Even though ONE Volunteer Elaine VanCleave moved to a whole new town, she was still able to connect with other ONE members and get involved with local events.
After living in Birmingham, Ala., for 24 years, my husband and I recently moved to Nashville. Quite understandably, it was difficult to leave family, friends and the home where we raised our three now-grown daughters.
Back in action!
Before we even moved to town, the Nashville Welcome Wagon came in the form of an email from local ONE Congressional District Leader Abby Sasser, asking if I’d like to volunteer for ONE at the July U2 concert at Vanderbilt. Having served as Birmingham’s unofficial district leader in ONE’s early years, I had not been very active with ONE since our 2009 Stand Up and Take Action! Hunger Banquet.
ONE volunteers from Tennessee met with Congressman Jim Cooper in his Nashville office this week. On behalf of the 21,947 ONE members in Tennessee — almost 5,000 of those in Rep. Cooper’s district — we wanted to thank Rep. Cooper for his past support of funding that protects the world’s poorest people.
Last Thursday, 22 ONE members gathered together in Nashville to learn how to become better advocates for the world’s poorest people. Both new and veteran volunteers received training from ONE DC staff on effective methods of using their voice to ensure the world’s most vulnerable populations have the support they need to get themselves out of extreme poverty.
Writing letters, making phone calls and signing on to petitions addressed to our representatives are very important tools to let Congress know their constituents care about the world’s poor.
We can save millions of lives if the US and other countries will just make small investments in smart programs that are proven to work.
For instance, we learned about two new vaccines that have the capability to significantly reduce mortality rates due to pneumonia and diarrhea, illnesses which kill more children around the world than tuberculosis, malaria and HIV/AIDS combined.
Barrett Ward is the founder of the fashionABLE, a Nashville-based fashion company that does trade with Africa in order to bolster economic opportunities for the most vulnerable. In this blog post, he shares how the economic model of his company helps provide jobs, skills and wages to Africans.
Let’s talk seriously about the solutions to poverty.
Thank you to everyone who entered the giveaway for Well:Done passes this week. I loved reading through your interesting facts about water and sanitation (especially the one about the solar-powered toilet…crazy!). To choose the winner, I scrolled up and down the comments section with my eyes closed, and wherever the mouse landed was whoever I chose!
Here they are:
So, congratulations Kathy, Adam and Mallory — you are our winners! You’ll receive two tickets each. I’ll email you with more info on where you can pick them up.
Nearly 150 ONE super-members were in Washington, D.C. for ONE’s 2011 Power Summit, a four-day advocacy extravaganza. Abby Sasser from Tennessee writes about her experience meeting Sens. Corker and Alexander.
Senator Corker and Senator Alexander with ONE members
Fresh off of our victory in stopping cuts to critical programs in the 2011 budget, Tennessee ONE members headed to Washington, D.C., for the ONE Power Summit. During the summit, we visited Capitol Hill to discuss funding for global vaccines and agriculture for next year’s budget. We met both Senators Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander and visited Rep. Jim Cooper’s office to remind them that more than 22,000 ONE members in the state would like Congress to save the 1 percent of the federal budget that supports life saving programs for the most vulnerable people around the world.
ONE was busy this past week in Tennessee, taking to field from Nashville all the way down to Jackson. Tennessee residents collectively hand-wrote more than 150 letters, which were delivered to Senator Bob Corker’s staff in Nashville last week to discuss the effect budget cuts will have on the world’s poorest people. We shared the reality of what the cuts will mean, including staggering numbers like half a million more deaths from HIV/AIDS and nearly 20,000 more infants infected with HIV. We also shared our personal experiences from on the ground work in Africa, because the fact is these are not just statistics, these are actual human lives.
Senator Corker is on the International Affairs committee and has the potential to be a great ally in this fight. We hope we can gain his support in opposing these cuts which are disproportionately large, about 40 percent, compared to cuts elsewhere in the budget that vary from 10 to 15 percent. Senator Corker has done great work on behalf of the world’s poorest people in the past by co-authoring the Water for the World Act and his personal involvement in Haiti. It is our hope that he will continue on this path of helping the most vulnerable populations around the globe and combat these recent cuts.
The next day, students at Union University, led by Campus Leader Sarah White, delivered petitions and the handwritten letters to Sen. Corker’s Jackson office. Fourteen students tagged along to meet with Senator Corker’s staff, and we were well received. “We know ONE very well -– you’re a very well-respected group!” said one staffer. At both meetings, we presented a petition that had been signed by 1,139 Tennesseans as well the hundreds of handwritten letters asking the Senator to vote no on cuts that would inevitably cost millions of lives. There is still another week before the Senate votes on the budget. Tennesseans — if you haven’t yet, please write Senator Corker and ask him to vote against cuts for the world’s poor.
-Abby Sasser, Congressional District leader for Tennessee’s 5th District
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.
