin or blog, or taking part in our special Global Mothers’ Day event in May (information to come in April). Whatever you decide to do, it can make a positive difference to women and families worldwide.

Please click here for our advocacy toolkit. It can be downloaded for your use. We would appreciate hearing your comments and suggestions at info@rcrc.org