July 19 2008 8 a.m. Saturday

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.

Sen. Bill Frist, M.D.

On the first day of the ONE trip to Rwanda, the team spent some powerful moments touring the Kigali Genocide Memorial and listening to the testimonials of both a perpetrator and a survivor of the genocide. We also visited a coffee washing station where local farmers bring the beans and area workers clean and sort them. Many of these beans end up in our coffee back home. The coffee industry is growing fast, and other specialty crops are not far behind.

On our second day, we’ll look at another key industry – tourism. We’ll hear from Rwandans about their experiences in the tourism industry, what that has meant for the economy here in the effort to fight poverty, and what the future may hold.

-Tom Gavin

[Photo: Kigali Rwanda 19 July 2008: Congressman John Kasich and Karen Kasich in discussion with women working at the USAID Coffee Farm washing station project. ]

July 18, 2008

We were up at 6 am and off to the airport. Things took just a bit longer to clear customs for our flight to Kigali, Rwanda, so we were delayed us just a bit. We left Mozambique after a full four and a half days, with many great memories. We are much more educated as to the challenges of the people of Mozambique, and we appreciate them teaching us about how we can be most useful. They don’t want fish; they want the opportunity to fish. And we can help make the setting more conducive to fishing – by help with clean water, roads, training community health workers (who can teach others and treat others), and capacity building.

It’s a long flight to Rwanda; check the map. The dot between Nampula, Mozambique, to the dot of Kigali, Rwanda, is 8 hours – as the single engine plane with a 30 knot headwind flies! “Are we there yet?” I kept hearing from the seats behind me. I have piloted single engine planes a lot in Africa – Uganda, Sudan, and Kenya. But never in Mozambique and Rwanda so I even had to fly a little bit today.

Mauro de Lorenzo, my “plus one” scholar/aide who assists me with the MCC, had kindly gotten a couple of rolls for each of us for our breakfast, but that was it for meals until after we landed. On board, the pilots had brought some sausage and Ritz crackers that we all split – I was looking for some cheese but we had run out on the last leg. Cokes (minus Carville this time) and water kept us hydrated, but not too much because there is no bathroom on the plane. There’s nothing better than getting a little hypoxic after a few hours of flying at 13,500 feet. There was a little turbulence for the final two hours, but overall, it was a beautiful day flying over a majestic countryside with the vivid colors enhanced by the African sunlight.

We did make one fuel stop in Tanzania for 30 minutes, and we stretched our legs. Then back up to Kigali. We finally arrived, and we were met at the plane by the ONE Campaign staffers, one from the U.S. and one from Germany. One of the Deputy Ministers (who is also a physician – yeah!!) met us at the airport to welcome us and off we went to the hotel. When I was last in Rwanda, the hotel was under different ownership, but it has now been upgraded and it’s very comfortable. We went to the lounge looking for food at 5:30pm. I still had cheese on my mind, but unfortunately the bar only had peanuts.

Mauro and I were met by Tyler Denton from ONE, and we discussed the next five days of the trip. It looked perfectly planned. We will begin with the genocide history tomorrow.

I had a private meeting that I will tell you about in a few days that ran for an hour, and then I went to dinner with Cindy McCain. The rest of the group will arrive from the States after dinner. Cindy is blogging as well, so I will let her tell her story, (more…)

The crew of ONE staff and American leaders has touched down in Rwanda. Check out the short video that ONE Vote ‘08 Co-Chair and former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist sent us from the ground:

Our first day is starting with a meeting with Ambassador Arietti, our U.S. Ambassador to Rwanda. He’s giving a good overview of the progress that has been made here since the genocide ended in 1994. It is amazing to think of the progress that this country has made, not only in education and health care, but also in healing the societal scars from the genocide.

Couple of points that the Ambassador made that should especially interest ONE members. PEPFAR — our global AIDS program — is making an enormous contribution to Rwanda. He said that the U.S. contributes around $120 million through PEPFAR to Rwanda. As a result, 50,000 people are now on HIV medicines.

The Ambassador pointed out that we have used the PEPFAR program to help build medical capacity in Rwanda. There are 441 rural clinics in this country. Many didn’t have power or water or staff. The United Stats has been a strong partner with Rwanda and, through PEPFAR funding, America has been able to improve medical services. Doctor training, nurse training, and medicines are at the core of the U.S. involvement.

Later today, we’re going to see how Rwandan products are opening doors to trade and opportunity for people (hint — think Starbucks).

-Tom Gavin, ONE’s Communications Director

A whole crew of American leaders and ONE staff took off for Rwanda last night on a trip to see American aid money at work. The visit is led by ONE Vote ‘08 Co-Chairs and former Republican and Democratic Senate Leaders Bill Frist and Tom Daschle. Among the many others on the trip: Mike Huckabee, John Podesta, John Kasich, Susan McCue, and Cindy McCain.

Yesterday, our CEO David Lane recorded a quick video before catching his flight. Check out the clip below and head back to the ONE Blog this weekend and through Tuesday for more updates from the trip. (Cross your fingers with us that their internet connections works out and we get posts from them each day.)

-Virginia Simmons

Later this month, the ONE Campaign is set to reach out to senior advisors and key political voices from the Democratic and Republican parties as we continue to make the case that aid works, that American leadership can help a generation of people break the brutal cycle of extreme poverty. To drive that point home, we’re headed to Rwanda with an impressive roster of folks. We’re fortunate to have people who understand what’s at stake, both in terms of the lives which are on the line from poverty and preventable disease, and in terms of the benefit for America’s renewed leadership role in the world through expanded investment and assistance in these terribly poor countries.

The trip will be led by former U.S. Senate Majority Leaders Tom Daschle and Bill Frist – the two men who, for the past year, have co-chaired our ONE Vote ’08 effort. They’ll be joined by people like John Podesta (who was Chief of Staff to President Clinton and heads the Center for American Progress), Mike Huckabee (former Governor of Arkansas who expressed support for the ONE platform when he was running for the GOP nomination), and John Kasich (former member of the House of Representatives who worked as House Budget Committee Chairman). Cindy McCain will join the bipartisan trip as well. Mrs. McCain has a solid history of work in the fight against extreme poverty and preventable global disease. She’s served on the Board of Directors to ONE-partner CARE International since 2005. She founded the American Voluntary Medical Team in 1988, organizing trips for medical personnel to provide emergency care to disaster-struck or war-torn regions. She also serves on the boards for the non-profits Operation Smile and the HALO Trust.

The American people have made an incredible difference in the lives of millions of people struggling to survive extreme, brutal poverty. Our next president has the opportunity to finish the job – to finally erase preventable diseases from the planet and eliminate the kind of suffocating poverty which claims thousands of lives a day. We know the way, but we need our next president to show the will. That’s why we’re bringing this group of people to Rwanda. Each of them is in a unique position to help shape the policies and priorities of the man who could be our next president, and we want the fight against extreme poverty and preventable diseases to be front and center.

In Rwanda, we’ll visit places where PEPFAR is providing funds to save lives at risk from HIV/AIDS. We’ll stop at a school to hear from the students about the importance of their education to break free from extreme poverty. We’ll hear from farmers about their efforts to grow more crops and address the food crisis by growing their way out of it. All told, it will be an eye-opening trip, and one that we hope pays off with stronger policy commitments to the issues we care so much about – ending poverty and disease — from the two leading presidential candidates.

We’ll send updates from the trip and let you know how things are going.

-David Lane