This winter, many in the United States are struggling harder to put food on the table, to hold on to a job, to secure a warm home month-to-month. For many, debts have become harder to pay, and some are faced with a wrenching choice between paying the mortgage and paying for food or heat. In a sense, many impoverished countries face the same desperate decisions. Each day the world’s poorest countries pay more than $100 million to rich creditors—money that would be better spent on health care or basic education. Due in part to the current global economic crisis, countries throughout Africa, Asia, and Latin America are struggling to keep up with payments on debts owed to the United States and international financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. The Jubilee USA Network brings together people of faith and conscience to challenge this unjust reality through active solidarity with global partners, creative grassroots advocacy strategies, and educational outreach.

The Jubilee USA Network was formed in the late 1990s by a diverse group of activists and organizations, inspired by the biblical call for a Jubilee year when slaves are freed, lands redistributed, and debts cancelled to create a clean slate for a more just world. Today, Jubilee includes thousands of faith-based, human rights, environmental, labor, and anti-poverty activists working for an end to the international debt crisis, more just policies and practices in the world of international finance, and right relationships between peoples and nations. Taking its direction from partner groups in the global South, Jubilee has seen $80 billion of debt cancelled in 23 countries—money that has gone to build roads and schools and combat the AIDS crisis, among other uses.

Currently Jubilee USA is working to help those in the United States make connections between the economic crisis at home and the continuing crisis abroad. The model of free-market capitalism and harsh economic prescriptions for poor countries has been failing for 30 years and needs to change. Inequalities continue to grow, and most of the world still lives in poverty.

We’ve all read about the economic troubles stemming from recent reckless lending and deregulation on the part of U.S. banks. What we don’t talk about is its striking resemblance to the lending of the 1970s, when private banks and rich governments, motivated by a huge influx of oil money and by Cold War politics, lent money to developing countries. Money was wasted on harmful “development” projects, stolen by dictators, and used to purchase weapons or pay for the dubious advice of Northern consultants. Much of the debt results from usurious interest rates and heavy penalties for missed payments, as well as projects that primarily benefited the global North. The question becomes, who owes whom?

Jubilee is calling on Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to make the needs of the world’s poorest people a priority as he crafts his response to the global economic crisis. The “What’s on Your Heart?” Campaign calls on grassroots activists around the United States to create handmade hearts and postcards with their messages for the treasury secretary. Writes one activist from Missouri, “Four hurricanes have devastated Haiti, but the tiny nation continues to pay $1 million every week to the World Bank—this is shameful!” An interfaith group of prominent religious leaders will deliver the messages to the new treasury secretary in person when they meet with him before Valentine’s Day.

Meanwhile, Congress is considering legislation—the Jubilee Act for Responsible Lending and Expanded Debt Cancellation—to extend debt cancellation to additional countries and de-link it from harmful economic policy requirements like privatization, lowering of trade barriers, and austerity budgets. The bill also requires Secretary Geithner to begin work on a binding international framework for responsible lending and a U.S. audit of debts resulting from odious or irresponsible lending in the past.

Many people have been calling recently for reform of the international economic system. Jubilee seeks to ensure that this call doesn’t come only from rich businesspeople and corporations, but from ordinary citizens who care about poverty across the globe. The economic crisis hurts many, yet there is a reason for hope in the new momentum for economic change brought on by the current crisis. Jubilee member Meiling Albert of Vacaville, California’s handmade heart sends a gentle reminder: “It’s not just about us, it’s about all of us.”