Our friends from the ONE Germany office bring us the latest on their fantastic Artikel ONE Campaign:

Yesterday marked the highlight of our 2009 German election campaign. We met with Volker Kauder, the head of the largest faction in the new Bundestag – the CDU/CSU. We were actress Minh-Khai Phan-Thi, actor Jan Josef Liefers, TV host Cherno Jobatey, the German ONE team and four ONE supporters. We handed over not only the Artikel ONE and the more than 6,000 signatures of ONE supporters – some of them seasoned politicians themselves – but also a blanket made of handkerchiefs. People we met on our trip to Tanzania – students, mothers, nurses, farmers, engineers,… – had signed them and written their wishes to the German people on them.

Volker Kauder wouldn’t make any promises on keeping the German governments promise to increase ODA to 0.51 % of the nation’s GNI by next year or to 0.7 % by 2015. However, he remembered a meeting we had with him ten months ago when we handed him and his social democrat colleague Peter Struck a large thank you note to thank the German parliament for repeatedly increasing ODA. Kauder: “In the current economic climate I cannot promise anything. But I sure want another one of these thank you notes!” Well, you know what to do!