As a ONE Field Coordinator, one of the most common questions I hear is “What can I do to help?”
It’s a tough one to answer because the opportunities are really endless. Since ONE is a grassroots campaign, volunteers can most effectively contribute to the Campaign by using their skills, interest, and knowledge of their community. But I know this doesn’t help answer the question.
So, now we have launched the Fall Toolkit (currently located online in the ONE Voter Center), which has all the tools you’ll need to engage in the ONE Campaign over the new few months.
The kit includes tools to:
Plan an event or house party on October 15th – the Day of Action to Stand Up against Global Poverty;
Get your friends and family to sign the ONE Voter Pledge; and
Help raise global poverty’s profile.
This is a great resource for all ONE supporters, particularly during this important time before elections.
So check out the toolkit. I hope that you’ll find great ideas about how to get involved. And I hope ONE supporters all across the country will be involved in our October 15 Day of Action. I’ll be using resources from the toolkit at an event in Chicago that day. Check back to the ONE Blog to see how it goes.
On Saturday, September 23, ONE Campaign headquarters sent interns Katy and I to help the Campaign’s concert team at the Virgin Festival, hosted by Virgin Mobile at the Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, MD.
The Festival featured more than 20 acts (from THE WHO to The Killers) on multiple stages and allowed non-profits, like ONE, to do outreach at the event by setting up booths and walking the grounds. By the end of the day, with four of us working the event, we collected 1,000 new ONE Declaration signatures.
ONE concert experts,
Brande and Aaron, staffed our table, handing out materials and information about the Campaign. People visited our booth to buy wristbands, ask how they could get more involved or just to see what all the fuss was about. A lot of fans were eager to ask questions since they had already heard about ONE from last year’s Live8 concerts.
As Katy and I wandered the field, trying to avoid stepping on garbage and holding drinks for people as they signed our clipboards, I was especially overwhelmed by one thing: there were still so many people we hadn’t talked to.
Here we were, just two people armed with black ONE T-shirts and smiles, in a sea of forty thousand people who were mostly concerned with… well, themselves. At times it felt pointless. What were 1,000 signatures when there were 39,000 more people who we hadn’t talked to? I kept telling myself that we could have done so much more with more volunteers, and more time, and less Gnarls Barkley breaks.
And yet… that’s how advocacy goes sometimes. You have to throw yourself, body and soul, into a cause, spread the word to as many people as possible, and then sit back and take some time for yourself. You just have to trust that one or two of the people you talked to will talk to their friends… and those friends will tell more friends… and a new ONE group will be born in an area that had previously been completely unfamiliar with poverty issues.
That’s the great thing about ONE. None of us, not even the biggest celebrity in the world, is going to eradicate poverty on his or her own. No matter how many office hours you work – no matter how many wristbands you give to your friends at school. What a funny conundrum: we need to depend on each other in order to help each other. One person, one voice, one vote at a time…
When I decided to start a ONE group in Orange County, California, I had my doubts. Orange County (OC), an extremely affluent and aesthetically beautiful community, is for the most part devoid of any sign of poverty or hunger. I wondered if residents here cared enough, beyond their expensive tract homes and their top rated schools, to want to get involved with issues that seem a million miles away. Boy, was I surprised.
I began with a meeting at my home to introduce my family and friends to the Campaign and the issues. Only 14 of the over 50 friends I invited came, but the energy was encouraging. Next, I posted the group on the ONE website and immediately began hearing from my fellow OC citizens. People here are aware and interested after all. We held our first official meeting this month. High school and college students and people in their 20s, 30s and 40s all showed up to get involved and to get this group underway.
The OC ONE group is excited, energetic, full of great ideas and steadily growing. We are holding meetings in October and November and new members are always welcome. You can join our group by going to ONE.org homepage.
Around the country, ONE members are getting involved in their local AIDS Walks.
I have attended my local AIDS Walk since 1995 and have always been inspired to see so many people coming together to support those living with HIV/AIDS and in memory for those we have lost.
As well as showing support for your local HIV/AIDS organizations – by wearing ONE shirts, telling other walk attendees about ONE and by signing up new members with ONE Declaration sheets – these walks are also opportunities to increase the visibility of ONE in your community.
Last year, DC ONE formed a team of 14 volunteers for the Washington AIDS Walk. This year’s DC walk is on October 7 and Yvette Castro, a DC ONE volunteer, is returning as the team’s captain. She said: “Last year’s walk was so much fun. We got to meet other local ONE volunteers and the walk led to lots of new opportunities and events for ONE volunteer.”
If you live in the DC area you can join by going to: www.aidswalkwashington.org and registering for the “DC ONE Campaign” team.
If you are not in DC, check to see if your community is hosting an AIDS Walk. In many cities, you can join a team that ONE volunteers have already formed. If your city doesn’t have a ONE team yet, consider hosting one and inviting your family and friends to join you.
[Pictured above: The 2005 DC ONE Campaign AIDS Walk team.]
A few weeks
ago, the band Sierra Leone’s
Refugee All Stars donated their song “Living Like a Refugee” to all ONE members. (For those
who missed our email and blog post, this remarkable band was formed by six refugees who escaped
from the ten-year civil war in Sierra Leone.)
Today, we want
to give you an update on the band’s whereabouts:
Their CD, Living Like A Refugee, is coming out on Tuesday, September 26.
You can pre-order a copy here.
The band is currently touring the U.S. as part of their worldwide tour. Check out their tour dates. I plan to go to
their October 26 performance at the 9:30 Club here in D.C.
A critically acclaimed
documentary about the band was released last year and is currently being screened at film festivals
around the country and world. Click on this link for screening dates
and locations.
The band’s channel on
You Tube is one of the most subscribed channels on the site this week. Check out it out for
excerpts from their documentary, live concert footage and footage of the band’s life in refugee
camps.
I posted one of
the band’s You Tube video clips above. If you visit and subscribe to their channel, you’ll be helping to
spread the word about the band. Check back to the ONE Blog for an update after the October 26 D.C.
show.
The most important thing you can do this year to end extreme poverty is vote on November 7th.
Extreme poverty impacts almost every aspect of our nation’s foreign policy and contradicts our core values. Since ONE’s launch two years ago, over 2.4 million people and 100 of the world’s most respected humanitarian organizations have joined together in an unprecedented alliance to help the world’s poorest nations. This November is the first time that we, as ONE members, will cast ballots and add our voices to the electoral process.
Sign the ONE Voter pledge – a pledge to educate yourself, your community, and to vote on Election Day. Together, we are building an organized constituency of Americans who are taking concrete steps to end extreme poverty. Over the next six weeks, ONE members will host events in their homes, places of worship, and cities, educating themselves about how America can do even more to fight AIDS and poverty around the world.
We’ll use the ONE Voter Pledge to reach out to people who want to learn how to get more involved. The pledge is a tool to raise global poverty awareness in communities across the country. Your one conversation or email might seem like a small contribution. But, in concert with millions of other ONE members, a pledge to vote and talk about global poverty is an important step toward enabling the world’s poorest nations to rise out of poverty.
To win the fight against extreme poverty, we must make it a national priority. Please vote and make your voice and your priorities heard in the democratic process.
ONE is campaigning to ensure that the Congressional budget does not cut foreign assistance programs like Feed the Future that help people break the cycle of poverty and hunger.
The Horn of Africa is experiencing its worst drought in 60 years. More than 11 million people, mostly nomadic pastoralists and farmers in south-central Somalia, north-eastern Kenya, and south-eastern Ethiopia, are severely lacking access to food.
2011 marks 30 years since the first cases of AIDS were documented. Take a closer look at the specific, achievable goals we must hit by 2015 to make this year the beginning of the end of AIDS.
As aid agencies warn more than 9 million people could be affected by a food crisis in East Africa, world leaders are failing to keep their 2009 promises to tackle the causes of chronic hunger and support farmers in the world's poorest countries.
