Regional Field Organizer Tzviatko Chiderov reports on a letter-writing event in Chicago yesterday. This piece is part of a larger blog series on transparency in the extractives industry. Stay tuned for more updates on this topic.
We had a great event for ONE members in Chicago yesterday. A group of all ages and backgrounds gathered at Robert Morris University downtown to hear what ONE is all about, learn of our objectives for the new year, see living proof of smart, effective foreign aid, and find ways to get more involved in their communities.
In fact, almost all of our attendees took several important actions during the hour-long meeting. They wrote letters to the US Securities and Exchange Commission in support of greater transparency, and encouraged the Commission to pass a strong rule requiring companies to disclose payments made to foreign governments for access to their natural resources.
ONE Illinois member Janet Glavin reports on a recent ONE event with Rotary International in Peoria.
The cold and snowy weather didn’t stop ONE Peoria from giving our first presentation to members of Rotary Club of Peoria Downtown about ONE’s official collaboration with Rotary International. We shared information about ONE’s mission and highlighted the Living Proof successes and detailed several key issues of focus for ONE, including childhood vaccines that Rotarians could help support with their advocacy, and projects to help further eradicate extreme poverty. We also highlighted area ONE volunteer engagement with members of Congress and made a call to action for the club and individual members to join ONE. Twenty members signed up on the spot! A great beginning.
More than 120 ONE members convened in our nation’s capitol last week to lobby Congress on our issues and visit the White House for a leadership briefing. Members kept in contact with each other using the #ONErocksDC hashtag on Twitter.
ONE regional field directors, Congressional District leaders and campus leaders were given a very great opportunity to make some loud noise in Washington D.C. on Capitol Hill last week. We were invited to the White House for the White House Leadership Briefing. This was a joint effort with ONE and two other groups: the Truman National Security Project and the American Academy of Pediatrics. In all, we had more than 120 people directly lobbying to their government officials to ensure they do not cut foreign aid and sustain the current budget to keep the health and well-being of the world’s poorest intact. I went as the campus leader to Illinois State University.
A couple of weeks ago, five ONE members let Illinois’ junior senator know that his constituents care about smart and effective programs that are helping people fight disease and lift themselves out of poverty. I had the privilege of visiting Senator Mark Kirk’s Chicago office with some of ONE’s most passionate and knowledgeable volunteers in the city: Kofi Aluka, Susan Eloy de Vitale, Tom McElligott and Richard Smiley.
The five of us met with Matt Abbott, Senator Kirk’s director of global and economic affairs. Matt, having just traveled to the Horn of Africa, understood our urgent push to let world leaders know they need to close the funding gap for aid and keep their long-term promises to the region.
Hours before U2 rocked Chicago’s Soldier Field, ONE volunteers from all over the country made some noise outside of the gates. About 30 ONE members — coming from as far as Alaska and as close as a couple blocks away — gathered in the Windy City to engage the 80,000 attendees of U2′s July 5th concert. Through some old-fashioned pavement-pounding, those volunteers helped the ONE Campaign grow by 2,747 members. We are proud to welcome these new supporters to the community of more than 2.5 million members who can say “I Am ONE.” The volunteers that showed up asked concert goers to sign a petition to government leaders asking them to support the U.S.’s promised funding to the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI).
On Wednesday I had the honor of joining ONE’s Great Lakes Regional Field Director, J.D. Bryant, at a meeting at the office of Senator Dick Durbin in Chicago. At our meeting with Senator Durbin’s aide Maria McElwain, we thanked the Senator on behold of more than 70,000 ONE members in Illinois. The focus of our meeting was to ask Senator Durbin to sign a letter to USAID Administrator Raj Shah, requesting that the U.S. pledge $450M over three years to the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) at the upcoming pledging conference on June 13th, 2011. As someone with a background in international development, Ms. McElwain had some great questions for us.
We presented the Senator 25 handwritten thank-you cards from Illinoisans for his leadership on funding for programs that help the world’s poorest people, including the Global Fund and PEPFAR, along with a ONE poster with the following acknowledgement: “Senator Durbin: Thank you so much for protecting critical life-saving programs in the 2011 budget. Thanks to you, America will continue to save millions of people from extreme poverty and preventable disease, and help African farmers to feed their nations.”
As a ONE team member in the Great Lakes Region, this meeting was a wonderful opportunity to meet with the staff of a Senator with such extensive foreign relations experience. I look forward to the continued collaboration with Senator Durbin and his legislative team on the important issues that ONE is addressing now and in the coming years.
On Friday, former Republican Rep. Jim Kolbe came to Northwestern University. The 8th Congressional District of Arizona’s former congressman spoke to Northwestern’s Political Union, a community of students interested in global affairs that hosts weekly informal debates. We were excited to bring the former congressman, a fellow Wildcat himself, to a lively discussion about American leadership in foreign aid and international development. Mr. Kolbe reminded us all why we should bother caring about the world’s poorest people even as we tend to our own fiscal house.
Mr. Kolbe speaks to members of Northwestern University’s Political Union
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.
