What is ONE? What would you say if you had to explain it to your neighbor? We often say ONE is an advocacy group. We say ONE is lobbying politicians to fight poverty and preventable disease. And we often say ONE is a about a spirit of being a community of people around the world who strongly believe that where you live should not determine if you live.

Alright. A long explanation. And not very visual. The team of ONE Germany tried to tell about the strong community that ONE can be – a community of left and right, student and manager, housewife and movie star – in just 90 seconds. With a spot.

The story: A man and a woman are talking in a restaurant. He talks about Africa, bragging a bit about what he knows about achievements and success stories by the poorest countries. But he can’t really tell what he wants to. The lady at his table seems to know everybody in the room and they keep being interrupted. By the waiter, the newspaper man and also by really famous German actors and singers including Bono, Benno Fuermann, Michael Mittermeier, Katja Riemann, Jan Josef Liefers, Rea Garvey, Minh-Khai Phan-Thi, Cherno Jobatey, Jana Pallaske. At the end she asks him: Ok, and what are YOU actually doing about Africa?

And there it is: what ONE is about. Anybody can join to encourage policy makers around the world for more and better efforts in the fight against extreme poverty.

We shot this spot in just ONE day with such tremendous help from so many people – it is hard to thank them adequately. They contributed their skills and work just to help ONE: the extras, the technical crew, the production, Anne von Keller and Philip Mauritz who are starring in the spot, our director Benjamin Quabeck, Bono and as much as eight famous German artists. We probably had the most impressive cast of all film productions in Germany this year!

A great thank you should also go to the movie theatre group CineStar. Thanks to their support we will be able to show the spot on 437 screens across Germany. A great thanks to MTV which will also screen our spot and to the social network studiVZ/meinVZ for their continued support.

All of this comes at a crucial point in time: the parties CDU/CSU and FDP won the German elections and currently are negotiating their common policies in a government coalition. With the support from more and more Germans who support ONE we might be able to convince them to make the fight against poverty a strong part of German politics for the next four years. More and more people will join. Be ONE of us.

-Sergius Seebohm