ONE is proud to announce Wofford College in South Carolina as the 2008-09 ONE Campus Challenge (OCC) champions. Big congrats go out to ONE-Wofford, and also to the runner-up schools: the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and the University of Florida.

Since September, students across the United States have been competing for the top OCC honors through weekly challenges, advocacy initiatives, and awareness-raising activities all in the fight against global poverty.

In March, we announced our Top 10 schools, each of which received a $1,000 grant towards creating an on-campus anti-poverty project. The projects were evaluated by a combination of scores from a ONE staff judging panel and online votes.

Wofford’s Campus Leader Tomas Moreno, Vice President Sarah Moore, Secretary Jessica Grantham, and Treasurer Christine Shelton put together an outstanding project. Themed “ONE Week to Change the World,” it included teaching about ONE’s issues in 29 classes across 10+ majors, a rally and trivia night, an art contest, a film screening, outreach to sports teams, an interfaith ONE Sabbath, a panel discussion on trade and microcredit, partnerships with several other campus groups, fundraising for three charities and advocacy work on two different pieces of legislation.

The ONE judging panel was impressed with ONE-Wofford’s balance of activities, their focus on laying a strong foundation for OCC’s future on their campus, and their inclusion of ONE’s core issues in a highly relevant way. The Wofford team’s ability to think “outside the box” in terms of overcoming their obstacles and reaching out to a variety of groups also made their project stand out.

Recognizing they might not be able to net as many petition signatures as a larger school, ONE-Wofford ran TWO advocacy initiatives, around both the Global Food Security Act and the Foreign Assistance Act. By running two petitions, the Wofford OCC chapter effectively doubled its impact, and brought in nearly 400 signatures on each petition.

ONE-Wofford further magnified their potential to change the world by joining forces with other campus organizations, departments, and official ONE partners. They worked with their Biology Department to help run an ice cream promotion for their “Sons of Lwala” film screening. They tapped their Sports Marketing Team to help promote ONE at several sporting events. They collaborated with Amnesty International to put on a showing of “The Vagina Monologues” with a focus on women in the developing world, and with Oxfam America to include ONE issues in their Capitol Hill Lobby Day. And they reached out to students of the Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu and Buddhist faiths with a ONE Sabbath event demonstrating the importance of giving regardless of faith background.

In short, ONE-Wofford employed every available resource, turned their small student body size into an advantage, had both breadth and depth to their events, and created partnerships and momentum that will keep ONE’s message alive at Wofford long after the current students have graduated.

Congratulations to Wofford College, our 2008-9 ONE Campus Challenge champs!

-Emily Stivers