Help End World Peace?
August 20th, 2007 at 9:32 am | posted by Virginia Simmons
The ONE Campaign concert team has been back out on the road the past few weeks, recruiting new ONE members and volunteers along the way!
We just launched our third summer on tour with the Dave Matthews Band. We kicked the tour off in Boston two weeks ago with a powerhouse crew of volunteers. Among those that joined us were Amy, who is one of the lead volunteers in the Boston area, and Wendy, a South African native who for some reason kept accidentally asking fans if they wanted to ‘help end world peace’. WE knew she meant world poverty, but the fans who stopped looked pretty confused! It worked though, once they stopped she explained what she MEANT to say and got them signed up and involved! In Philly we had Brit, Brent and Maria join us – Brit had just met us the week before at the Virgin Festival and brought her friend Brent along, and Maria was also a first time volunteer. In Pittsburgh we got to work with Brian, a lead volunteer for the area who comes out and helps at every show we do, and his team of great volunteers – they hold the record so far on the tour for the most sign ups, though we’re pretty sure our teams in Milwaukee and Florida are going to do their best to steal that title! We’ve already also been through Hartford and DC, and have gotten thousands of Dave fans involved with the campaign. We’ve got a good six weeks left of the tour ahead of us, and expect it to be even bigger and better than the last two years.
We got to take part in the Virgin festival again as well. It was two days this year instead of one, which gave us more time to get lots and lots of people involved with ONE. In addition to getting a few thousand more people to sign the ONE Declaration, we also managed to recruit a TON of new volunteers for the campaign, people that were eager to join us in reaching out and building support for ONE. Over the weekend, we also had some very cool volunteers join us. Andy is in the Navy – we are convinced his military training allowed him to withstand the intense heat and humidity – and just got involved with ONE, working with us was his first volunteer experience with the campaign. He was joined by Tracy, a Southern California transplant who now lives in Baltimore. They really gave it their all on Saturday, and got lots and lots of people involved. On Sunday, Tracy came back out, and we were also joined by Sara, Deidree and Sajid – all Baltimore/DC area ONE supporters who played a big part in making the weekend a success.
We also rejoined the Warped Tour last week. We were at the west coast Warped dates earlier this summer, but had to drop off to tour for a stretch. We are back in action though, getting thousands of young people across the country involved and active with ONE. Warped can be intense – it’s loud, always hot, has long days, and everything we bring out seems to be coated in a layer of dust and dirt within a day – but it’s also one of our favorite tours to do, giving us a unique chance to reach out young fans in just about every part of the country. It’s always so cool to hear about organizing around ONE happenings at college campuses, high schools and even elementary schools. Our volunteers on Warped always reflect that as well – we’ve had some amazing high school students join us at various shows over the past few weeks, doing a great job to get more and more people involved with the campaign. A lot of our volunteers, in fact, are fans that first learned about ONE at another concert. We’ve taken ONE out to Warped since the summer of 2004, and it’s really rewarding to see the impact that has made – every day we talk to young supporters who are doing amazing things for ONE in their community.
We’ll be out on the road taking ONE across the country for the next six weeks – be sure to get in touch with your local organizer if you’d like to join us, as we always are looking for volunteers to help us in making poverty history, and watch for more updates soon!
-Brande Jackson, ONE Concert Outreach
