The Mission Committee is pleased to announce our choices for the 2011 Christmas Offering. This year we will again divide the offering between a local and an international organization.

The local organization we have chosen is the BackPack Program of the Food Bank of WNY. Each Friday afternoon, three meal kits and two pieces of perishable fruit will be sent home with eligible children in participating schools. The program offers more than food; it gives children a feeling of security. It costs only $5.31 to sponsor a child for a week; $21.24 covers a month.

The second half of our offering will go to Doctors Without Borders. Every day, around the clock, Doctors Without Borders medical volunteers are at work saving lives in more than 70 countries. They have no political or religious agenda, but provide assistance to people whose survival is threatened by violence or neglect due primarily to armed conflict, epidemics, malnutrition, exclusion from health care, or natural disasters. Their work earned them the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999.

Thank you for your generous holiday response in the past. We ask that you thoughtfully consider responding once again in gratitude for the lives of your own children or grandchildren and for the lives of North’s children.