Last week we wrote about ONE’s involvement with the UK’s Labour Party Conference. Some commenters naturally asked about ONE’s involvement withe the Conservative Party Conference. Today Jessica Gomez-Duran from ONE’s UK office reports back:

The ‘Africa Dream Team’ sticker album that was produced for the Conservative Party Conference

Well, now that we’re rested post party conference season, I thought it was about time we filled you in on last week’s Conservative Party Conference in Manchester and the successful reception we hosted there.

As with the reception we held at the Labour Party conference the week before, ONE’s Oliver Buston said a few words of welcome and showed a video message from Archbishop Desmond Tutu in which he praised the progress that has been achieved so far in Africa. We were then privileged to have two footballers at our event – South African footballer Quinton Fortune and World Cup winner Marcel Desailly. They spoke about the importance of education and the 1GOAL campaign, which aims to ensure that the lasting legacy of next year’s football World Cup is that every child can be learning in school by 2015. The Shadow International Development Secretary, Andrew Mitchell MP, also spoke outlining policies contained in the Conservative Green Paper. People seemed really interested in ONE and our issues and there was a positive atmosphere in the room.

As a way of linking our reception events with the World Cup, we proposed a ‘2010 Africa Dream Team’ of MPs. So, for the party conferences, we created a set of 10 football stickers to collect and the opportunity to ‘join the team’ as the 11th player. Everyone was given a blank sticker album and, just like being back in the school playground, a flurry of swapsies was necessary to harvest the complete 10. The stickers even featured in The Sun, the Telegraph and the Guardian newspapers here.

At the receptions, people could join in and become the goalkeeper of the Africa Dream Team by having their face photographed, speedily photoshopped onto a football player’s body, and then printed out onto their very own sticker. It was hard work but worth it as people seemed to really get a kick out of them!

All in all the receptions were great successes. But in the coming weeks and months we will want to hear much more detail about what all the parties are committing to in their manifestos. Stay tuned…

-Jessica Gomez-Duran

The sticker album produced for the Labour Party Conference