This morning Joe Leyba, Kathy Stinchfield, and I had a meeting with Congresswoman Betty McCollum’s Chief of Staff, Bill Harper. Mr. Harper is familiar with ONE, which has almost 5,000 members in Minnesota’s fourth district and over 38,000 in Minnesota. We were excited to update him all the great things ONE members have been doing in the Twin Cities as well as around the country!

We thanked Representative McCollum for her ongoing support and leadership in past legislation such as Jubilee, Education for all, PEPFAR, and the Global Child Survival Act. Rep. McCollum will reintroduce later the bill now called ‘Newborn, Child, and Mother Survival Act of 2009’ to the house this coming week, Senator Dodd is also scheduled to introduce it to the Senate.

We also addressed a few policy issues with Mr. Harper for this year’s congress: We encouraged Rep. McCollum to support President Obama’s 2010 Budget requests for International Affairs and continue her active engagement in the reauthorization of the foreign assistance act. ONE also supports the Lugar-Casey ‘Global Food Security’ Act which Rep. McCollum will introduce to the house. We again thanked her for her leadership and committed to help advocate for this bill.

Mr. Harper is extremely knowledgeable on the issues and said Rep. McCollum’s major focuses this year will be on Maternal and child health, reinvesting in Agriculture development as well as elevating development in foreign aid reform. He thanked us for our commitment to fight extreme poverty and support these important issues through grassroots organization.

It was a great meeting and we sincerely appreciate Mr. Harper taking the time to speak with us today!

-Libby Crimmings, Joe Leyba & Kathy Stinchfield