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.