Ta Da!

Announcing the ONE Campus Challenge!

one.org/campus

Students have played a critical role in every major movement in American history. Ending extreme poverty is no different.

Right now, using our handy brand new student website, campuses across the country are competing against each other to prove that their students are the most creative and effective poverty fighters in the country.

Check it out and sign up for your favorite school.

I hope you like it. It’s been quite the feat to get the challenge in order and the site live. We’re stoked to see the students take over.

Ask John Yourself!

UPDATE [1:45 p.m.]: If you missed today’s webcast of John Edwards answering live questions at UNH and from people online, don’t despair. It’s being re-broadcast tonight at 7:00 p.m. on MTV. I don’t want to give too much away, but ONE did play a role and we learned more about Edwards’ position on global AIDS.

Today at noon, YOU’LL have the chance to ask Senator John Edwards a question when he sits down with MTV, MySpace and a college audience at the University of New Hampshire.

No more tired questions from talking heads. You’ll get to submit your questions online in real time and hear them read by MTV correspondents. This is your chance to ask John Edwards – and in the weeks ahead all the other major presidential candidates from both parties – hard-hitting questions about what the next president should do to fight extreme poverty and global disease.

Here’s how to get in on the action:

1. Visit our question page for advice how to formulate a question about extreme poverty.
2. Watch the MTV/MySpace Presidential Dialogue with John Edwards live today online at 12:00 p.m. EST on MTV.com or MySpace.com/election2008.
3. During the debate, submit your question for John Edwards on MTV.com, or through MySpaceIM.
4. Use the live polling feature to rate each answer either: ‘agree,’ ‘disagree,’ ‘full of bull,’ ’scripted/canned,’ ’sincere/authentic,’ or ‘well argued.’
5. Stay tuned and let’s hear how John Edwards plans to end poverty if he’s elected president.
6. If you can’t watch live, it’ll be broadcast on MTV tonight at 7:00 p.m. EST.

Remember to include in your question that you’re a member of the ONE Campaign, a movement of over 2 million Americans working together as ONE to end extreme poverty and global disease and save millions of lives in the world’s poorest countries.

-Aaron Banks

Understanding the Fast in 7 Days

-By Robyn Llloyd, Jubilee USA Supporter, filmmaker, activist

JubileeUSA is holding a rolling fast for 40 days from Sep. 6 to Oct. 15 to bring awareness of the urgent need for debt relief for impoverished countries in order for them to meet the Millennium Development Goals of 2015.

This year is a Sabbath Year (seven years from 2000) and the world is midway towards the deadline of the MDGs. But are we midway toward meeting the goals of cutting global poverty and hunger in half?

I am one of more than 10,000 fasters supporting the Jubilee Act (HR 2634), which is co-sponsored by 50 representatives. My congressman, Vermont Rep. Peter Welch has now signed on to the Jubilee Act.

More than 10,000 people nationally are planning to fast — for one day or many — and have registered to fast on the Jubilee USA website. David Duncombe, a 79-year-old minister from Washington state, has vowed to fast for 40 days, and spend his time walking the halls of Congress in support of the Act.

I decide to take part doing a week-long fast. Below are excerpts from what I experienced on different days of the fast. Though I know my experience of ‘hunger’ will have very little resemblance to the day in and day out suffering of one in five people around the world who are impoverished, it’s my way of showing solidarity with the millions of people who cannot and do not choose to fast. For them, it’s a way of life.

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Dave Friends Sign Up in Droves

ONE is still on the road with the Dave Matthews Band, talking to fans all across the country about fighting poverty, joining forces with our sister organization (RED) as well! We’ve spent the past two weeks going from Florida to Texas, building support along the way…

Our time in Florida started out in Gainesville, where our team of volunteers included Tricia, who had volunteered with us at the Daytona 500 NASCAR event last year, Brady, a freshman at UF who has been involved with ONE for a while but was volunteering for the first time, and Christine and Leah, UF students who definitely figured out the best way to get their fellow students on board with our work! We also had Holly and Jamie joining us, and Yee, a UF law student who was technically suppose to be volunteering for another organization, but that organization couldn’t set up and since she was already there, she joined us! They all did AMAZING – this was seriously one of the best volunteer crews we’ve worked with all year long!

We hit Tampa the next afternoon, (more…)

Rep. Bachus on the Global Poverty Act

Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL), a long-time champion in the fight against global poverty, and a lead sponsor of the Global Poverty Act gave a great speech on the House’s floor yesterday.

An excerpt:

“Today in dozens of poor countries all over the world, little boys and girls are born into poverty, disease, and hunger. Hopelessness and despair are their daily companions. Their burdens are day-to-day, they are painful, and they are heavy.

In debating debt relief, I quoted Sister Rebecca Trujillo. She was asked – how do the poor get through the day, how do they survive? Her answer was: “Since being in Nicaragua, I have taken to answer in a matter of fact way, ‘Often they do not.’ ”

We’re fond of saying we’ve had a really bad day. But we ought to be reminded that for billions of people throughout the world that even on our worst days, we have more food, more shelter, more clothes, more security, more health care, more of everything than our poor brothers and sisters have on their best days….

Reducing global poverty is in our economic interest and our national security as well. The bill will focus our battle against global poverty. It is a powerful statement that Americans are committed to making this world a better place for all.”

Read the full statement after the jump…

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Rep. Smith on the Global Poverty Act

Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed the Global Poverty Act of 2007, H.R. 1302. This bill states for the first time that reducing global poverty and eliminating extreme global poverty are among our foremost foreign policy goals and that the President must create a strategy to further those goals.

As ONE Campaign community members, you probably already know the numbers – that more than a billion people live on less than a dollar a day, and nearly 3 billion people live on less than 2 dollars a day. You know that extreme poverty breeds instability and that it is in our national interest to alleviate that instability.

But more than anything, you know – and I agree – that when we live in a world with such vast resources, the existence of such deep and widespread poverty is a moral affront. And yet, current U.S. policy does not require an overall strategy to focus our resources and provide accountability to our efforts to confront the menace of global poverty. This bill, should it pass in the Senate and receive the President’s signature, will change that.

The Global Poverty Act passed by a voice vote on the House floor, illustrating the bipartisan support behind the measure. That means that the goal of ending worldwide extreme poverty and reducing global poverty in general has broad bipartisan support, in part thanks to your efforts to weigh in with your public officials.

I hope you are as encouraged by the House’s passage of the Global Poverty Act as I am. I’ll be pushing in the weeks ahead to get the Senate to pass the Global Poverty Act, and I hope you’ll join me by contacting your Senators directly. Thank you for your work. If you want to see my remarks in support of the bill, feel free to visit.

Sincerely,
Adam Smith
Member of Congress

Something Shaking in Iowa

Iowa State University’s ONE chapter started their campus Political Action Week strong and finished even stronger. On Monday, ONE’s outreach specialist Natalie Sugira spoke to students about her life experiences growing up in Rwanda. On Friday, ONE student members got a taste of activism when Senator Barack Obama held a rally on Central Campus. Twenty plus students wore their ONE T-shirts and attended the event to represent the billion who live on less than a dollar a day.

During the speech, Obama talked about America’s commitment to solving the problems in Darfur and the AIDS crisis in sub-Saharan Africa. Immediately after the speech student volunteers Nora Tobin, Ruth Powell, and Brittany DuBois worked their way through the swarm of students and approached Senator Barack Obama about wearing a ONE band. Not only did he put on a ONE band but they also managed to snap some great photos. Senator Barack Obama proceeded to keep the band on while he shook literally hundreds of hands.

-Jeff Yanecek

Poverty Act Passes House!

The Global Poverty Act passed by voice vote in the House just now!

Back in June, ONE members wrote letters to key representatives to move this bill out of committee and ONE super volunteers have been working to move the bill ahead for months. During today’s debate, members of Congress gave ONE partners Bread for the World and RESULTS well-deserved shout outs for their excellent work on the legislation.

Note: A Global Poverty Act must be introduced and passed in the Senate, as well, in order for this act to turn into the law.

What would the act do you ask? We’re one step ahead of you, so check out the below. As always, throw questions or comments into the comment thread.

What the Global Poverty Act does:

• Declares it official U.S. policy to promote the reduction of global poverty, the elimination of extreme global poverty, and the achievement of the U.N. Millennium Development Goal of cutting extreme global poverty in half by 2015.
• Requires the President to develop and implement a comprehensive strategy to carry out that policy.
• Includes guidelines for what the strategy should include - from aid, trade, and debt relief, to working with the international community, businesses and NGOs, to ensuring environmental sustainability.
• Requires that the President’s strategy include specific and measurable goals, efforts to be undertaken, benchmarks, and timetables.
• Requires the President to report back to Congress annually on progress made in the implementation of the global poverty strategy.

Global Poverty Act on the Floor

Representative Smith and Representative Bachus and several of their colleagues are speaking on the floor now about the Global Poverty Act.

Watch on TV on live online on C-Span.com.

The bill would require the U.S. government to develop and implement a comprehensive strategy to reduce global poverty.

President’s UN Address Now Up

A relevant excerpt about food aid, AIDS, malaria and education below:

Feeding the hungry has long been a special calling for my nation. Today, more than half the world’s food assistance comes from America. We send emergency food stocks to starving people from camps in Sudan to slums in — around the world. I’ve proposed an innovative initiative to alleviate hunger under which America would purchase the crops of local farmers in Africa and elsewhere, rather than shipping in food from the developed world. This would help build up local agriculture and break the cycle of famine in the developing world — and I urge our United States Congress to support this initiative.

Many in this hall are bringing the spirit of generosity to fighting HIV/AIDS and malaria. Five years ago, in Sub-Saharan Africa, an AIDS diagnosis was widely considered a death sentence, and fewer than 50,000 people infected with the virus were receiving treatment. The world responded by creating the Global Fund, which is working with governments and the private sector to fight the disease around the world. The United States decided to take these steps a little further by launching the $15 billion Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. Since 2003, this effort has helped bring cutting-edge medicines to more than a million people in sub-Sahara Africa. It’s a good start. So earlier this year, I proposed to double our initial commitment to $30 billion. By coming together, the world can turn the tide against HIV/AIDS — once and for all.

Malaria is another common killer. In some countries, malaria takes as many lives as HIV/AIDS — the vast majority of them children under the age of five years old. Every one of these deaths is unnecessary, because the disease is preventable and treatable. The world knows what it takes to stop malaria — bed nets and indoor spraying and medicine to treat the disease. Two years ago, America launched a $1.2 billion malaria initiative. Other nations and the private sector are making vital contributions, as well. I call on every member state to maintain its focus, find new ways to join this cause, and bring us closer to the day when malaria deaths are no more.

Third, the mission of the United Nations requires liberating people from the chains of illiteracy and ignorance. Article 26 of the Universal Declaration states: “Everyone has the right to education.” And when nations make the investments needed to educate their people, the whole world benefits. Better education unleashes the talent and potential of its citizens, and adds to the prosperity of all of us. Better education promotes better health and greater independence. Better education increases the strength of democracy, and weakens the appeal of violent ideologies. So the United States is joining with nations around the world to help them provide a better education for their people.

A good education starts with good teachers. In partnership with other nations, America has helped train more than 600,000 teachers and administrators. A good education requires good textbooks. So in partnership with other nations, America has distributed tens of millions of textbooks. A good education requires access to good schools. So in partnership with other nations, America is helping nations raise standards in their schools at home, and providing scholarships to help students come to schools in the United States. In all our education efforts, our nation is working to expand access for women and girls, so that the opportunity to get a decent education is open to all.”

Full address here.