This was an exciting time to join the ONE campaign as the new field director. I joined the team in June. With many of our partner organizations, we are aiming to support your efforts to discuss issues we care about with your Members of Congress. Throughout the summer, I got to hear and see ONE campaign members educating and advocating their U.S. Senators and Representatives for more funding for poverty-focused development assistance. Grandparents, high school and college students, rural and urban residents, receptionists, doctors, stay-at-home parents, pastors, and teachers all made their voices heard and took their interest in the ONE campaign to a higher level.

Their message to increase funding for programs that have an impact on poor peoples’ lives - like global AIDS and HIV prevention and treatment, TB and malaria prevention, roads, and bridges - was heard in offices on Capitol Hill and when members of Congress were home for the August recess. Many of the aid organizations who founded the ONE campaign organized lobby days in Washington, DC, and over a thousand people got involved here and at home.

The work for sitting Members of Congress isn’t done yet for the year so let your members of Congress know how you stand on the issue.

Next week, members of Congress come back to Washington, but they’ll be home again and often this fall as all 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representative and one-third of the Senate are up for re-election this year. One effective way to advocate for poverty-focused development assistance is to ask them about global poverty issues at local town hall meetings this fall.

You can find information about your members Congress’ town hall meetings by visiting their official websites or by calling their offices.

I hope you’ll continue to make your voice heard. Let’s make sure that global poverty registers as an issue that we care about.

Vicky Rateau
ONE Campaign Field Director

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 30th, 2006 at 12:00 pm 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.