With the passage of the 2007 continuing resolution in the Senate
yesterday, ONE Regional Organizer Stephanie Handler asked me to write a
post explaining why I think it’s easy to contact senators and to do
political work from my home. She is a really cool gal and I really get a
kick out of her calling me occasionally.

I live in a little mountain town in Arizona and I contacted my two
senators back in January about the resolution, but I found the task a
bit light, so afterward I decided to write every single senator in the
country a personal email. It took about two weeks at about two hours per
day. No big deal.

I looked up every senators’ email address
and then found out enough about each person so that I could personalize each message. Since ONE is all about logical and efficient ways to serve the needy persons abroad, it was not hard to find a moment in each senators’ life when he or she had addressed the needy in some way.

I home school my 10th grade son, and he found my information-seeking to
be pretty interesting, as well. We both learned a lot about the folks
serving our country in Congress.

You’re thinking I’m a young mother with too much time on my hands. In
fact, I am fifty years old and very busy.

I believe that every citizen can make a difference. If you have ever
traveled outside the US you have probably discovered that our little
planet is just that: a little planet. All of us humans have a connection
to each other, and when there is a problem somewhere it trickles down
and eventually affects everyone’s quality of life. I tell my son and my
students to look at the big pictures and then fill them in with all the
little pictures of life. Become a part of the little pictures and state
your opinions. When politician gets out of touch with their
constituents, I often wonder if it is because we as citizens forget to
include them in OUR lives. And I don’t just write to my senators and
congress-persons when I am upset about something, I like to write them
about the good stuff they are doing too.

I hope this may help maybe one or two people to see that it is pretty
easy to get involved. I also hope it helps you to feel that you, as an
individual, can make a huge difference in the decisions and actions that
go on in this world. And you know what? Getting involved makes being a
citizen of earth fun. Get active and have fun doing it!

The World Bank released new data today from its corruption index, the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI). The good news is that African countries have shown perhaps the most marked decreases in corruption. According to the index, Kenya, Ghana, Niger, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, and Tanzania have all shown “significant improvements in governance” since 1998.

The report cautioned against the tendency to tar all developing nations with the corruption brush, citing considerable variations in governance among poor countries. While countries like Rwanda and Tanzania have become more transparent in the last decade, Zimbabwe and Cote D’Ivoire have both faced increasingly poor governance. And corruption is not just the territory of poor nations. In fact, this year Chile scored better on corruption measures than the United States, and Botswana, Uruguay, and Costa Rica all fared better than Italy and Greece, both developed nations. The report’s map (pg. 6) of the world color-coded by corruption levels showcases more surprising results.

The World Bank project tracks countries’ governance in 6 areas:

• Voice and Accountability: the extent to which a country’s citizens are able to participate in selecting their government

• Political Stability: perceptions of the likelihood that the government will be destabilized or overthrown by unconstitutional or violent means

• Government Effectiveness: the quality of public services, the quality of the civil service and the degree of its independence from political pressures, the quality of policy formulation and implementation, and the credibility of the government’s commitment to such policies

• Regulatory Quality: the ability of the government to formulate and implement sound policies and regulations that permit and promote private sector development

• Rule of Law: the extent to which agents have confidence in and abide by the rules of society, and in particular the quality of contract enforcement, the police, and the courts, as well as the likelihood of crime and violence

• Control of Corruption: the extent to which public power is exercised for private gain, including both petty and grand forms of corruption, as well as “capture” of the state by elites and private interests

Read more

African corruption ‘on the wane’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6288400.stm

World Bank Report on Governing Finds Level Playing Field
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/11/world/11worldbank.html

A Decade of Measuring Governance (Booklet)
http://info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi2007/pdf/booklet_decade_of_measuring_governance.pdf

World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators 1996-2006
http://info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi2007/

After an intense day of negotiations and campaigning, we have had some disappointing news in from the G8. There appears to be a lot more slipping up than stepping up. The final communiqué does not include the targets and time tables we and global campaigners sought and backtracks from the promises they made in 2005. I think Bono sums it up pretty well when he said as part of DATA’s press release today:

“G8 leaders say they are serious about keeping their promises from 2005, but today they have made their job seriously harder. They say $60billion for AIDS, TB and malaria and it sounds great, but that’s not earmarked for Africa, it’s a global figure and there’s no timeline. Even if their laudable commitment to put 5 million people on lifesaving drugs had a due date of 2010 – which it doesn’t – it would only be half their stated ambition of 2005.

“This summit outcomes document isn’t readable in any language, it’s called a communiqué but it seems to have been deliberately designed not to communicate the real facts. Do they think we can’t read or count? We are looking for accountable language and accountable numbers: we didn’t get them today.”

But as Bono also said – “But we are not lost; right now it’s the G8 that are lost.”

The day also showed the tremendous growth and strength of the global movement as the nearly 1 million voices collected urging the G8 to keep their promises were delivered as part of the grand finale at the concert in Rostock and more than 100 journalists packing into a airless press room to hear from five Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP) activists from Africa. (Followed by a boat chase just outside the press center, with Greenpeace and a number of police motorboats playing high speed cat and mouse live on TV!)

As it seems our world leaders have a long way to go toward fulfilling their these promises to the world’s poorest, it reminds us all the more how important the ONE Vote 08 work we will launch on Monday and undertake in the next several months is, so that we might ensure that our leaders make global poverty a key issue at the 2008 ballot box and we hold them to account! So in that spirit, back to work preparing to help ensure Monday’s launch is a success! Click here to sign-up for the ONE Vote ‘08 Conference Call on Monday night.

I spent today in Accra, Ghana, in a place called Nima.  Some people call it a slum, with people, too many people, stacked on top of each other in a small space.  Hundreds of thousands of people. 

These people call it home, and it’s a busy place full of life.

Words have a different meaning in a slum.  Home can mean a piece of wood, pushed against a wall to cover from the rain.  A child’s bath is when your mother brings out a bucket of dirty water and washes you in the middle of the street.   A mosquito bite can mean death from malaria.

One nurse walking means help is on the way.  Debt cancellation means you get medicines that will save your life.

A nurse named Mary took me on a walk through and deep into Nima, down snaking paths and endless muddy alleys to get into the heart of the slum to visit with a local family to check on their son.   The cancellation of decades-old, unsustainable Ghanaian debts helped to pay for the clinic Mary works at in Nima, where kids get medicine for malaria and pregnant women get treatment so their babies are born healthy and safe.  She takes Bono around the clinic, showing us where they see and treat mothers every day.  Mary often walks 18 hours a day, from clinics to homes to churches to schools, visiting children and families to bring life-saving medicines and her most incredible gift, her care.    

Mary is at least 30 years older than me and could probably walk me into the ground without breaking a sweat.  She makes her way through the mud, and I’m amazed at how she keeps her nursing uniform and shoes so clean.  I think that she must look like some kind of angel when she knocks at the simple doors of Nima, all in white, with hope in her eyes and pills in her hand that might well save your child’s life.

We walk by businesses that have sprouted everywhere in Nima, people selling cell phones, equipment, food, water in bags as there’s no running water here at all, a room full of sewing machines where 10 women are earning a living.   People are working and not letting what surrounds them keep them from getting up and doing something.  People seem tireless in circumstances that would make anyone tired. 

Bono stops and speaks with Jessica, a woman who owns a stand where she sells cell phone cards.  She tells us about how she started her business, the challenges and her hopes for the future.  Bono says this looks familiar, it’s just like the American dream—but now it’s also a Ghanaian dream.  A dream of being able to have a good job and the opportunity to make a life for you and the ones you love.

We’ve walked a long way and I’m tired.  Mary’s not.  She’s ready to go to vaccinate some children for polio, measles, mumps, rubella, just like kids in the U.S. We go to a church down the street where the Nima clinic has setup a free vaccination day.  All the women waiting in front of this Episcopal church for shots for their babies are Muslim.  As we walk up, they remind me that we really can all be ONE.

Next Steps for Africa: LIVE TOMORROW Jan 27th 10:45 AM EST
Also available afterward for viewing

Last year saw major new commitments by the G-8 to increase aid and reduce debt in Africa. Yet the UN World Summit pointed to Africa’s faltering progress towards reaching the Millennium Development Goals.

1) What is the role of African, G-8 and business leaders in making the promises of 2005 a reality?
2) Can broad public support to alleviate poverty and disease on the continent be maintained?
3) How will the completion of the Doha Round trade talks impact Africa?

• Bono, Musician, DATA (Debt, AIDS and Trade in Africa), United Kingdom
  
  
• Niall FitzGerald, Chairman, Reuters, United Kingdom; Member of the Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum
  
  
• Olusegun Obasanjo, President of Nigeria
  
  
• Paul D. Wolfowitz, President, World Bank, Washington DC
  

 Marking World AIDS Day, the U.S. government and the Global
Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria today released their
annual anti-retroviral ( ARV) treatment numbers for 2005.

• Total people globally living with HIV/AIDs 40.3 million
• Total global new infections in 2005: 4.9m (still almost 13,500 per day)
• Deaths (global) in 2005: 3.1m (still approx 8,500 per day)

There are currently 40.3 million people worldwide living with
HIV/AIDS.  The numbers are staggering, but we’ve begun to make
progress with the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)
which estimates that 400,000 people in 15 focus countries are being
provided life-saving ARVs. The Global Fund estimates that 384,000
people are receiving HIV/AIDS medicines as a result of their projects
in 130 countries around the world.  In total, WHO estimates more
than 1 million people are now on life saving ARVs- a tremendous
increase over just 400,000 in late 2003. But there is much further to
go if we are to keep our pledge to get 10m on ARVs by 2010!

Take a look at this article in the San Francisco Chronicle with Bono
talking about the emergency of global AIDS and extreme poverty and how
we are working, as ONE, together and making real progress. You can also
tune into their three part podacst about their meeting at www.sfgate.com/blogs/podcasts

U2’s Bono makes fiery case for rocking the world with ambitious mission to eradicate global misery

“Wearing pink-tinted, wraparound glasses beneath a beat-up, perfectly
molded straw cowboy hat, the U2 front man said that although the United
States has much work to do and more money to give to fight poverty and
AIDS, the Bush administration had gone from a “standing start” to
tripling its aid to Africa over the past four years. He singled out the
president’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which has put a
quarter-million Africans on antiviral medication in the past year.
It is an amazing thing he’s pulled off,” Bono said. “Three years ago,
people would laugh openly, in your face, at the idea that we could work
with the administration on this stuff.

The firebrand rock star, in town for two sold-out shows earlier this
week at the Arena in Oakland, has been signing up audience members for
his One Campaign to Make Poverty History all along the “Vertigo” tour,
which has been playing to packed houses in America and Europe since
March. He hoped to get a million people; he got 2 million.”

Click here to read the full article