“You gotta trust your vision of visibility if you wanna make poverty history – Keep on rockin’ in the free world”

And with that, in Honolulu, U2 ended a tour of more than 130 shows. Initially it seemed strange to suddenly be back at a U2 show nearly a year after our last date in December 2005, but we quickly fell back into place. At this last show alone, we signed up more than 1,800 new ONE members in person and more than 4,000 more by text. Judging by the amount of people I saw wearing white ONE bands on the island after the last date of the show, I could tell that our reach was pretty massive!

If anything really stood out, it was all the RED, EDUN and ONE shirts in the crowd. There were countless fans sporting the new RED product tees, the ONE EDUN tees (Bono himself was wearing the EDUN ONE shirt most of the night) and the black ONE tee. It’s hard for me to believe that, in March 2005 when the tour began, there were only 50 or so ONE shirts in existence (for my staff and our volunteers), and now tens of thousands of fans are helping to fight poverty with their fashion choices! All in all, it’s been an amazing journey watching this campaign expand and really make an impact over the past two years.

Getting to go to Hawaii was of course a nice perk, but even more fun was talking to so many fans from across the country and around the world who had come to Honolulu for this special show. As always, we had a stellar crew of volunteers to join us in making the night a big success. Among those volunteers were Beth and Susan, sisters from southern California. Susan is currently a nurse who now lives in Hawaii. Beth had to wake up three hours after the show ended to run in the AIDS marathon Sunday morning! Rounding out the crew were Sheri and her sister (L.A. volunteers), Sean and Shari (ONE Hawaii members), Linsey and Laura (with the local Salvation Army), Riley (a Hawaii native), and Lori (a tried-and-true San Francisco volunteer). It was especially great to see Lori. She was among the very first ONE volunteers we ever got to work with, when she joined us at a U2 show in San Jose back in April 2005.

It’s always bittersweet to have something as amazing as the U2 tour come to an end, but it’s good to know that more than 100,000 fans joined ONE in that time and that we were able to take great strides in spreading the word about ONE. A special thanks to all of those volunteers that have joined us on the Vertigo tour, and to the Vertigo crew for their endless support of ONE!

Keep on the lookout for exciting volunteer opportunities to come in 2007!