Saturday night, the city of Nashua, NH, held a Winter Holiday Stroll that attracted many of the city’s residents (and a few presidential candidates) to the downtown area.

ONE member Brandon Laws hit Main Street just as Mayor Rudy Giuliani made his was down the stroll. Brandon was able to briefly talk with the mayor and let him know that as a member of the ONE Campaign, he thought it was very important for our nation to do everything we can to help save lives in Africa and end extreme poverty. Rudy thanked him and even posed for a quick picture.

Later, as we walked down the street, I was able to talk with Rudy and thank him for the answer he gave me a few weeks ago at a town hall meeting when he told the crowd that as we have the richest economy in the world the US must be a global leader in fighting malaria and AIDS in Africa, and said that we need to encourage more trade with Africa. Rudy told me that he really believes in our work and that the ONE Campaign “gets it.”

Rudy ran into a few more ONE members as he made his way that night. Even in cold New Hampshire, people are realizing that we can save lives in the poorest nations on earth, when we drop our party differences and unite as ONE.

-Matthew Bartlett, ONE Regional Organizer

On Friday, I traveled to Laconia, NH, for a Sen. Fred Thompson event and to make sure that the world’s poorest people were represented in the Granite State.

Sen. Thompson gave a short speech and then took a few questions. I was able to talk with him about the world’s poorest people. I told him how a billion people in the world live on less than a dollar a day and die by the millions from preventable diseases like AIDS and malaria. I also told him that our nation was scaling up our efforts to save lives and noted the efforts of President Bush and former Majority Leader, and ONE Vote ‘08 Co-Chair Sen. Bill Frist. I asked him, if elected, would he continue our country’s efforts in some of the most desperate places around the world. He told me, “I’ll do my best” and gladly took a ONE band from me. He even told me that everywhere he goes he gets a ONE band.

From the chilly Granite State, across the nation, on to DC, to Africa and beyond, you’ll find the ONE Campaign advocating for the world’s poorest people!

-Matthew Bartlett, ONE Regional Organizer

ONE’s Libby Pederson is on fire. Below she delivers the “On The Record” petitions, with more than 53,000 signatures, to Senators Biden and Thompson in Iowa.

-Virginia Simmons

The African Children’s Choir visited Ames, IA, last Friday night to perform at St. Thomas Aquinas Church. The Iowa State ONE group was there with a table inviting people to sign the ONE Declaration.

The children in the choir, 7 to 12 years old, started out singing songs in both in English and African languages. In the middle of the concert, we watched a video to raise awareness of the conditions the children were living in before they joined the choir – orphaned by AIDS or torn from their families by war and living on the streets of Uganda, Nigeria, or Tanzania.

The presentation was all the more moving when the children came back to perform the second half. They started by telling the audience what they wanted to be when they grow up – doctors, nurses, beauticians, senators, and presidents!

After the concert, several members stood near the exits of the church with clipboards while the rest manned the table. We talked to a number of people about how they can help children with similar stories in Africa by joining ONE and by encouraging our own government to play its role.

Over sixty students and community members added their names to the ONE Declaration and joined us in the fight!

-Elise Mullen, member of ONE at Iowa State

Last night in Laconia, NH, Sen. Obama held a town hall meeting and I went with some ONE members to lend our voice to the poorest people on Earth.

During his speech, Sen. Obama spoke about how, if elected president, he would expand US efforts to fight AIDS and poverty in Africa and said that he would help build schools for impoverished children so that they do not end up without primary education or get pulled into extremist madrassas. And in response to a question, he stated that he would try to shift wasteful farm payments to conservation in order to help local farms and developing world farms.

After the town hall, ONE member Melissa Skinner was able to pass off an informational packet for “On The Record” that over 50,000 ONE members signed on to in the past 2 weeks. Sen. Obama told her that although he was not wearing his ONE bracelet, he support’s ONE goals and had Melissa give the packet to his aid, Reggie Love.

(Apologies the clip is sideways. Will try to fix!)

-Matthew Bartlett, ONE Regional Organizer

Yesterday, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon announced 2008 the “Year of Sanitation” and urged the world to increase investment in providing clean water and sanitation throughout the world.

From a Tuesday Reuters article:

“Investing approximately $10 billion per year can halve the proportion of people without basic sanitation by 2015,” [the U.N. statement] said.

The U.N.’s drive for better sanitation will involve regional conferences and public campaigns to raise awareness and implement projects to improve sanitation in developing countries through public and private partnerships.

UK-based charity WaterAid said the absence of clean toilet facilities, access to safe water and efficient sanitation was directly related to the spread of diseases that killed 1.8 million children a year.

It estimated the economic cost of not investing in sanitation and clean water at $38 million a year resulting from infant deaths, lost work days and school absences due to disease.”

Read the full article here.

-Virginia Simmons

Rep. Dennis Kucinich was in Concord, NH, today where he went to get a charitable haircut to benefit autism. I presented the “On The Record” petitions to him in the barber chair.

Rep. Kucinich was eager to tell me how much he support’s ONE’s mission and efforts. His staff was already familiar with “On The Record” from when ONE member Michael Castaldo dropped off the petitions to his office over the weekend!

-Matthew Bartlett, ONE Regional Organizer

Thank you again for all the work you all have done to help move Liberia’s debt cancellation forward. There have been some questions about the future use of this debt cancellation money. I want to provide with you some facts and figures.

First, in order to qualify for the HIPC (Heavily Indebted Poor Countries) debt cancellation process that Liberia has now entered, a country must establish a track record of macroeconomic stability and must have a national poverty-reduction plan. That Liberia met these two requirements so quickly after such a prolonged period of conflict (their 14-year civil war) is a testament to their early success and the leadership of President Johnson Sirleaf.

Second, debt cancellation has proven to be an effective means of delivering poverty reduction. Some success stories:

• In 2005, Nigeria spent $750 million of $1 billion in debt relief through a tracking system (the “virtual” poverty fund) that monitored and tracked the flow of funds to poverty-reducing activity and evaluated its impact. This money was directed to education, health and infrastructure projects.
• For every dollar freed up from debt services, African governments have increased social spending by twice as much.
• Overall expenditures on poverty reduction in all HIPC countries increased from $14.8 billion (9.3% of GDP) in 2005 to 16.7 billion (10.2% of GDP) in 2006.

Below is a chart that graphically depicts the impressive increases in poverty-reducing expenditures in countries that have past “completion point” in the HIPC process.

-Josh Lozman, ONE Vote ‘08 Policy Director

Nevada ONE member Robin Mercer delivered 50,000+ petitions asking Governor Mitt Romney to go on the record and tell us exactly where he stands on fighting extreme poverty and global disease. Will he – and the other presidential candidates – take up the challenge?
Stay tuned.

Update: UNR ONE Club President Tracey Gaffney and club member Adam Allen just presented John Edwards with “On the Record” petitions, too.

-Aaron Banks

ONE member Libby Pederson outdid herself this weekend in Iowa, delivering “On the Record” campaign petitions from more than 50,000 ONE members to four of the presidential campaigns. The petitions ask the candidates to go on the record, in writing and on camera, to tell us exactly what they plan to do to end extreme poverty and global disease.

But we won’t hear back from them until they hear from us, and that’s what petition delivery is all about. Check it out below.

Here’s Libby Pederson delivering a petition to a Chris Dodd campaign staffer.

There she is again outside Joe Biden’s HQ.

And inside Mike Huckabee’s office.

What a trooper, once again, handing petitions to a staffer from the Barack Obama campaign.

-Aaron Banks