Ten years ago today, at a small press conference in New York, Bono and Bill Gates launched an activist entity called DATA, with start-up funds from Mr Gates, George Soros and Ed Scott.

I was one of the founders, along with Bobby Shriver and Lucy Matthew, and appointed the executive director. Though we started small, our oh so clever acronymic name stood for audacious goals: to campaign on debt, AIDS, trade and aid in partnership with African activists – in return for African governments offering more democracy, accountability and transparency to their citizens. We aspired to be data-based activists with a transatlantic bipartisan strategy, blending pop and policy, so that those with extreme global power would be forced to deal with extreme local poverty – and take the historic opportunity before us to end it.

This little unit evolved into ONE, and in partnership with others helped catalyze the Make Poverty History campaign, the Live 8 concerts and (RED), enabling tens of millions of people to take effective action against extreme poverty. Curiously, hardly anybody knows what all this, and the huge Jubilee Drop the Debt movement where we cut our activist teeth, really achieved.

Some think it achieved nothing or even backfired. So by telling you now the aim is not to blow our own trumpet but to sound a loud alarm, because if people don’t get to know about the wild successes of these struggles, as well as lessons learned from some big failures, they won’t get what’s at stake if progress stalls and programs get cut back.

The statistics of success seem staggering. Maybe that’s part of the reason that people don’t know what’s been achieved; the super-sized statistics drown out more human-size stories. For example, since we and partners ramped up our campaigning for access to life preserving anti-AIDS medication, access increased – from only 50,000 people in Africa receiving the life-saving anti-retrovirals in 2002 to over five million people receiving the drugs in 2010. Such huge inhuman numbers have millions of human faces. Grace and Agnes are two HIV positive Ugandan activists who, when we first met them a decade ago, weren’t able to get the drugs they needed to keep them healthy. Their friends were dying in droves; surely they would themselves depart soon. They had formed a solidarity group, the AIDS Support Organization, to sing to each other and find strength in the face of this daily struggle, and spread a hopeful message of AIDS prevention to those not yet infected. I recall our fury that these brilliant people would die so prematurely, leaving a generation of AIDS orphans. Yet just two weeks ago – ten years to the day after we first met them – we hung out with Grace and Agnes again, as the equatorial sun set on a veranda overlooking Lake Victoria. They are so alive and beaming with pride as they told us how, with a little help from their friends like Presidents Bush and Clinton, they’ve helped get nearly 300,000 more HIV positive Ugandans on to life-preserving, orphan-preventing medications.

Scale this up to 5 million across Africa, and 6.6 million globally, and we see an achievement on an epic scale. It is one of humanity’s greatest recent endeavors. Yet it is a tale rarely told. The story is similar in the spread of bed nets and medications to beat malaria, which have cut death rates in half in 11 African countries. It is similar for education, with 46.5 million more children in school across Africa, in part because of dropped debts. It is similar for vaccinations: 5.5 million deaths have been averted through investments in the GAVI Alliance for simple childhood immunizations. And it is similar for AIDS, TB and malaria, with the Global Fund, also set up ten years ago, saving over 100,000 lives every month from these three killer diseases.

It is hugely humbling to see a campaign you work for catch fire, shift from the margins to the mainstream and know that for each of the millions of lives changed, there are a million others on the other side of the planet across seemingly vast divides, who reached out in partnership. Real people believing in each other and working together to change the world.

But there is no room for smug self-congratulation as the struggles against disease, inequality and illiteracy are far from over, and especially as we learn the lessons of three scandalous oversights: on food security, on trade, and on support for African civil society and their drive for improved transparency and accountability.

Firstly, we were all far too late to campaign for increased investments into food security until the price of food spiraled out of control, hitting the poorest hardest. Still nearly a billion people go hungry every day. Thankfully, the combined leadership of Kofi Annan, Bill Gates and President Obama has put the importance of food security back on the map. But there’s still much, much more to do.

Secondly, we never got going on trade. Despite repeated efforts, the Doha Trade Round is dead, and the often promised Development Round has delivered nothing. Yet steps can – and must – still be taken, for example to support intra-African trade and integration, and provide greater access to all developed markets for African goods, quota and duty free. The better news is on investment as word of Africa’s booming economies has transformed perceptions. Ten years ago the Economist called Africa the “hopeless continent”. In December, the Economist wrote of an “Africa Rising”.

Thirdly, calls from African civil society for greater transparency and accountability have often been paid politically correct lip service, but real support was scarce. Now we’re trying to make up for lost time, in particular by backing activists’ calls for oil, gas and other extractive companies to “publish what they pay” governments for the right to extract natural resources. This will allow citizens to scrutinize official accounts and reduce space for corruption. Indeed, all public finances must be made more transparent and all projects more rigorously monitored for impact, especially by the marginalized – the very people these projects are intended to help. In the last ten years new technologies – led by the mobile phone and social media – make it now much more possible to turbocharge such transparency drives.

It’s an understatement to say that the world has changed utterly this last ten years, in some ways better, some worse. We’ve witnessed serious failures of political and corporate leadership bring on a devastating financial crisis. We’ve also seen that it is leadership from the people that is more often what inspires. From the Arab street to the millions of people delivering lifesaving support to each other on an epic scale we, as citizens and as organized global civil society, can change the course of history. In the face of such progress, and so many remaining challenges and opportunities, the abiding lesson must be that cynicism is unacceptable, apathy is the enemy, to care can be cool. There are grounds for optimism, for hope – for when we work together as one, across political divides, oceans, ethnicities, and beliefs we’ve seen we can achieve awesome results. With so much more to do forgive us if we celebrate – for it’s the best way to accelerate.

This post first appeared on the Huffington Post UK website

We traveled down dirt roads near the town of Beni, in eastern Congo, close to the Ugandan border. Militias are active in the region, so our group was protected by an armed escort. Interactions at checkpoints along the road are unpredictable. In the town of Beni itself, a curfew is imposed each night at sunset.

Nearly all the homes in the area are within a few kilometers of the main road. Venturing further into the jungle is to risk attack. Women can be kidnapped and used as porters or sex slaves.

Conflict takes a toll on lives, but also on livelihoods. There is no employment in this part of the Congo other than agriculture. But decades of war helped destroy coffee production, once the main cash crop. Insecurity also makes it risky to forage in the jungle for bananas and other fruit.

But hope has come in an odd form: the world’s appetite for chocolate. Cocoa grows well in this part of the world. It can be cultivated by cooperatives, in safer areas, using environmentally sustainable methods. An even when the rebels come, they don’t steal the cocoa, which isn’t useful to them. In the Congo, cocoa isn’t just a cash crop. It is a survival crop –- a particularly resilient form of agriculture.

I was traveling to the region with the Eastern Congo Initiative (ECI), a grant-making organization founded by actor and director Ben Affleck and supported by important foundations. Ben has made eastern Congo the focus of his activism and philanthropy, earning tremendous respect from his local partners. Together –- along with Ben’s delightful mother Chris, a teacher who lives in Massachusetts -– we visited a number of cocoa farms and production facilities.

ECI is helping in two ways. It supports a partner named Greenhouse, which teaches farmers the proper techniques for growing and processing cocoa. The process is relatively complex. Cacao trees are grown in the shade. Its fruit is opened to reveal milky white seeds, which are fermented in vats before being dried. Getting each stage of production right requires training.

But an agricultural commodity needs a market. So, ECI has helped connect Congolese cocoa farmers with a Seattle-based company called Theo Chocolate. Its Founder and CEO, Joe Whinney, accompanied us on the trip. Theo sells chocolate in more than 4,000 retailers, including Whole Foods.

Joe takes a socially conscious approach to business, making sure that his supply chain is ethical and transparent. But he also pushes hard for farmers to increase quality -– particularly in fermentation and drying -– which is essential to a premium chocolate company and the key to higher incomes for farmers. Joe believes that Congo cocoa is some of the best in the world. “The cocoa here is exquisite,” he told me. “It tastes like brownies smell in the oven.” Theo Chocolate has pledged to purchase all the quality cocoa produced by local cooperatives.

So far, Greenhouse has helped organize 19 cooperatives, which benefit families including about 11,000 people. The daily income for farmers producing quality cocoa will increase from about a dollar a day to $2 or $3. Doubling or tripling their income will allow farmers to purchase metal for the roofs of their sheds, or to provide dowries for their daughters. Most of the cocoa farmers we spoke with also mentioned that increased income would pay school fees for their children.

This is not only a success story in the making; it is model for development. “So much development,” Joe says, “is like pushing on a string. Market demand is what pulls the string.” Farmers who produce marketable products are taken permanently out of extreme poverty. They find independence, self-sufficiency and dignity -– the ultimate goals of development. “This is one of the best ways to invest in Africa’s future,” argues Ben Affleck. Joe makes the point with typical enthusiasm: “Cocoa can save the world.”

As the world’s business, political and media elite made their annual trek to the Swiss town of Davos -– blanketed in more snow than I have seen there for a decade -– conventional wisdom had it they should have all the lightheartedness of a gray, winter, Alpine sky. The Eurozone crisis, the difficulty of getting tough political decisions in the United States, and worries in some of the champions among emerging markets – the chance of a property crash in China, for example, or of runaway inflation in India –- were all said to contribute to a note of pessimism among Davos devotees.

But even if you think that the prophets of global economic doom and gloom are right –- I don’t, as it happens, but that’s another story – there are plenty of reasons to be cheerful about the state of the world. Some of them were collected in Bill Gates’s annual letter on the work of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which should be required reading for the Davos crowd. The letter detailed some of the extraordinary advances that have been made in global health, for example, over the past decades, with the roll out of vaccines on a massive scale, tremendous progress, especially in India, on the eradication of polio, and, indeed, on the treatment and prevention of HIV/AIDS. I was particularly pleased that Bill’s letter made mention of the rotavirus vaccine that GAVI is rolling out to tackle one of the leading causes of diarrhea – an appalling killer of children, and one which has rarely gotten the public or political dissension that it deserves.

Of course, the letter pointed out how much more needed to be done so that all people, everywhere, could live lives of equal dignity. More funding needs to be devoted to research and development in agriculture –- a key goal of ONE this year. Those of us who advocate for increased resources to go to the world’s poor appreciate that in tough economic times, we have our work cut out for us. But when generous funders like the Gates Foundation and taxpayers around the world have done so much to combat extreme poverty and preventable disease in the last ten years, now would be the very worst moment to give up the fight. That fight is more likely to be won, as Bill pointed out in a passage on the need for more resources for The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria that is worth quoting at length, if citizens in the rich world understood just how much could be done with comparatively few resources.

“Between 2011 and 2013, assuming that all donors honor their commitments, the Global Fund will disburse $10 billion. This is a $2 billion increase, but not nearly the $12–$14 billion that is needed and was hoped for. Citizens of donor countries should know about the difference their generosity has made. The cost of keeping a patient on AIDS drugs has been coming down, and it looks like getting it to $300 per patient per year should be achievable. That will mean every $300 that governments invest in the Global Fund will put another person on treatment for a year. Every $300 that’s not forthcoming will represent a person taken off treatment. That’s a very clear choice. I believe that if people understood the choice, they would ask their government to save more lives.”

I’m here with a crack ONE team shooting a new short film about the beginning of the end of AIDS — what an incredible statement! Think about it: by 2015, we can actually turn the tide on an epidemic that has claimed 30 million lives over the past 30 years. But as with everything we work on, it won’t happen without you ONEers doing some heavy lifting — so stay tuned for what you can do to make the beginning of the end of aids a reality.

We wouldn’t be here without the generosity of our friends at Sundance Channel. They reached out to us a few weeks back and offered us free space to film, right next to where they are conducting there own interviews here at the Sundance Headquarters. Yesterday, I had a chance to chat with Sarah Barnett, EVP of Sundance Channel about the vision of Sundance, the power of community and how storytelling can help change the world. Take a look:

Production is going great. We’ve already filmed Allison Janney, Blythe Danner, Jason Ritter, Richard Jenkins, Julie Mond and many more. One of the real luxuries of my job is meeting so many talented people who believe in ONE and want to do their part to help — and this trip has been no exception.

Keep fighting the good fight, ONEers!

Greetings from Park City, Utah and the Sundance Film Festival! ONE is on the ground in Park City thanks to the great team at the Sundance Channel, who reached out to us recently to invite ONE to be their official nonprofit partner at this year’s festival. We were thrilled to be asked to come out and join the Sundance Channel at their headquarters this weekend, where we’ll shoot a new video campaign that will help raise awareness of our push to get to “the beginning of the end of AIDS” by 2015.

The new campaign won’t be released until late February, but starting this weekend, we’ll be sharing behind-the-scenes photos and other content from Sundance through the ONE Blog, Facebook and Twitter accounts — so keep checking back here through the weekend.

While our marketing team is working on the video shoot upstairs in the HQ, hoping to enlist the support of a number of the great actors and actresses at the festival, Maura Daley (@Maura_at_ONE) and Libby Crimmings (@Libby_at_ONE) from the ONE field team will be working the crowds downstairs in the lounge area and out and about in Park City, signing up new ONE members and spreading the word.

The beginning of the end of AIDS sounds like a dream, but it could be a reality in a few short years if we keep pushing and building on the progress that has been made thanks to smart, effective investments and the hard work of health care workers on the ground in the world’s poorest countries.

ONE, (RED), Keep a Child Alive, and dozens of other organizations engaged in the fight against global AIDS came together just a month ago on World AIDS Day to kick-off this push for the beginning of the end of AIDS. This new project is just another step in that fight –- wish us good luck this weekend, and can’t wait for you to see the final product…

Follow Kathy’s Sundance updates on Twitter at @KathyMcKiernan.

And this is just the beginning, according to a recent blog post on Afrinnovator. Author Mbwana Alliy offers 12 tech predictions for Africa in 2012 — most of them centering around mobile technologies. In his article, Alliy asserts that smartphones will become cheaper and more available and that mhealth and mobile money technologies will improve. He predicts that mobile broadband rollout will start to expanding services into rural area, increasing smartphone usage. He also says mobile money will begin to grow outside Kenya and mobile commerce will experience growth as well.

But Alliy also warns that investing in mobile technologies may not be quite so easy. Mobile health projects will expand, but that startups health companies will need to scale quickly in order to survive. Most can survive still as smaller pilot programs. Finally, there will be a rush to invest in mobile tech in Africa, especially as Africa crosses the 700 million mark for mobile users. But, investors may be focused more on infrastructure growth to support all these new technologies.

So what could some of these predictions mean? A recent “Poverty Matters” post from The Guardian cites a GSM Association study that mobile broadband growth could create up to 27 million new jobs and increase GDP per capita by 5.2%, lifting 40 million people out of poverty. Socially, Alliy also points out that social media growth, especially with Facebook and Twitter, could led to disruption in media services and press as demand grows for both services. Tech education and educational partnerships to train local talent will be crucial to keep up with the booming mobile tech market and the billions of people waiting to use more mobile technologies.

Our friends at CARE are letting you put together a customized CAREpackage that will help poor girls and women access the resources they need to lift themselves out of poverty. Whether it’s helping to send a girl in Afghanistan to school for a year or an expectant mother in Peru safely deliver her child, this interactive virtual gift is not only fun to assemble, but will help to empower women and girls all over the world.

Looking for that perfect gift for your favorite coffee drinker? Comfort the Children has you covered with their L.I.F.E (coffee) jacket! This reusable coffee sleeve is available at select Whole Foods and their website, and are handmade in Kenya by a special group of mothers and special needs children. The proceeds from these environmentally friendly sleeves help these women earn an income for their families and provide an education for their children.

Fidelity Denim is offering a special edition women’s jeans in recognition of World AIDS Day. All proceeds of these radically red skinny jeans benefit the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation. Find them here at www.dedicateddenim.com.

Our sister organization (RED) has an entire store of products to choose from, all of which help to benefit the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. From a pair of Converse chucks to a custom (RED) iPad case, there’s something for just about everyone on your list. And it doesn’t hurt that they all come in a festive red color!

Save the Children has put out an extensive gift guide of products from all over the world, the proceeds of which are helping to address the most urgent needs of children and families that might otherwise go unmet. One of our favorite gifts is a set of four beautifully hand-painted papier mache ornaments from India. These are sure to add a little flare to any tree.

For a twist on the typical toy selection for your little ones, UNICEF is continuing its longstanding partnership with IKEA for their annual global soft toy campaign. This adorable stuffed clown dog will help provide children with access to a quality education. For every IKEA soft toy and accompanying children’s book sold, the IKEA Foundation will donate one euro (approximately $1.35) to support UNICEF and Save the Children Education programs.

The holidays wouldn’t be the same without our favorite tunes. Lucky for us, Jawbone has joined forces with charity: water to create a $50 Limited Edition JAMBOX to support the organization’s work in bringing clean, safe drinking water to the billion people currently living without it.

Is it a gift or is it a donation? It’s both! CURE is offering a cool knitted hat for those who donate $25 to a life-changing surgery for a disabled child in the developing world. Best part of all, you’ll be able to track the progress of the child that your hat helped through CUREkids.

And of course, the list wouldn’t be complete without a few of our favorite items from the ONE Store! Our shop is chock full of merchandise, from our new fashionABLE infinity scarf to the latest version of our signature ONE bracelet. All proceeds support ONE Action, which presses world leaders to support smart and effective policies that are saving lives, putting kids in school and helping to improve futures in Africa and throughout the developing world.

And just because we love you, here’s a free download of “Joy to the World” by the David Crowder*Band to make your day merry and bright.

Happy Holidays from all of us at ONE!

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the discovery of HIV/AIDS. But this World AIDS Day –- December 1st — we’re commemorating it as a call to action to help bring about the beginning of the end of AIDS… and it starts with you.

We’re proud to announce the launch of the (2015)QUILT, a groundbreaking digital tool that brings people from all over the world together to fight for a historic achievement –- the delivery of the first AIDS-free generation in more than 30 years. Watch our latest video and get started now:

It’s quick, easy, and fun to add your name to the digital quilt. And, you’re making a pledge with your panel, joining thousand of people from around the world who will call attention to fight for a bold plan to create an AIDS Free generation by 2015. Think of it as “creative advocacy.”

Once you’ve created your panel, you can download our Social Media Toolkit (or read it in the viewer below) and learn how you can help spread the word about your quilt panel. The toolkit will also link you to other resources that you’ll need to help in our campaign in the fight against AIDS.

The (2015)QUILT draws its inspiration from the internationally celebrated AIDS Memorial Quilt, which started in 1987 and contained more than 94,000 names and weighs 54 tons! The AIDS Memorial Quilt has been used to fight prejudice, to raise awareness and to transform apathy into advocacy and indifference into compassion. The (2015)QUILT will be a call to action to bring about the end of this deadly disease.

So get creative and get started now at 2015quilt.com and use your voice to pledge. Every generation is known for something. Let’s be the one to deliver an AIDS-Free Generation by 2015.

The event, “The Beginning of the End of AIDS,” is a live discussion powered by YouTube, featuring former Presidents George W. Bush and President Bill Clinton, Bono, Alicia Keys and more. The panel -– with help from partners at the Tema Clinic in Ghana, Keep a Child Alive, the Bush Foundation, Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, the Saddleback Church and others — will tackle key questions on the fight against AIDS, including where we are today, where we’re falling short, and what it’s going to take to end this preventable disease for good.

This is where you come in: we need your questions for the panel. Take a minute to watch this video from ONE CEO Michael Elliott above and visit www.youtube.com/TheONECampaign to submit your question on our YouTube channel now. Once you’re done, spread the word and ask your friends and family to vote on your question so we can present it to our distinguished panel.

AIDS used to be a death sentence. Now, remarkably, we could be looking at the beginning of the end of AIDS if certain steps are taken. So, be sure to ask your question now and mark your calendar for Thursday, December 1st from 10 to 12 p.m. ET to join our online YouTube event.

In less than two weeks, government leaders, NGOs heads and even private sector representatives will be meeting in Busan, South Korea to discuss how to make aid and other development resources more effective. Why should you care? Because better aid means better accountability to recipients and taxpayers, and more money to those who fight poverty and disease.

Unfortunately, some countries are pushing back against making firm commitments and time lines to implement better aid standards. That’s where you come in. We need you to tell them that ONE members are paying attention. When US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton attends the Forum on November 30th, she will be making a big speech on the future of development effectiveness. But before she delivers her remarks, let’s encourage her to make bold commitments on aid effectiveness for the US and urge other countries to follow suit.

Using the form below, tell Secretary Clinton this message. Feel free to add your own message, too:

US leadership on aid effectiveness is critical to ensure that governments are held accountable and people in developing countries get the resources they need to lead healthy and productive lives. Please encourage participants at Busan to make bold and measurable commitments on transparency, accountability, and results to empower citizens in developing countries with the information and tools they need to achieve sustainable development outcomes.

If you need help with what to say, read our policy document on our Hot Topics page, “A Better Way to Better Aid.”

I will be collecting all your comments on Friday, November 25, and personally delivering them to the US delegation in Busan. Check back after the Forum to hear more about Clinton’s speech and the conference outcome.