While on the bus traveling between locations in Rwanda, Cindy McCain reflects on the trip so far, noting the themes of forgiveness and the Rwandan women who are moving the country forward.
The first stop this morning was the Kigali Genocide Memorial Center. John Podesta and I laid a wreath at the mass grave site of the genocide victims. I had the opportunity to do this last year when I was in Rwanda with Samaritan’s Purse, Scott Hughett, and my wife, Karyn (who is at home now recuperating from back surgery). The site and the service in which we participated are a moving, memorial remembrance of the million people who died over those 100 days of genocide. (It is so hard to comprehend). Each member of our delegation laid a single rose alongside the wreath, one by one, as we each paid our respects. Beneath that wreath lay a mass grave, one of many at the site, containing the partial remains of over 5,000 individuals from the Kigali region.
It was remarkable that the memorial was designed to tell the story a mere four years after the genocide occurred, (more…)
ONE Vote ’08 Co-Chairs and former senate leaders Bill Frist and Tom Daschle talk about what they’ve seen and learned so far and what message they want to pass along when they return to the States later this week.
Senators Daschle and Frist, Mike Huckabee, John Podesta, John Kasich, Susan McCue, David Lane and Cindy McCain attended the Saint John the Baptist Cathedral in Rwanda yesterday during their ongoing trip to see life-saving U.S. aid at work.
Below, a short video clip from Mike Huckabee talking about the role of faith in the fight against global poverty.
Today was an emotional moment for me and for the rest of our delegation. There is so much pain in Rwanda’s past, and out of that pain has come a society that is committed to reconciliation. They are trying to move forward together. This was one of the most powerful experiences I have had in any place. Out of the pain has come great hope. The people are trying to build a new country, where people live together in peace.
It’s wonderful to see this. And it is bringing new hope for the future.
Rwanda has a 2020 plan, to have growth be widespread and successful by the year 2020. We’ve seen a spirit of entrepreneurship today. We saw women sorting coffee and farmers with their specialty crops. In talking with them, there is a lot of spirit and optimism. Grow new opportunities. Put kids in school. Move forward as one country.
The people of America ought to be proud of what’s happened here and our support for the people who have come so far so fast. We’ve helped through USAID with the development of new industry and new entrepreneurs. PEPFAR is making a major difference in fighting AIDS and HIV. There’s still a lot to do, and we can help.
-John Podesta, President of the Center for American Progress
First for the questions that I am most frequently asked. What is ONE? And why are Tom Daschle and Bill Frist leading this delegation to Rwanda?
ONE is a grassroots organization with about 2 million members in the U.S whose purpose is to fight extreme poverty and preventable disease around the world. I’ve been working with ONE since Bono and I went to Uganda in 2001. ONE pushes for better policies and, where needed, more resources to support effective, anti-poverty programs. We lobby and put pressure on political leaders in our country to do more, but to do that well we know we must listen to those who are living in the developing world trying to transform their societies for the better. And there is no more appropriate place in the world to do that than Rwanda, a country that went through the most horrendous atrocities imaginable just 14 years ago, with a million people killed in genocide over a period of 100 days. Today is creating a future of hope and opportunity that will lift the country out of poverty and decimate preventable disease. They demonstrate good governance and investments in education and health, and they create an environment conducive to business and trade.
We have tremendous admiration for those people working on the ground to improve the lives of the world’s poorest, and it is our responsibility and obligation to spread their success stories and share their lessons learned.
As an anti-poverty organization, ONE often advocates for development assistance, HIV/AIDS policy, and clean water, but we also know that the lasting solution to poverty is economic growth, trade, investment.
Rwanda has laid out an incredibly ambitious vision for where it hopes to take the economy by 2020 in its Vision 2020; it’s an inspiring framework. Vision 2020 is Rwanda’s goal/plan to be a middle income country by the year 2020. They’ve said they want to be the “Singapore of Africa.”
My own goal of putting together this trip for our ONE delegation is to visually and graphically make the link of health and education to trade and investment. Although not always apparent (especially to the politicians in Washington!), these are connected spheres of activity. In a healthy country, they build upon and reinforce each other. Healthy, educated people produce more developed economies. Business and trade produce the tax revenue that a government can invest in public education and public health. But too often our development initiatives treat these as separate.
We begin today as ONE; the setting, challenges, and some solutions will be explored by our motley family of ONE.
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.
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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.
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