Archive for March, 2007
“Anne: “Something people always say about the world, is that we have the resources to end poverty, and we have the knowledge to end poverty, we just don’t have the will power.
Now I’m going to say the same thing to you: You have the resources, you have the knowledge, we need you go out and use it.
Hopefully you feel like you can walk out of here and be the ONE Campaign of Minnesota.”
Mike got up and talked about some new ONE Campaign groups in Minnesota.
They’ll be monthly meetings on the third Thursday of every month at 6pm at the Minnesota Church in Assembly Room 1 at 122 W. Franklin Ave. W. (corner of Frankliin and Pillsbury) in Minneapolis, MN 55404. Mike will lead the first few meetings, but he’s looking for someone to take a leadership role for the group.
There’s also a Twin City ONE Yahoo Group you can join from ONE.org. Sign up to learn a lot more.
(Some more useful handouts below)
-Ten Ways to Contribute to ONE
-ONE Volunteer Guidelines
We broke into groups again, this time for targeted outreach brainstorms. The groups were faith, campus, “ONE in your community,” or “ONE Leaders.” In each group, individuals committed to actions they plan to take and someone reported back from each group.
Faith
-Talk to their church group
-Learn, personally, more about how the government works, so that they can educate others
-Conduct letter-writing Sundays for the farm bill
-Get their churches to move into international poverty work, not just missions
Campus Group
-Make official ONE groups
-Do an artwork competition
-Table on the first day of every month, at strategic locations on campus
-Talk to political and business departments, not just regional or social justice departments
-Hold ONE band give away
-Get departmental faculty involved
-Work with other organizations on campus
-Speak during classes
-Set up a table during earth week
-Get speakers to come to your school
Starting Up a ONE Groups
-Speaking to churches, youth groups
-Starting up Facebook groups
-Use MySpace/Facebook
-Movie and Book clubs
-Wearing the ONE Band can be a discussion starter
-Table at Earth Day event
-Use Craigslist and MeetUp.com
ONE in your Community
-Contact members of Congress
-Talk to family members and friends
-Use community groups that you’re already involved with
-Publish locally
-Visit Africa
-Use Facebook
ONE Leaders
-Go to local civic groups
-Talk to teachers and students
-Movie clubs
-Book Club
-Post flyers with quotes and pictures
-Make your city a city of ONE by discussing it with your mayor
-Wear ONE shirts at major city events
-Develop “ONE month” at churches, with one issue highlighted per month
-Hold a ONE 5K race
-Bring ONE into their workplace
While I am sitting here, blogging away, a number of ONE members are dropping by to say hi.
David Alley is from St. Paul, MN. He has worked with charter schools for last 15 years and he’s looking to jump into something new. He’s interested in creative, innovative, resource-smart education in developing countries, as well as the empowerment of women, which he thinks, as many do, is key to ending poverty.
Claudia Espinosa is here from Iowa (although I’ve already met her on Facebook weeks ago.) Claudia moved to the U.S. from Mexico in 1999 and became involved in debt relief through her church. She found ONE though Jubilee and she’s been a strong member ever since.
Joe Leyba from St. Paul swung by to give me one of his homemade ONE buttons. He learned about ONE through U2, read a bunch of information about the Campaign and now he “reads the ONE Blog all the time.” (Good sucking up points Joe:)
Finally, I met Amy Sturgeon. Amy first heard about ONE from the 2005 T.V. commercials. The wide breath of supporters in the commercials caught her eye and she knew that this campaign was something she wanted to pay attention to. Amy talks to her church leaders about the issues and stays up to date with the ONE emails. She found ONE’s 2006 thanksgiving email, about the Oxfam Hunger Banquet, particularly moving and helpful. She’s here because this is something she cares about deeply and she wants to get more involved.
Everyone broke into groups again. Monét Cooper of Jubilee and Lou Hille of Oxfam led a session on “Lobbying 101,” Jane Ascroft of CARE and Mike Batell of Bread for the World led a session on “Lobbying 202″ and Anne Bathelder and Annisa Wanat of ONE led a session on the candidates.
I dropped by Jane and Mike’s sessions where they were talking about ways to prepare before meeting with a member of Congress, including researching the member, researching your issues and planning your clear, concise ask.
Mike really emphasized the importance of learning your members’ backgrounds. If you can be versatile with your message, and tailor it to a certain way of thinking (faith, security) who may find it can resonate with your member more quickly and with more staying power.
Jane talked about not being discouraged if your member (or their staff person you meet with) isn’t on board. You may have to develop a relationship with him or her and think of that member in terms of a long-term plan. Be polite and persistent. You’d be surprise how people can come around with some time.
This sheet might also be helpful:Meeting Your Member of Congress
Next Anne came up.
You may have noticed, she said, that last year’s “Time Person of the Year” was a mirror. Anne says she thought that was sorta lame, but it still works with this point: No one person is making this movement happen; We are all making this movement happen.
Anne talked about why we picked Minneapolis for this training: there’s an important political convention here in 2008. We picked Denver for the same reason.
The ONE Campaign is changing the political landscape. “Congress is paying attention to our issues in a way I don’t think they were even two years ago.”
Anne remembers when she first started talking about debt cancellation and everyone treated her like she was nuts. But five years later, we had cancelled 21 developing countries’ debt. And just last week, for example, the Senate passed the Smith-Dodd amendment reversing a $2.2 billion planned cut to the president’s 2008 international affairs account budget request.
Anne talked about how ONE volunteers in New Hampshire are going up to the presidential candidates, asking them their plans on fighting extreme poverty and global AIDS. You can look through the ONE Blog, to see the candidates (Republicans and Democrats) who have donned the ONE band.
Next, Anne told everyone to call Senator Klobuchar about the 302B (the next step in the 2008 budget process.) Mike took the stage and called the senator in front of everyone. Mike asked Senator Klobuchar to support the Senate’s 2008 international affairs budget of $38.9 billion.
Anne then asked everyone in the room to pull out their cell phones and do the same right now. (Everyone calling a senator in their home state if they aren’t from Minnesota.)
Anne: “This afternoon is all about taking the information you have and making it useful- so that next time we won’t be able to fit into this room. We’ll have to find a bigger one.”
Mike from Bread then came up to talk about outreach. We need to bring more people in, he says, because we are building a movement and numbers matter. It matters if a senator gets 3, 10, 100, or 2,000 letters. A senator is probably not going to read your letter. And one letter, no matter how well-written, is probably not going to change a senator’s mind. But if a senator’s office gets a large number of letters on the same issue, they’re going to pay attention to that issue.
Congressional offices don’t get many letters on poverty-development assistance, especially before the ONE Campaign came around.
Two basic steps to engaging people:
1) Ask them to sign up at ONE.org
2) Encourage them to take direct action
Mike tells us that one of his favorite things about ONE is that it empowers all of us to take this into our own hands. You can take these ideas to your own community. Below are some of Mike’s outreach ideas:
-When tabling, you have 30 seconds, ask people to “sign their name to the ONE Declaration and add their name to the fight against poverty.” Next, give them materials and bring a cell phone or a laptop with an internet connection. Get them to make a phone call or send an email to their member of Congress, right then and there while still at the table.
-You can use clip boards instead of tables. Stand outside of campus dorms. Go door to door in your neighborhood.
-Send email announcements to your friends and family.
-Place flyers on classroom seats, on bathroom stalls.
-Make public service announcements for a local radio station, place announcements in local newspapers about events and meetings.
-Use FaceBook. 80% of college students check their FaceBook accounts almost everyday and it had an incredible ability to spread messages.
-Present at other organizations’ events to talk about ONE.
-Hand out ONE Declaration sign-up sheets at your meetings and tell everyone to come to the next meeting with their sheets full of new names (and email addresses.)
-Start off and end meetings by having everyone write a letter to their member of Congress (it only takes two minutes.)
-Set up in-district meetings with your member of Congress or their office staff.
-Attend your members of Congress’ local Town Hall meetings, ask their stances on fighting global poverty.
-Identify “grass tops activist” who have direct relationships with members of Congress and get them involved in our fight.
Initiate your own movement in your hometown. Talk to classes, tell all your friends, table. If after a few days, you get 200 people to sign the ONE Declaration, and thirty of them are passionate enough to go on and get more people to sign on then you are moving our fight closer to its tipping point.
“The way that the world is today is not the way that it has to be. “
