Hundreds of thousands of ONE supporters have taken action and reached out to their leaders, asking
them to do more to fight global AIDS and extreme poverty. They’ve emailed, made
phone calls, sent hand-written letters and arranged personal meetings. When I
first got involved in ONE, I questioned the impact that I – as a single person
- could have on my leaders. Could simply writing a letter make a difference?
Would my busy Member of Congress even get my letter, let alone read it? As it
turns out, a hand-written letter goes a long way.

Congressman
Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), a strong advocate in Washington for the fight against poverty,
recently received a hefty stack of letters from ONE supporters thanking him for
his efforts to help make poverty history and asking him to continue his
important work. Check out the pictures I just received of him reading the
letters.

Congressman
Blumenauer has helped the fight against AIDS and poverty, working across the
aisle with Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) to author the Senator Paul
Simon Water for the Poor Act, which makes providing access to safe drinking
water and sanitation a major objective of U.S. International assistance.

Our
leaders in Washington
are elected to represent us and the things that matter most to the Americans
who put them in office. Writing a letter, sending an email, arranging a
personal meeting and making a phone call are all extensions of our voice, and
we can use our voices to help end extreme poverty and global AIDS. Like
Congressman Blumenauer, other leaders in Washington
are receiving ONE’s letters and feeling empowered to take action. I feel
confident that my letters are being read and impacting my Representatives, so I
say let’s keep writing, calling, emailing, meeting and empowering our leaders
to help make poverty history.

A BIG Thank you to all who hosted and attended ONE Watch Parties – this is a party that was held in Orlando, FL.

The ONE Watch Party in Orlando was held at the home of Mark and
Joan Faulkner (coordinator of the ONEorlando chapter) – The evening started
with some drinks and appetizers, with of course U2 playing in the background. A
“ONE” information table was set up for new volunteers to show the typical set-up
at events that included, ONE Fact Sheets, Declaration Pages, What is ONE
literature, ONE Watch Sign-in, Letter to the Senator forms, ONE wristbands, ONE
stickers, and a variety of information regarding partner organizations of ONE,
i.e. RESULTS, Heifer, World Vision, CARE, Bread for the World, Fair Trade
information, etc.) Each person received a ONE wristband (if they didn’t already
have one). The room was full of talk about ONE, but as soon as the Nightly News
began, the room was only filled with silence. Everyone listened intently
to BONO, who has brought so much awareness regarding these serious global issues
to our homes…and hearts.

“How can we NOT do something” is what we remember hearing
at ONEorlando’s first meeting May, 2005. Since then ONEorlando has held
awareness/planning meetings on a monthly basis, holds ONE.org Acoustical
Awareness Shows the first Sunday of each month, has had speakers from World
Vision, Heifer, RESULTS, CARE and others, and has also met with their Senators
office to introduce ONE locally. We have taken part in various events over the
past year which include, World AIDS Day, Darfur Awareness Week, World Water Day,
AIDS Walk Orlando, World Fair Trade Day and many more. ONEorlando thrives for a
“local effort… global effect..” and is constantly working to better educate
the group about the issues, in order to provide awareness to our
community.

With a local email listing of over 260, ONEorlando welcomed 14 new
volunteers at the ONE Watch Party. Everyone stayed after NBC’s Broadcast and
listened to information regarding ONE, and we had a Q&A time to discuss how
everyone can be a part of the campaign, no matter how young, or old you are. We
were told “you guys have really got everyone excited about wanting to help make
a difference.”

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.

After Nigeria, we bolted for the airport and skipped across the tarmac to our
awaiting white albatross for the short flight to Mali, where we were joined by
OXFAM representatives who took us out into the countryside to meet village
farmers who are growing commercial and organic cotton.

This was my favorite part of the trip, with the women farmers dressed in
bright vibrant clothes alongside men, sharing their stories of economic
diversification and the difference the cotton crops were making in their
lives. Bono presented the village elders a gift of cola nuts, and in return,
they gave him some of the locally grown cotton and a Make Poverty History shirt
that had been made with the cotton grown with their own hands.

We all sat under a large shade tree as the midday sun beat down upon the
village and shared stories and learned the hardships of drought and water
shortages on their lives. As if heaven sent, shortly thereafter a rain cloud
emerged and the children began running through the fields with buckets and other
home made water spouts to collect the rain water for drinking. I started to
realize how fortunate we are in our country that we are to be able to turn on
the tap and drink fresh water while here they are extremely dependent on these
rains and the four deep wells that have been dug nearby. They are incredibly
strong people who survive under the harshest conditions. The cotton they grow
helps feed their families and put their children in school but it is the rain
that provides life in its most basic form.

We shook hands and waved good bye and headed off into the afternoon,
impressed by this village’s tenacity and ability to survive and actually thrive
under these conditions. Amazing.

As you know by now, Bono is touring Africa with NBC’s
Brian Williams. I was just on the msnbc website and found a great
interview with Bono about Africa’s vast potential and why he’s
there on a six-country tour. Click here to check out the interview: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12916501/

Where I grew up, school assemblies were never as incredible as the one we saw today: a Chancellor, a rock star, an economist, a TV news anchor and one amazing Nigerian Finance Minister, joined by over 350 kids singing, marching in unison:

“Parents listen to your children,
We are the leaders of tomorrow…”

They sang outside their four room schoolhouse to Bono, UK Chancellor Gordon Brown, Dr. Jeff Sachs, Brian Williams of NBC Nightly News and Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi, classrooms open to the sun and filled with the most basic tools to educate and inspire: a simple blackboard, desks and benches made out of rummaged wood, one poster on the wall and a few pieces of scattered chalk. They sang in lines marked by rocks, the same rocks spelled out on the ground the most generous, African of words: “Welcome”.

It’s incredible how much the people we meet do to make us feel welcome in their schools, villages, homes. You look around and are amazed at what people can do with so little, and it makes you wonder what they could do with even a little more. Books. Paper. Crayons. More teachers. A square meal at school every day.

The things any kid in school in America takes as a given.

Chancellor Brown and Bono asked a classroom of children what did they want to be when they grew up, and the answers could have been the same as a classroom in Des Moines, Iowa: teachers, doctors, engineers, even a few who thought they might be up for being a rock star or economist themselves. Hands raised high, hopes even higher, Minister Ngozi asked them how many of them had sisters or brothers in college, and only a few hands went up. I wanted all of them to be in the air.

Bono met a group of children afterwards who had gathered around the school, kids from the neighboring huts and tin roofed homes who weren’t able to attend school themselves but had come to check out the new visitors. They were beautiful and told us all the reasons they couldn’t also sit in those simple benches and desks, reasons that sounded different but could all be described in just one word: poverty. After embraces and smiles and conversation, they started shouting “ONE” together with Bono.

Maybe, as ONE, we could start raising our voices even louder for them too.

“Parents, listen to your children,
We are the leaders of tomorrow…”

The Nightly News with Brian Williams is happening now with Bono, live from Africa. Mali today – Ghana tomorrow.

 If you miss the broadcast – don’t worry, you can catch it online here after 10pmEST!

Sign up to host or attend a watch party near you tomorrow, Tuesday May 23rd across America. 

Photos by J. Tayloe Emery

Great article from a Reuters reporter traveling with Bono.

ARUSHA, Tanzania
(Reuters) – Rock singer and activist Bono said on Saturday the idea of
eradicating Africa’s biggest killer in the
next decade was as exciting as watching Neil Armstrong take the first walk on
the moon.

The front man for Irish rock band U2 — who is half-way through a six-nation
African jaunt — was inspired by the use of new technology in a family-owned
Tanzanian factory to make nets which will repel mosquitoes, the insect which
transmits malaria.

Malaria infects between 300 million to 500 million people a
year. A million of those taken ill will die, mostly infants and babies. Of the
deaths, more than 80 percent occur in Africa
and more than half those could be prevented if bed nets were made available to
families, according to experts.

Read the full article 

Tonight, the NBC
Nightly News with Brian Williams airs the first of many segments documenting
Bono’s six country tour of Africa. Bono is there with ONE and DATA, shedding
light on the crisis of global AIDS and extreme poverty. The trip includes stops
in Lesotho, Rwanda, Tanzania, Nigeria, Mali and Ghana. Tonight’s is the first in
a series of broadcasts from Africa, so be sure to check the blog for information
about future on-air reports.