The following letter was sent to participating schools to introduce ERI and the Caritas letter-writing campaign

Dear Teacher,

Greetings from the office of Edmund Rice International in Geneva.

For those who don’t already know, Edmund Rice International (ERI) is a recently established joint initiative of the Christian Brothers and Presentation Brothers to work at the international level to promote and protect the rights of the child, especially the right to education, and to engage in ecological advocacy through the promotion of ecological sustainability.

ERI works with like-minded non-government organizations to engage with the United Nations through the Human Rights Council in Geneva, the UN in New York and through other UN agencies in seeking shared solutions to the issues affecting the lives of the most vulnerable people on our planet.

The Edmund Rice Network has a presence in over thirty countries where members of the network can be found working with and for the more underprivileged of God’s people.

In its work of advocacy ERI would hope to both draw on the experience of the Edmund Rice Network and to enlist the support of its members in its efforts to help bring about a more just and sustainable world.

This letter aims to introduce the first effort to mobilise the resources of the Edmund Rice network in a global advocacy campaign in which we hope to involve as many as possible of the more than quarter of a million students in Edmund Rice schools around the world in support of the Caritas/EAA letter-writing campaign to governments and pharmaceutical companies, to improve access to medicines for children with HIV.

Accompanying this letter are some guidelines for involving students in advocacy, some background to the Caritas/ Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance (EAA) campaign and some resources for teachers (including lesson plans and sample letters).

We are inviting all schools to encourage students to take part in the campaign in some way. You may want to involve the whole school, a particular year level or just one class.

You will need to set aside two hours of class time to enable the students to learn about HIV and AIDS and how their letter might help children with HIV, and then to actually write their letters.

http://www.edmundriceinternational.org/

Letters to governments should be sent directly to the Health Minister in your country (teachers will need to provide the address to students), whilst letters to pharmaceutical companies should be sent to Caritas who will send them on.

Letters should be marked for the attention of the Secretary General and the Director of Communications and sent to

Caritas Internationalis
Palazzo San Calisto
Vatican City State
V-00120

If your school decides to participate in this campaign we would invite you to register details on our website at http://www.edmundriceinternational.org

Thank you for your support.

Brian Bond cfc

Edmund Rice International

bpbond@edmundrice.org