Live Post From Nairobi, Kenya

Jan 22nd, 2007 9:00 AM UTC
By Michelle Dixon, ONE's Deputy Director of Outreach

Launched yesterday with a rousing speech by Desmond Tutu, the World Social Forum here in Nairobi, Kenya, was in full, colorful swing today. I wish you were all here with me and could experience first hand this incredible display of the depth and diversity of the global poverty movement. Though with a billion dollars of poverty assistance hanging in the balance in the U.S., I am glad you are there to continue raising your voices. I’ll do my best to convey some of the sense of the activities with regular updates here on the ONE Blog.

Today, I helped to introduce a forum on ONE partner campaigns in Africa as part of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty. I was blown away as Sarah, the campaign coordinator in Nigeria, talked about how in just two years they have built a coalition of over 700 Nigerian organizations. Even more importantly, their mobilization has already had enormous victories, including the establishment an official Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) office in the Nigerian government. They’re certainly not letting down, however. The Nigerian elections are slated to take place in April and they refuse to miss this important opportunity to hold their leaders accountable. They have collected the platforms of all 15 national parties and are rating them and mobilizing their supporter base to vote based on how their plans to fight poverty and corruption.

In Malawi, their efforts to establish MDG clubs in schools and churches paid off when 1.5 Malawians took park in the Global Day of Action on October 17th. As a result of their mobilizations, their government agreed to one of their core demands and established a policy against gender-based violence.

All over the world people are rising up to hold their leaders accountable to the promises they have made to end extreme poverty, but while I was truly struck by the historic achievements of global poverty movements across Africa, their honest discussion of the challenges they are facing is a stark reminder of how much work there is left to do. Deo, from the Ugandan campaign, talked about how lack of basic infrastructure (roads, cars, electricity, computers, etc.) and the increasing crack downs on civil society activity are making it extremely difficult for them to organize. Not to mention the hard fact that Africa and global leaders have a long way to go if we are to actually achieve the Millennium Development Goals by 2015. But we are indeed just getting started and it was an encouraging reminder when the session closed with an announcement that tomorrow we will launch this year’s dates for global mobilization dates around the G8 Summit and the October 17th Day of Action Against Poverty. There is much to do before tomorrow to prepare, so for now, I wish you all good night from Nairobi.

TAGS: The ONE Blog