Senator Bond’s visit to Webster is a testament to the incredible success Missouri ONE members have had in reaching legislators this past year. Thanks in large part to ONE members’ efforts, Senator Bond and Senator Claire McCaskill both recently cosponsored two critical bills: the Water for the World Act (S. 624) and the Foreign Assistance Revitalization and Accountability Act (S. 1524).
So on Saturday, we gathered in a small auditorium at Webster to celebrate Missouri’s global poverty-fighting achievements, and learn how to make an even greater difference in 2010.
ONE’s regional field director for Missouri, Libby Crimmings, got us started by addressing a common question. “A lot of these things can seem so overwhelming. AIDS, poverty…you wonder, how can I make a difference?” I looked around the room and saw a lot of heads nodding. This is the question members and staff alike get when we’re out there advocating on issues such as disease prevention and treatment, smart agriculture, and maternal and child health. How does one person make a difference?
Libby had the answer. “The thing is, with ONE, it’s not just you. You can get your friends to sign up. Raise awareness in your community. Spread it around and we’re rapidly going to multiply,” she explained.
“It may be easy to ignore one person, say when you show up at a Congressional office. But if you show up with a bunch of people, you’re not going to be ignored. You’ve got your ONE posse behind you and it’s time to have a fist fight with global poverty. That is what this movement is all about.”
The Missouri “posse” is more than 24,000 members strong, including nearly 1,200 students involved in the ONE Campus Challenge. Our group at the Webster workshop was only 30 or so, but we produced dozens of letters to Senators McCaskill and Bond, and talked in-depth about how campaigns such as PEPFAR, ONE Vote ’08, Water for the World, Upgrade Aid, and Liberian Debt Relief have had a huge impact on the issues we care about most.
The ONE Campus Challenge was well-represented at this workshop, with students showing up from St. Louis University and the University of Missouri as well as Webster. We also had non-student members who drove up to two hours to be with us, and a good mix of newer ONE members and those who have been signed up for 3-5 years.
By the end of the workshop, our Missouri posse was feeling fired up and ready for the next throw-down in the budget and appropriations process.
We have other workshops coming up, all over the country. Check out the list here and remember to RSVP.
In just a few minutes, Senator Kit Bond of Missouri will address students at Webster University to discuss ‘smart power’, particularly in southeast Asia. Webster University’s ONE chapter is co-sponsoring the event which will touch on international development and extreme poverty.
You can watch a live stream of the event, which begins at 4 PM EST (3 PM CST) here. We’ll post relevant video when it becomes available.
ONE Webster – Webster University’s ONE Campus Challenge group – put together quite the event for “Stand Up and Take Action” on October 16 by getting 107 petition signatures to Missouri Senator Christopher Bond. The petition asked the senator to stand up for the world’s poor by co-sponsoring the Foreign Assistance Revitalization and Accountability Act (S. 1524). Today, we delivered it.
ONE Webster President Kritter Keirnan, Secretary Ellie Curran and I met with Senator Bond’s Foreign Policy Legislative Assistant, Michael DuBois, and Community Liaison Peggy Barnhart. We began by thanking the senator for co-sponsoring the Water for the World Act (S. 624), legislation that will provide 100 million more people with clean drinking water by 2015. When we presented the petitions, Mike DuBois informed us that he had already been reading the S. 1524 legislation and was optimistic that the senator would sign on very soon. He explained that the bill is congruent with the senator’s beliefs regarding smart power and was a complement to the America’s Global Development Capacity Act (S. 355) that he co-sponsored earlier this year.
Senator Bond has been a champion for the extreme poor in the Senate as of late and he recently co-authored a book that discusses smart power and the importance of US foreign aid to developing countries in southeast Asia. We presented his staffers with an invitation from Webster University President Elizabeth Stoble to speak about these ideas on our campus. They were very open to the idea and promised to pass the invitation along to the senator.
ONE Webster is very excited about the outcome of today’s meeting and we hope we will soon be planning an event for Senator Bond to speak at!
-Nick Stevens, Founder and Online Communications Director for ONE Webster
Yesterday, the ONE blog featured a post about coffee farmers in Ethiopia from the ONE and Product (RED) trip to Africa. Our delegation saw first hand how agriculture can encourage economic growth in Ethiopia. This morning at “Coffee with Claire,” I made sure that Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill understood the importance of funding improvements in agriculture infrastructure in developing countries.
Every Thursday, the senator invites her Missouri constituents visiting DC to her office for a cup of joe. She talks about legislation she is working on and answers questions. After the discussion, I gave her 26 handwritten letters that students at Webster University wrote asking her to co-sponsor the Global Food Security Act (S. 384). I also asked her to rally support for President Obama’s $1.4 billion appropriations request for agriculture.
In the discussion the senator mentioned the struggles she faces when deciding on legislation. She says sometimes it is difficult to weigh the positives and negatives of each side.
When it comes to weighing appropriations for agriculture, the scale is tipped. Nearly one billion people go to bed hungry each night and malnourishment is the underlying cause of death for 3.5 million children each year. As ONE members it is up to us to make sure Congress creates a lasting solution to hunger by investing in agriculture.
-Nick Stevens, ONE intern and founder of ONE Webster
Several ONE volunteers from Webster University recently came to DC during their fall break to meet with their Senator’s office and discuss issues relating to extreme poverty. Nick Stevens writes:
Fall break. A time for catching up on your soaps and sleep, right? Not for me and three other Webster University students. We decided to trek halfway across the country to lobby for ONE in DC.
On Tuesday, October 21 ONE Webster members Sandra Lemenaite, Dirk Bokeloh, Michelle Overington and I met with Joshua Kremer at Senator Bond’s office next to the nation’s capitol.
We told Joshua about the importance of development aid as part of a national security strategy and thanked Senator Bond for voting in favor of PEPFAR. In May, I delivered more than 700 letters to Senator Bond’s St. Louis office asking him to support the PEPFAR Reauthorization. This legislation has helped to put more than two million African people on life-saving anti-retroviral drugs.
The meeting was the first time I had lobbied in DC. Our meetings in St. Louis were effective, but it was great to meet someone in Bond’s foreign policy department. I look forward to building the relationship from here and hope that ONE’s presence will inspire Senator Bond to co-sponsor poverty ending legislation in the future.
Move over Washington University! You may have had vice presidential candidates Sarah Palin and Joe Biden in St. Louis for the debate, but ONE Webster had the ONE Campaign Tour Bus! Sporting a giant ONE logo and blasting great music, the ONE Campaign tour bus attracted students as we tabled throughout the day to promote our vice presidential debate watch party that evening.
Not only did we have the bus, but former Missouri Governor Bob Holden put on a pre-debate analysis with a panel of experts from universities across St. Louis. We packed Webster’s Sunnen Lounge with 170 people. After the chairs ran out, people piled in around the sides and back.
I figured the current economic crisis would dominate the debate, but I wanted [ONE to be there to] make sure everyone remembered those who have been living in an economic crisis their entire lives.
Thank you to all of the ONE Webster volunteers and our co-sponsors: Holden Public Policy Forum, Webster Rock the Vote, College Republicans and College Democrats.
Tyler Sangermano from the University of Missouri attended a rally with Senator Joe Biden in Columbia, MO last week and managed to not only ask the senator about his plans to combat extreme poverty, but also hand deliver a ONE shirt and capture on video the senator telling a great story about his wife and he thinking about ONE the night before he was selected to be Senator Obama’s running mate.
The audio is a little rough in this video clip, so I transcribed a few key bits of what Senator Biden says below.
First he talked proudly about how he
“shepherded through the new AIDS, malaria, and Tuberculosis proposal [PEPFAR] that went from 30 billion to 50 billion and by the way, George W. Bush deserves great credit.”
And then after Tyler handed Biden a ONE shirt, which he held up for the crowd, Senator Biden told this great story:
“When Barack Obama picked me and asked me to be his vice president, I talked [...to my wife]. And my wife told me the night before… I don’t know about you guys, but my wife is such a busy mother and grandmother and teacher…and all of the notes at our house are literally taped to the bathroom mirrors…so literally notes are on the mirror any where I shave.
And she had a ONE decal, you know the big decals you have like this? Only it was white with blue on it. And she had [written] underneath ONE, she had ‘squared’. That’s me. ONE Squared. Between Barack Obama and me we are going to ONE Square it.”
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70 degrees and sunny. We couldn’t have asked for a more perfect day for our ONE member workshop in St. Louis, Missouri. And we couldn’t have asked for a more perfect event to kick things off than Missouri Senator Kit Bond signing the 
Libby had the answer. “The thing is, with ONE, it’s not just you. You can get your friends to sign up. Raise awareness in your community. Spread it around and we’re rapidly going to multiply,” she explained.
Yesterday, the ONE blog featured 
