With only two more stops on the U2 360 tour after Friday’s show in Las Vegas, it seems an appropriate time to look back and say thanks to two guys who have done so much to make ONE’s little piece of the tour a smash success: Matt Higginson and Weldon Kennedy.

Weldon Kennedy is in the front row on the far left. Matt Higginson is front and center.

Weldon took a break from his regular job in London as a campaigner to organize ONE members at tour stops across Europe this past summer. In Barcelona, Dublin, Gelsenkirchen and lots of places in between, Weldon and ONE members from many countries,speaking many languages, never let weather get them down and did something even more impressive than massively expanding ONE’s European membership. They created communities of activists and friends who are fired up to work together to end global poverty.

Weldon started us off on the North American leg of the U2 360 tour, but it’s ONE Field Organizer Matt Higginson, who took over in Washington, DC, who is finishing in Vancouver on Wednesday.

We’re in Las Vegas, Nevada as I write this, the city where Matt makes his home with his wife Elizabeth and 6 month-old son Topher. I would say Matt’s in better spirits than usual as a result, and he very well might be. But you’d never know, because Matt’s infectious enthusiasm has never wavered.

In fact, both Weldon and Matt have shown a valuable skill for putting our awesome ONE volunteers at ease, and making approaching total strangers at U2 concerts and asking them to join ONE and become anti-poverty activists – no easy thing – a lot of fun.

Between them, Matt and Weldon will have gone to 30 cities in 12 countries and signed up more than 75,000 new ONE members by the time the 2009 U2 360 tour wraps up in Vancouver on Wednesday. And I think I speak for a whole lot of ONE members who’ve worked with them, when I say thank you and we’d be glad to hit the road with you guys anytime.

Matt Higginson

Weldon Kennedy

The ultimate fasces on tour.

-Aaron Banks