I feel like Sydney from an episode of
ALIAS! OK, minus the hot pink wig and
fluent Russian. This stay at home mom
and ONE volunteer is taking in all the sights and sounds of the G8 Summit in
St. Petersburg,
Russia. The setting on the coast of the Baltic Sea–
which we travel to through security check points and only by boat– adds to the
spy movie feel, but in reality it is all business here at the G8.

This morning I attended a press
conference with President Bush and Russian President Putin. They discussed important global concerns,
including questions on nuclear arms and the current conflict in the Middle East. And
having never been in the same room with a U.S. President, I was quite taken with
it all. But with all this talk of war
and conflict I kept having this nagging question come to the surface: Extreme poverty kills thousands of people
every day and will continue to take innocent lives. Will the G8 leaders keep the promises made to
the world’s poor last year or will they break their word?

I attended the G8 Summit last
year as a ONE delegate when G8 leaders promised $50 billion more in effective
international assistance per year by 2010, with half of that for Africa. Some other
promises included near universal access to AIDS drugs and care for AIDS orphans
and to reduce the impact of malaria by 85% and help save the lives of 600,000
children every year. We’ve made some
important progress on canceling debts for 19 countries, with more to come. When
it comes to effective aid the G8 leaders are off track. America has made some increases in
development assistance but more needs to be done. On trade, we’re hoping for a breakthrough at
the summit on a trade deal that will work for Africa and the world’s poorest countries.

I’m just one, ordinary person who
in this moment is having an extraordinary experience, and who is sitting in on
Presidential press conferences. And
President Bush has not asked for a sit down chat with me yet! That is the power of ONE. As one person I’m just sitting in a room full
of people with my silent questions. Together we are loud and those nagging
concerns become points on the world leader’s agenda at the G8
Summit.

As ONE we need to urge world
leaders to keep their promises to Africa and
the world’s poorest people.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 15th, 2006 at 9:00 am and is filed under The ONE Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.