Hello from Accra, Ghana, where ONE is taking part in major meetings about aid effectiveness this week.

A team from our London and Nigeria offices is here, joining hundreds of others from government and civil society from around the world, to make aid work harder in the fight against poverty.

We know that effective aid is improving the lives of millions of people, but a slowing global economy and rising food and fuel costs makes it all the more important that every cent is spent well.

There are many ways to improve aid effectiveness. ONE, as part of a new group called “Publish What You Fund,” is concentrating on improving the quality of information on aid spending.

Without good information, planning for schools, hospitals, roads, sanitation and the other elements of development is extremely difficult. Citizens also find it very hard to hold their governments accountable. And without good information, it is impossible to be sure that resources are being used well.

In many very poor countries, up to half of spending on donor-funded development projects is done outside government. This is sometimes necessary if local systems aren’t in place, but this can also lead to a lot of duplication and waste of resources.

At the High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Accra this week, (more…)

An amazing email from a DNCC ONE Delegate Lori Macklin to ONE Vote ‘08 National Coordinator Erin Eagan.

Dear Erin, 
  


Thank you so much for the opportunity to participate in this week’s DNC as a ONE delegate – it was a blast!!  My husband and I stopped by the ONE bus and participated in the ONE Service Project at Manual High School, where I got to meet David Lane and see Dana Buck, my old friend from World Vision.  It felt so good to be a part of the caregiver kit project – Josh from Daughtry told me in the assembly line that it meant a lot to him to do something so meaningful.

At our morning delegation breakfast meeting on Wednesday, I spoke about ONE and distributed wrist bands to our entire WA State delegation.  People were very interested, and I encouraged them to join the movement.  There are a couple of photos attached of us wearing ONE gear at the convention, and a friend sent me this link to a photo from MSNBC, where I was hugging my fellow delegate, Moe Spencer, after Barack Obama was proclaimed the nominee by acclamation:

Thanks so much for all that you do, and for being at both the DNC and RNC – ONE’s issues should matter to all of us, and I’m so proud to be a part of the movement to eradicate global poverty and disease.

Greetings to Josh Peck and Jamie Drummond too! 
  


Sincerely Yours, 

Lori Macklin 

Obama National Delegate 

Washington State

Matt Higgginson was in charge of local ONE volunteers for the DNCC all week and did an amazing job if I do say so myself. I thought posting some of the pics from his camera might give you a sense of what he was up to all week.

Local volunteers Brooke and Dana working the ONE Bus.

Darren & Lindsey from Littleton, CO, working the service project.

ONE volunteer Joe Marsh is signing Delegates up as they wait for their credentials.

And one of many volunteers who walked the 16th St. Mall in Denver and signed up new members to ONE.

Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi just sent along this submission for us at the ONE Blog.

Greetings from the Democratic National Convention in Denver!   I am excited to be here this week for the nomination of Barack Obama and Joe Biden to be the next President and Vice President of the United States.  This week is the culmination of an historic race that has brought millions of voters to the polls – many voting for the first time.
The ONE Campaign knows firsthand about how to energize people for action.  They are building a global movement, inspiring millions of people – both young and old – to raise awareness for the challenges facing Africa.  We know that inside maneuvering cannot be successful without outside mobilization.  The ONE Campaign is a model of effective mobilization to support the cause of ending extreme poverty and disease in the poorest countries of the world.

Young people all over the world are making their voices heard – through conversations, emails, and blogs – about their hopes for a brighter future – of their desire for peace and prosperity.  They are weary of war, poverty, and disease.  They are demanding a brighter future for themselves and all the citizens of the world.   It is the impatience of youth that gives me hope.

Everywhere I travel, the call is clear: the world needs America to lead.  We must reclaim our rightful place in the community of nations, with a sustainable foreign policy that reflects American values.  We must have goals as ambitious as the risks we face.  We must be at the forefront of the fight against the long-term conditions that breed poverty, disease, instability and environmental degradation. 

The moral case is reason alone to act, but as we have seen in the cases of (more…)

Next week, a team from ONE is headed to Accra, Ghana for a high-level summit on aid effectivenes. The meeting will bring together government ministers, civil society organizations and development experts to focus on maximizing the effectiveness of the $100 billion of development assistance that is spent around the world each year.

There’s still a long way to go to ensure that all aid is delivered in a way that maximizes results like these. Development assistance works best where it is driven by local activities and initiative, when it is delivered promptly and predictably and above all where there is local accountability for its use.

In 2005, over 100 countries came to consensus on what is necessary for aid to be effective and signed on to the Paris Declaration, which is grounded on five principles:

Ownership: Poor countries exercise effective leadership over their development policies and strategies, and coordinate development actions.

Alignment: Donors base their overall support on partner countries’ national development strategies, institutions, and procedures.

Harmonization: Donors’ actions are more harmonized, transparent, and collectively effective.

Managing for results: Managing resources and improving decision making for development results.

Mutual accountability: Donors and partners are accountable for development results.

The Paris Declaration was an important first step in improving the effectiveness of aid. The next step is implementation. Recent monitoring including ONE’s 2008 DATA Report shows that donors have been slow in translating their commitments into action. The summit in Accra is an important moment for countries to deliver on their commitments and set specific, time-bound actions to implement the principles set forth in Paris.

Stay tuned here for a more detailed look at what ONE is asking for at the summit and updates from our team in Accra.

Senator John McCain announced his running mate for this election- Governor Sarah Palin. When Obama announced his vp-pick last week, ONE members wrote to him immediately calling on him to be a leader on global poverty, now we need to make sure we contact Governor Sarah Palin right away too.

Soon Palin will be engulfed in campaigning and national media, so now is our moment to break through the clutter. Send the below digital postcard to McCain vp-pick now and then forward the news to your friends. We want her to hear from ONE members first.

-Virginia Simmons

Ginny just emailed this post to me (picture coming soon, the AT&T cell phone traffic is so heavy out there that I’m just getting this now):

I’m here at Invesco field representing ONE while we wait for Senator Obama to give his speech accepting the Democratic nomination for the presidency.

All over the stadium ONE members and staff are proudly wearing our ONE shirts, buttons and stickers – and in doing so, working to raise the profile of the fight to end global poverty in this election. (And as Meighan just let us know, there’s even a dedicated ONE in the very front row. Maybe you can catch her on TV?)

Here’s a pic of the crew I’m with now.

(Update: picture)

If you’re at Senator Obama’s acceptance speech or watching it from home, keep your eyes peeled for one of us sitting up front during the speech. Megan Kline, long time ONE member, has been selected out of the 70,000 people in attendance to sit in the “donut” in front of the podium. They’re moving people around but as of the last report, she’s sitting in the front row.

And like any proud ONE member, she’s wearing her ONE shirt!

So, keep an eye out for her and post a comment here if you see her.

Thanks Megan for making sure ONE is seen and thanks to all ONE members for making sure our issues are heard by so many in Washington and across the country.

(UPDATED: I added video.)

Yesterday afternoon, I attended the National Democratic Institute’s global poverty panel at the DNCC. It was moderated by Gayle Smith, who’s a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

The speakers were:

Madeleine K. Albright, former U.S. Secretary of State and NDI chairman
Ben Affleck, actor, director, and advocate
Nancy Birdsall, president of the Center for Global Development
John J. Danilovich, CEO of the Millennium Challenge Account
Tom Daschle, former Senate Majority Leader and Co-Chair of ONE Vote ‘08
Hernando de Soto, president of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy
Obiageli “Oby” Ezekwesili, vice president of the Africa Region of the World Bank
Donald Payne, U.S. representative
Tim Wirth, former U.S. senator, and CEO of the United Nations Foundation
James Wolfensohn, former president of the World Bank.

Josh Lozman of our policy staff is going to be sending in a post about the panel a little later.

I also took a small camera with me and shot some simple video, so I’ll post a couple clips here to give you a sense of what it was like to be in the room. The 1st is of Senator Tom Daschle answering a question about his recent trip with ONE through Rwanda.

This second one is of Ben Affleck talking about his new perspective after having visited Africa- and what he thinks that new perspective means for how we should message effectively. After, President of the Center for Global Development Nancy Birdsall talks about the incredible progress we’ve seen.

John Sauer of Water Advocates sent us his op-ed that was featured in The Local regarding World Water Week.

Finding the toilet in Stockholm

Last week a mix of water and sanitation experts gathered for World Water Weekin Stockholm, Sweden to mull over the world’s biggest public health crisis. The problem is that not enough people paid attention.

Each year over 2 million deaths could be prevented with improvements related to access to safe drinking-water, sanitation and hygiene. To put that in perspective, we have it within our grasp to prevent the equivalent deaths of 10 Asian tsunamis or 1,000 Hurricane Katrinas. Yet a major effort—like those that have been launched to address HIV/AIDS and malaria—to tackle the global drinking water and sanitation crisis remains elusive. The scope of this disconnect is baffling; water- and sanitation-related diseases (like relatively-easy-to-prevent diarrhea) kill more children each year than HIV/AIDS, malaria, and measles combined.

One reason why there hasn’t been a Herculean effort to address this global scourge is that we in the water and sanitation sector are not doing enough to influence how this issue is understood by others. We have not been proactive or coordinated enough to frame the issue to the media and the wider development community in an action-oriented “this-can-be-done” tone.

(more…)