Last week I joined several Milwaukee ONE members to meet with Rebeca Lopez of Senator Russ Feingold’s staff, to encourage the Senator’s continued work on behalf of the impoverished around the globe. As we met, we thanked Senator Feingold for his efforts to alleviate poverty, including his support of HIV/AIDS relief.

We told Ms. Lopez of ONE’s growing grassroots force across Wisconsin with over 27,000 members and mentioned our uniting with various groups in the state- from campus organizations to the United Nations chapter in Milwaukee.

We asked that the Senator consider the effects of climate change on many underdeveloped countries and devote 5% of climate legislation revenue to the world’s poorest people to adapt to climate change.

Finally, we requested Senator Feingold sign on as a cosponsor of the Senator Paul Simon Water for the World Act of 2009, a bi-partisan effort to provide access to clean water and sanitation to 100 million people. Rebeca informed us that the Senator has requested of the Foreign Relations Committee that the bill be brought up for a vote this year.

Rebeca assured us that our requests and concerns would be passed on and that Senator Feingold, already an advocate for poverty-stricken nations, would continue to support the fight against global poverty.

-Andrew Hable, Wisconsin ONE Member

The U.S. Government Accountability Office will release a report today saying that the United States’ and multilateral agencies efforts to reduce hunger in sub-Saharan Africa have been “insufficient.” The report comes one week before a special United Nation’s summit in Rome on the global food crisis.

From today’s Washington Post:

“To see that chronic hunger in Africa is getting worse despite our actions shows that the international community must retool its strategy to combat it,” said Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), chairman of the subcommittee on African affairs, who led the request for the report. “Rather than simply sending more food aid to Africa, the U.S. and the international community need to address the factors that contribute to food insecurity.”

A spokeswoman for USAID said the agency was aware of the report but said it would decline comment until its official release this morning. The report comes on the heels of another released by the GAO last year sharply criticizing U.S. food aid programs. That report called them “inherently inefficient” because they rely on the sale of American-grown food that is costly to transport overseas, as opposed to food purchased closer to the troubled regions themselves.

-Virginia Simmons