Virginia Simmons is ONE's deputy director of new media and oversees ONE's U.S. website and U.S. online campaigns. Previously she served as ONE's online communications manager and online organizing coordinator. In 2005, Ginny created the first-ever blog written by a death row inmate, an online innovation that received national and international media attention. Starting in 2003, she served three years on Amnesty International's board for their Program to Abolish the Death Penalty. In 2005, she coordinated the death penalty community's online campaign around the 1,000th U.S. execution. Ginny has also worked as a fellow at the D.C. Public Defender Service, as a paralegal at the Washington Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs and as an associate at M+R Strategic Services in their eCampaigns department consulting non-profits and campaigns on their email advocacy programs. She attended Georgetown University where she helped create a fictitious type of cheese (xanadu), which often still circulates as real throughout the Internet. Ginny grew up in New Hampshire.
Bono talks about our campaign to ensure no child is born with HIV by 2015, before singing “Moment of Surrender” on stage in Paris on September 18.
Bono:
“Here’s a thought to leave you with: By 2015, we could live in a world where no kids are born with HIV. The first born AIDS-free generation of our lifetime, by 2015. That’s a thought, right? Every day, 1,000 mothers give birth to a child with HIV. And it doesn’t have to be, so sign up to the ONE Campaign, choose RED, support your First Lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy and the Global Fund. They’re here tonight. This is for them. Thank you, you’re our heroes.”
We here at ONE were extremely saddened to hear of the death of Nelson Mandela’s 13-year old granddaughter, Zenani Mandela, reportedly due a car crash caused by a drink driver.
“The death of Zenani Mandela, who was on her way home from a pre-World Cup concert in Soweto, stunned South Africa on the day it was celebrating hosting the tournament. Mandela, who turns 92 next month, pulled out of an eagerly anticipated appearance at the opening ceremony to stay at home with family. Jacob Zuma, the South African president, passed on a message from him that said: “The game must start. You must enjoy the game.”
As an anti-apartheid activist who spent decades in prison fighting for what he knew to be right, and as the first South African president chosen in an election open to all the people of South Africa — he remains one of the greatest leaders in the world today.
We’ve been so grateful for his support for ONE’s work over the years — and our thoughts and prayers are with Mr. Mandela and his family.
Today the beautiful game is in all its glory. All eyes are on Africa — the continent is hosting the World Cup for the very first time. And to mark the launch of the world’s biggest sporting event, Yahoo!’s Penalty Shootout game is turning (RED) and helping generate monies to help eliminate AIDS in Africa.
Play. Score. And for every goal Yahoo! will contribute $1, up to $100,000 USD, to the Global Fund, the recipient of (RED) monies. Your goal counts as many times as you can score!
It’s for one day only – TODAY – and you can play the game here.
In 2005, the G8 countries all made robust commitments to sub-Saharan Africa — which they said they’d meet by 2010. ONE’s 2010 DATA Report gives the final verdict on how well they did.
You can tune into the livestream below to watch today’s DC panel discuss the report’s results.
The panel includes ONE President and CEO David Lane, ONE Board Member and former White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten, and Senior Professional Staff Member on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Pearl-Alice Marsh — and is co-hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and the University of Miami Center for International Media.
ONE’s Lauren Clanin is at the event and will be sending back recap posts soon. You can read a ton more about the DATA Report here.
Gary Darmstadt of the Gates Foundation posted this amazing piece today on their new blog, Foundation Notes. I hope you’ll check it out.
As a gynecologist in Bangladesh, Dr. Ferdousi Begum saw firsthand the effects of that country’s staggering infant mortality rate.
And while she worked hard to save as many patients as possible, she knew that the poorest, most rural communities in her country needed more than she – or the limited number of other doctors like her – could provide. So she began training volunteers to provide basic care to pregnant women in their own communities. Since 2005, Dr. Begum’s dedication has had remarkable results: she has trained 3,200 volunteers, who have provided care to 300,000 women, treated 83,000 kids for pneumonia and diarrhea, and done much more.
Her efforts haven’t gone unnoticed. In 2008, Save the Children hired Dr. Begum to serve as the program manager for its Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health division. Save the Children is one of the foundation’s key partners, and we’re excited about the life-saving work they are doing, with Dr. Begum’s leadership, to deliver proven interventions and save lives in Bangladesh and other countries. Thanks to efforts like theirs, there are encouraging signs of new momentum on maternal and child health. For the first time in decades, the number of women dying from pregnancy and childbirth has dropped significantly, and child deaths continue to decline.
Here at the Gates Foundation, improving the health of mothers and young children is one of our top priorities. As Melinda Gates shared yesterday in her speech at Women Deliver, we are committed to developing and delivering solutions to ensure that mothers and their children around the world have the chance to thrive.
Learn more about Dr. Begum and Save the Children’s work in Bangladesh, in this profile by GOOD magazine.
Huge, huge news: Just now, at the Women Deliver conference in DC, Melinda Gates announced that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is committing $1.5 billion in grants toward maternal, newborn and child health over the next five years.
Specifically, these grants will include training frontline health care workers, introducing low-cost, effective interventions to stem newborn infections and treat birth complications, and educating mothers about simple lifesaving practices like keeping newborns warm with their body heat.
Below is an excerpt from her remarkable speech:
Today, we are committing to make new grants totaling $1.5 billion over the next five years to support family planning, maternal and child health, and nutrition programs in developing countries.
This new pledge will complement our spending in other areas that affect women’s and children’s health, such as developing and delivering children’s vaccines, and preventing pneumonia, diarrhea, malaria, and HIV/AIDS.
I’m also making women’s and children’s health my personal priority as co-chair of the Gates Foundation.
My commitment to you is that I will continue to talk to leaders in rich countries about making funding pledges and following through on them. I will continue to talk to leaders in poor countries about making women and children a policy priority.
We will continue having this conversation about the work we’re doing together. We hold the future in our hands.
ONE’s Erin Hohlfelder is at the actual conference with Melinda now and will report back more soon.
Author Roger Thurow, who is a senior fellow for the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and a great friend to ONE, is writing for the excellent global agricultural development blog “Global Food for Thought.”
Below is an except on one of his latest post, which discusses the importance of country-led plans in the administration’s “Feed the Future” initiative, and particularly the increased focus on the role of women.
As Rajiv Shah spoke at last week’s Symposium on Global Agriculture and Food Security, I thought about an image in his old office at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation before he became Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Hanging on the wall behind his desk was a photo of a child crouching in a blue wash bucket somewhere in Africa. Only her head was visible above the bucket’s rim.
Tell me about the girl, I asked.
“She’s the boss,” he replied. She, and not the wealthy and influential Bill Gates, was essentially the one they all worked for at the foundation’s global agriculture development department.
“We’re working to benefit her,” Shah said.
In presenting the guidelines to the Obama administration’s Feed the Future initiative, Shah effectively indicated that that little girl — and millions of children like her, and their mothers and fathers — was still the boss. Not the mighty president, nor the secretary of state, nor members of Congress. They all need to listen to what the Africans – particularly those Africans struggling to feed themselves – have to say about the priorities of agriculture development.
ONE is campaigning to ensure that the Congressional budget does not cut foreign assistance programs like Feed the Future that help people break the cycle of poverty and hunger.
The Horn of Africa is experiencing its worst drought in 60 years. More than 11 million people, mostly nomadic pastoralists and farmers in south-central Somalia, north-eastern Kenya, and south-eastern Ethiopia, are severely lacking access to food.
2011 marks 30 years since the first cases of AIDS were documented. Take a closer look at the specific, achievable goals we must hit by 2015 to make this year the beginning of the end of AIDS.
As aid agencies warn more than 9 million people could be affected by a food crisis in East Africa, world leaders are failing to keep their 2009 promises to tackle the causes of chronic hunger and support farmers in the world's poorest countries.
