The Very Movement He Was Talking About

Feb 28th, 2007 2:00 PM EST
By Elaine Van Cleave, Head of ONE Birmingham group, Birmingham, AL

This weekend I attended and spoke at the 2nd Annual Hunger Summit at Auburn University in Alabama. College and university students from across the U.S.A., from Georgetown University to the University of Idaho, attended the three day conference.

James Morris, executive director of the UN World Food Programme (WFP), the world’s largest international food aid organization, spoke during the event. He told us that each year the WFP distributes food to about 100 million of the world’s poorest people; however, with 852 million hungry people on this planet, even the world’s largest food agency falls short.

Mr. Morris spoke passionately about the need for hunger and poverty to become a part of the national political agenda and told us that we need a movement to end hunger and poverty in this world.

The next day, I gave a presentation on the ONE Campaign.

In my talk, I identified ONE as the very movement Mr. Morris was talking about. I showed the ONE Vote Spot video produced by ONE for the 2006 midterm elections and told the students that ONE is growing everyday from its current size of 2.4 million members. Afterwards, I received a lot of positive responses and dozens of new members signed up for ONE.

Famine at American University

Feb 28th, 2007 1:00 PM EST
By Alan Boswell, ONE Online Organizer

Thirty enthusiastic American University students showed up on campus this
past Friday to learn how to become better advocates for the poor and
suffering around the world. ONE Regional Field Organizer Ranna Lanagan spoke
to the group, most of who were participating in an event on campus called
“30 Hour Famine.” After she finished explaining ONE and its issues,
students were given tips on being ONE advocates on campus. Afterwards, we
wrote letters to our congressmen to let them know about our support for
ONE’s fight for more and better aid towards the poorest countries in the
world.

Organizing a speaker on a college campus for a Friday night is typically not
an advised method of attracting event attendees, but neither is fasting for
30 hours the most popular weekend activity among college students. “30 Hour
Famine” is an event sponsored by World Vision, one of ONE’s founding partner
organizations. Youth all across the world participate in the fast in order
to better empathize with world hunger. While fasting, participants raise
awareness on world poverty and organize local service projects. We had over
twice as many participants as last year, making this the most successful
Famine on campus ever.

All-in-all around 20 students did the entire fast, and near the end we
discussed how the experience spoke to us personally. One common theme was
how the fast brought the global hunger crisis home in a way that our
academic studies on the issue could not. A couple students specifically
mentioned how they were excited to get more involved with ONE. With an AU
ONE Facebook group of over 550 members and a core group of excited students,
the AU ONE community is looking forward to even larger events in the future.

Join ONE’s global facebook group

A Package From San Francisco

Feb 27th, 2007 3:30 PM EST
By Virginia Simmons

• The Basics of the ONE Campaign,
  includes:
  
  -The Beginning of a Movement
  -AIDS and Extreme Poverty: Crisis and Opportunity
  -Making the G-8 Promises a Reality
• ONE Volunteer Guidelines
• The ONE Declaration Sign-Up Form
• Meeting Your Members of Congress
• Lobbying Tips
• Using the Internet to Organize for ONE
• The Farm Bill
• Reforming the 2007 Farm Bill, Oxfam
• Why Drop the Debt?, Jubilee USA (page 2 here)
• Why Foreign Aid Counts, CARE
• Issue Fact Sheets,
  includes:
  -The Millennium Development Goals
  -More and Better Aid
  -Debt Cancellation
  -Trade Justice
  -Clean Water & Sanitation
  -Education
  -Child & Maternal Health
  -HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis & Malaria

ONE Music: Natalie Grant

Feb 27th, 2007 11:30 AM EST
By Virginia Simmons

Singer-songwriter and GMA Dove Award winner Natalie Grant shows her support for the fight against extreme poverty by donating her song “Held” to ONE members this week.

Members Reflections Part III

Feb 26th, 2007 3:30 PM EST
By Virginia Simmons

Danny Drysdale wrote the below post on the spot at Saturday’s ONE training. (Danny may be the one who finally puts us all out of work.)

“Hi, I’m Danny Drysdale, 11, and I am writing this blog about two things in two parts, firstly I would like to talk about today, today is the day my mom and I went to the ONE San Francisco Advocacy Training.

Today, as I stated above, I went to the advocacy training in San Francisco for ONE. The day was broken down into 8 parts: “Registration”, “ONE campaign 101″, Debt cancellation, fair trade, and developmental assistance”, “Break-out sessions: Learning more about discussing the issues”, “Lunch”, “How to advocate on behalf of ONE issues”, “Advocacy break-outs: Learning more about outreach and advocacy”, and “The future of ONE in San Francisco”.

Today I estimated that there was about 50-100 people at any given time during the training. I also noted, though sadly, that I was the only kid there. Though still I managed to learn much from it, as I’m sure everyone else did. The speeches themselves were mostly made by Stephanie Handler, Field Organizer for ONE, Anne Batchelder, Field Coordinator of ONE, and Andy Rigsby of CARE. They talked about debt cancellation, fair trade, developmental assistance, how to advocate on behalf of ONE issues, and outreach in our community. The training was extensive and very informative. We also went into break-out groups and had 1:00-1:15 long discussions about various different subjects.

All in all, I think that this training was very helpful and important. So please, if you live in the area in which any of these trainings are located, you should go. If there is no training near enough to where you live or where you are, or you can’t go for any other reason, then by all means please get the information that was in the training, which is available on the Saturday posts on the ONE Blog.

Now I wish to tell you a little bit about myself and my connection to ONE. For all my life I have been interested in advocacy and activism. Though i really became involved in these things in 2nd grade, when i started going to a wonderful after school program called Magic Apple, located in Aptos, CA. It is a 2nd to 6th grade after school program that all of its students go to after school. The teachers there, Jan and Fran Jiminez, taught me and Magic’s (that’s what we call Magic Apple) other students about poverty, global warming, and other problems in the world. They teach us things made for college level students and even above, so obviously it has produced many different people, included local politicians, pro surfers, scientists, and much more. So in that mix it has made many activists and advocates. I just happen to be ONE of them.

So now i am very involved in many things, ONE of which happens to be ONE. So now i hope to do many things, some of them include lobbying politicians, fighting AIDS and extreme poverty, and getting kids more involved in something that affects children just like them, education in third-world countries. I am hoping to achieve this by raising awareness with presentations at schools, public events, and anywhere a large amount of kids can be found. I am hoping to make kids realize that children in other countries, children just like them, can’t even go to school: right now 104 million children in third-world countries can’t go to school because of disease, debt, and many other problems they may face. I wish to start a new branch of ONE, ONEkids. Though i have much more to say i must end here, so please if you wish to learn more about ONE please explore the website. Or if you wish to speak to me, then please post a comment on this blog.

-Danny Drysdale, ONE member, Santa Cruz, CA”

Members Reflections Part II

Feb 26th, 2007 1:00 PM EST
By Virginia Simmons

More member thoughts from Saturday’s San Francisco training:

“I signed up with ONE a few months ago when the U2 Vertigo tour came to Oakland. I’ve worn my white ONE wristband for a while, but I felt like I wanted to do more. When I heard there was going to be a ONE advocacy training session in San Francisco, just a few blocks from where I live, I decided now was the time to make a commitment to get more involved. I’m surprised how much I’ve learned in one day including how to lobby my representatives, volunteer in my community, and how to network with others who care about the same issues. There’s a lot of work to do, but I feel like now I have some basic skills that I can use to contribute my part eradicating global poverty.”

-Stephen Eyer, filmmaker and ONE member, San Francisco, CA

Update: added photo

Members Reflections Part I

Feb 26th, 2007 10:00 AM EST
By Virginia Simmons

At Saturday’s training in San Francisco, CA, ONE members took over our computers to let us know their thoughts:

“Hi Everybody,

Well, to be fully honest we’re not Shakespeares so our entry won’t be particularly loquacious. However, it would be our esteemed pleasure to let you know how amazingly fantastabulous and awesometastic the training was. Colloquially speaking; like… OH MY GOD! We’ve learned how to introduce the ONE Campaign to our school and how easy it is to make a difference. Even though we are 17, we now understand that our age is unimportant in the grand scheme of things. We will definitely get involved, thanks to you guys.

-Marta Dymek and Anand Badri, students and ONE members, San Francisco, California”

Update: added pictures

We Did It!

Feb 24th, 2007 5:00 PM EST
By admin

The first 2007 ONE member training is complete. Can’t wait to see the next crew in Denver on March 10.

Wrapped Up!

Feb 24th, 2007 4:00 PM EST
By Virginia Simmons

Stephanie briefly went over all the sessions from the day, talked about the San Francisco groups that already exist, all the opportunities we have to make an impact and thanked everyone for coming.

Anne wrapped it all up saying: “So you all made it. Six hours. Tons of information…Hopefully you’ll go home tonight and think about what you want you want to do next.”

Now everyone is mingling, meeting each other and asking questions.

There’s a lot of energy, a lot of hope and a lot of San Franciscans armed with the knowledge and tools they need to make a difference.

Check back for posts from the ONE members who attended today.

Advocacy Break Out Sessions

Feb 24th, 2007 3:30 PM EST
By Virginia Simmons

I jumped from room to room for the last break out session. At my first stop, Stephanie was leading her group through the ONE volunteer guidelines and the process for lobbying.

In Anne’s group they were in the middle of an advocacy brainstorm. On the board there were ideas like hosting events with ONE themes, having ONE tables at major events and community functions, creating ONE school groups, and, my favorite, running for office.

In Andy’s group, 11-year-old Danny was talking about how he wanted to create ONE for kids. We talked about how today’s kids will be the next generation of activists and how you can get parents’ attention about extreme poverty through their children. Another woman talked about reaching out to girl scouts because she watches the girl scouts in her community grow up to be the leaders in their high schools. Andy brought the discussion back to adults, telling the group we have to figure out how to tap into everyone’s “inner girl scout.”

Finally, I joined Lori’s group. Lori is a long-time San Francisco ONE volunteer. The group had already outlined a whole list of items including a once a month meeting for everyone in their area. The group also talked about the potential to tap into church groups and schools. Finally we talked about outreach in general. How sometimes you have to just try stuff out, see what works and keep trying. We have to work with each other and have faith that all of our individual work will add up to a movement.

I made sure to tell them that I wanted to hear updates about how their plans are going - and that I want to post those updates right here on the ONE Blog.