A Call to ‘Real Life’ Action

If you have not heard of Second Life yet, expect to start hearing about it from now on. Second Life is a rapidly growing virtual world in which users from all over the globe are able to meet and interact each other in a startlingly real-looking environment, forming virtual communities and events not possible within “real life.”

Today, the Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP) held a protest in Second Life as part of the Deine Stimme Gegen Armut (Your Voice Against Poverty) campaign in the lead up to the upcoming G8 summit in Germany. ONE is the American component of GCAP. The protest was organized by NETZ, a Germany-based non-profit that works in cooperation with Bangladeshi NGO’s to help that country’s fight against poverty. What good does a virtual protest do? For starters, one of Germany’s most-read newspapers has already decided to do a story on the Second Life GCAP event.

ONE’s presence was well-received and evident to all at the event. Our specially designed virtual kiosk was placed at multiple spots on location and was joined by a few of us ONE supporters proudly wearing our ONE T-shirts and ONE bands. They were happy to see the event had international support and even played their streaming audio speech in English a couple times for the ONE members in attendance. If you are already Second Life residents, contact ONE Binder in-world to get plugged into ONE’s growing Second Life community.

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Sojourners: Faith Guiding Our Votes

All of us at Sojourners are excited to be a partner with the ONE Campaign in seeking to end extreme poverty, which we believe is one of the greatest moral and religious imperatives of our time. And we’re just as excited to have ONE’s support for Faith Guiding Our Votes: A Presidential Forum on Faith, Values, and Poverty, a conversation we’re hosting with Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama which will be broadcast live on CNN this coming Monday, June 4, at 7 PM Eastern time. (A similar forum with Republican candidates is being planned for the fall.)

We’re in the final stages of deciding what questions to ask the candidates, and are asking our friends and supporters to cast a vote for which question they’d most like us to ask. (I hope I’m not prejudicing the vote any by mentioning that one of the nominees is a question about global poverty and the Millennium Development Goals.)

Tune in to CNN Monday to see which question is asked and how the candidates respond. Better yet, consider joining others at a watch party in your area, where people of faith will gather to issue a prophetic challenge to put poverty at the top of the national agenda.

Vegas Hillary, Vegas

Las Vegas ONE members attended a town hall meeting at Canyon Springs High School yesterday, hosted by Hillary Clinton.

Senator Clinton spoke repeatedly about the need to fight poverty.

The Clinton campaign was kind enough to allow ONE volunteers to greet attendees with ONE pamphlets and set up a ONE information booth in the lobby.

73 new members signed the declaration, including some students from Canyon Springs who held a forum earlier in the year about poverty at their school. They are excited to participate in their first presidential election as members and representatives of ONE.

91 year old activist Harry Krogan also signed the declaration. Harry said, “If you guys are fighting to educate women and children in impoverished countries, then I am with you 100%.”

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Bush Banks on Zoellick

At 11am today, President Bush nominated Robert Zoellick to be the new president of the World Bank.

Below, an excerpt from Zoellick’s remarks upon accepting the nomination:

“If the board and members of the Bank then concur with this nomination,
it will be my aim to work closely with and learn from the institution’s
dedicated and talented staff. Together, we can consult closely with the
Bank’s many stakeholders and partners to set a course to advance its
missions.

It would be an honor to help lead this key institution and to work with
the many fine professionals from all over the world who are dedicated to
overcoming poverty and creating opportunity.”

You can read President Bush’s and Mr. Zoellick’s full speeches
here.

Hillary Shaking It Up in Nashua

On Tuesday, Sen. Hillary Clinton did a downtown walk of Main Street in Nashua, New Hampshire. She stopped in at a few local stores to meet with primary voters.

Nine ONE members came out in ONE shirts and held posters that read “Thank you Hillary ‘n Sen. Smith for the Education for All Act”, “Proud to be American, Proud to be ONE”, and “Fight AIDS, Poverty, and Corruption in Africa”.

When Hillary walked by she noticed the signs and stopped to talk with the ONE members. Hillary was thrilled to see the poster thanking her for the EFA Act and spoke about the importance of getting children in the developing world enrolled in primary school. ONE member Melissa Skinner also spoke with Hillary about reforming the Farm Bill to allow impoverished Africans the ability to “trade their way out of poverty”.

Hillary then looked out in the crowd and was surprised to see all of the ONE members in ONE shirts and asked to shake everyone’s hand. She said that it was important for the ONE Campaign to keep up the visibility as she put on a ONE band.

Inside a local brewpub, while wearing a ONE shirt and holding his baby daughter, staunch conservative Kevin Keefe told Hillary, “I am a conservative and I am not supporting anyone on the democratic side, but I want to thank you for your efforts fighting HIV/AIDS in Africa”.

From Main Street in Nashua, New Hampshire, to the halls of Congress and on to the continent of Africa, there is a new and fresh partnership between America and the world’s poorest people. Republicans and Democrats are both realizing the opportunity we have to save lives around the world.

We are America, we can beat extreme poverty, we can make poverty history, we are ONE. It starts with your voice, and it starts today.

Bush to Ask for $30 Billion for AIDS Fight

At 1pm this afternoon, Bush will request a doubling of PEPFAR funding, from $15 to $30 billion over the next 5 years.

From this morning’s Washington Post:

“Bush announced the program [PEPFAR], the largest foreign-aid effort directed at a single disease in U.S. history, in his 2003 State of the Union address. Through last September, it was paying for anti-retroviral treatment for 822,000 people in the ‘target countries’ — 12 African nations, plus Guyana, Haiti and Vietnam.

The program also pays for drugs for 165,000 people elsewhere in the developing world, and it has provided short courses of medicine to more than 500,000 pregnant women — a strategy that has prevented about 100,000 infections to newborns, program officials say.

This year, an independent panel of experts assembled by the Institute of Medicine called the program ‘well positioned’ to help AIDS-devastated countries control epidemics.”

Learn more by tuning in to the president’s 1pm address and checking back to the ONE Blog just after.

Rapid Obama Photo Op in Cedar Rapids

Barack Obama was in Iowa Monday and Tuesday to meet with the people and unveil a new healthcare plan he’s proposing. The plan calls for everyone not covered by insurance to be covered by the end of his term in office.

Senator Obama visited Iowa City, Cedar Rapids and Davenport during his brief tour. ONE was able to meet up with him at a rally in Cedar Rapids where he answered questions about his healthcare policy as well as questions about the war in Iraq.

Though his time was short, he took a moment for a quick photo.

A ONE Drive-Thru

This weekend members of ONEorlando took part in an original kind of outreach with the O-Rock 105.9 Street Team.

O-Rock promoted the weekend-long outreach by inviting listeners to “drive-thru” and visit ONE at various locations throughout Orlando Friday through Monday. Those listening to O-Rock were told to drive-thru and drop off any canned goods, which were then donated to the HOPE Foundation (for their food bank to help the underpriviledged in Central Florida). They were then greeted by ONE members and after joining the campaign, were “stickered” and given the ONE white band. As a thank you to the listener for their genorosity for the food-drive, O-rock gave everyone the opportunity to pick tickets out off the “prize pack” - with prizes ranging from tickets to the movies, wet-n-wild water park, to tickets to the the upcoming Warped Tour concert this summer…there was something for everyone!

ONEorlando is currently working alongside the HOPE Foundation and the Carillon United Methodist Church for their “ONEnow” event, June 23rd. The event currently has over 20 non-profit organizations coming together under one roof, for a night of awareness, music, to encourage volunteer initiatives, sponsored by 105.9 Radio, Orlando.

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New World Bank President Announced

Tomorrow, President Bush will announce the selection of Robert Zoellick as the new president of the World Bank. Mr. Zoellick is a one-time U.S. trade representative and former No. 2 official at the State Department.

From a MSNBC piece:

“If confirmed by the bank’s board, Mr Zoellick will replace Paul Wolfowitz, who agreed to resign as bank chief on June 30 following a two-month long crisis over his handling of a secondment package for his girlfriend, a bank official.

The next bank president will face a stiff set of challenges, including the need to heal deep divisions within the bank while setting out a strategic vision of its future role in a world of private capital flows and large-scale philanthropic foundations.”

Read the full article here.

The Altruist’s High

We’ve all heard of the “runner’s high,” that euphoric release of
endorphins which flood the bloodstream during extended physical
exercise. Now, neuroscientists have astonishingly discovered that doing
good may inspire a similarly powerful physical and emotional response.
Is there an “altruist’s high”?

From the Washington Post:

“When the volunteers placed the interests of others before their own,
the generosity activated a primitive part of the brain that usually
lights up in response to food or sex. Altruism, the experiment
suggested, was not a superior moral faculty that suppresses basic
selfish urges but rather was basic to the brain, hard-wired and
pleasurable.”

Doing good feels pretty good. As a supporter of the ONE Campaign,
you’ve know that for a long time. When you talk to people about what a
great time you have volunteering with the ONE Campaign, don’t be afraid
to get them involved. It’s nearly a scientific certainty that they’ll
enjoy it, too.