Take Action: Add Poverty-Fighting to The Democratic and Republican Party Platforms

When the Democratic and Republican parties meet for their conventions at the end of August and early September, they’ll be unveiling their parties’ new platforms - and we want to make sure that the fight against extreme poverty is an important part of both of those platforms.

That why our ONE Vote ‘08 Co-Chairs, Senators Bill Frist and Tom Daschle will be meeting with leaders of both parties, and taking a petition from ONE members urging them to make poverty-fighting a priority for both the Democratic and Republican parties.

Click this link and we’ll add your name to the petition

Petition Text:

As a proud American, I urge you to make ending extreme poverty and global disease in the developing world a core part of your 2008 platform by including commitments to:

• Fight AIDS, TB and malaria and improve basic health services, particularly for mothers and young children
• Ensure access to clean water, basic sanitation and sufficient food supplies
• Spur economic growth through equitable trade and investment policies
• Modernize and increase development assistance, focusing on partnership, transparency and accountability
• Achieve universal primary education

Touring A Rwandan Clinic

Another video and post from ONE’s Tom Gavin from last week’s trip to Rwanda.

Monday, July 21:

The U.S. launched PEPFAR – the American global AIDS strategy – at the Masaka Clinic in 2004, so it made for a good place for the ONE delegation to visit and assess how things are going. Our delegation met with doctors, nurses, local officials, and patients seeking treatment and counsel from the clinic’s staff. We heard, time and again, the difference that America’s partnership in health care was making in Rwanda and throughout Africa.

The DATA Report, which ONE released earlier this year, shows the progress being made. It points out that, across Africa, nearly 2.12 million people were on antiretroviral therapy by last December, a huge jump from the 50,000 people on treatment in 2002. That means 30 percent of Africans in need of treatment are receiving it. But there remains a major challenge ahead. An additional 1.7 million Africans became infected with the HIV virus in 2007.

After touring the Masaka Clinic, some of the ONE delegation discussed the site visit and the overall trip with reporters.

-Tom Gavin

Why Is Specialty Coffee Washing Important in Rwanda?

Last week a crew of ONE staff and American leaders took a trip to Rwanda to see effective-U.S. aid at work. I just got in this clip of former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and Center for the American Progress President John Podesta talking about their visit to a specialty-coffee-washing station just outside of Kigali.

Senator Bill Frist, MD:

“We’re at a specialty-coffee-washing station in Rwanda, Kigali,- just outside of Kigali, Rwanda. Why is it important? It is because of economic development. In a country that is mainly plagued by poverty, what you see behind me, the employment of over 200 women, women who double their income by working at this specialty-coffee-washing station will now have that opportunity to put their kids in school, to put a roof over their head, to empower their family to earn an income in the future that indeed can capture their dreams and translate their hopes and dreams into a reality.”

John Podesta:

“Rwanda has a “Rwanda 2020 Plan” to try to really make sure that growth is widespread and that it affects everyone. And you saw a real spirit of entrepreneurship here today. We saw women sorting coffee earning about 50% more than they were earning in their livelihood. Before that we saw a young Rwanda entrepreneur who had built that coffee-washing station. The focus in on specialty coffee. Rwanda has always produced a lot of coffee, but now they’re producing for the high-end, and that’s a team effort, but just there’s just a lot of spirit and optimism about the capacity to get this country really moving again. And get the kids in school. Get the people working. And get some income into people’s pockets.

Frist: ONE Rwanda Trip Day 4

Senator Frist is sending in daily posts from ONE’s recent trip to Rwanda. Below is the post he wrote about Sunday.

SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST-CATHEDRAL

The drive to Saint John the Baptist-Cathedral in Ruhengeri is about two hours. It is a windy, but beautiful, road. Rwanda is known as the Land of a Thousand Hills, and this journey explains why. The hills are green, and the trees are even a darker green, separated by roughly plowed hillsides; every inch of land is used. It’s lush. The worn, dusty brown walking paths switch back like big “Z’s” painted on the sides of steep, steep hills, climbing to the sky. Every mile seems more picturesque than the previous.

Bishop John gave the service. He recognized all of the visitors and preached about self-sufficiency, entrepreneurship, and service. (more…)

Speciality Coffee Emerges in Rwanda

July 19, 2 pm
Nyandugu Coffee Washing Station

How in the world can you take an economy in which over 50% of the population is under the poverty level, is landlocked, ranks somewhere around 160th out of 180 countries on the “Developmental Scale,” and even think about “making extreme poverty history?” as we in ONE like to say.

Answer: Establish viable, sustainable economic growth based on the resources that you have. And the resources that Rwanda naturally have are agriculture (even though it is the most densely populated country in Africa) and tourism (they showcase the upland or mountain gorilla, the magnificent cousins to the lowland gorillas—those whom I used to take care of in the National Zoo –– but more on that in a couple of days).

First, the ONE delegation went to see a fantastic partnership at a “Coffee Washing Station,” owned by the Alfred Nkubili. Our U.S. government, namely USAID, has partnered with the owner and manager to establish a coffee bean washing station. This station purchases coffee beans (”cherries” actually) from farmers (many peasant farmers) and then they process the bean through a washing cycle that separates the beans by quality. These beans become the specialty coffee beans that are sold to Starbucks and specialty coffee shops across America.

To accommodate the burgeoning specialty coffee market, these washing stations hire about 200 women to separate and process the beans. At these facilities, these women’s salaries are double to what they could make elsewhere. And a doubling of their salary means (more…)

A Look Into Rwanda’s Past

July 19, 2008
11 am

The first stop this morning was the Kigali Genocide Memorial Center. John Podesta and I laid a wreath at the mass grave site of the genocide victims. I had the opportunity to do this last year when I was in Rwanda with Samaritan’s Purse, Scott Hughett, and my wife, Karyn (who is at home now recuperating from back surgery). The site and the service in which we participated are a moving, memorial remembrance of the million people who died over those 100 days of genocide. (It is so hard to comprehend). Each member of our delegation laid a single rose alongside the wreath, one by one, as we each paid our respects. Beneath that wreath lay a mass grave, one of many at the site, containing the partial remains of over 5,000 individuals from the Kigali region.

It was remarkable that the memorial was designed to tell the story a mere four years after the genocide occurred, (more…)

Frist and Daschle Walking, Talking Rwanda

ONE Vote ‘08 Co-Chairs and former senate leaders Bill Frist and Tom Daschle talk about what they’ve seen and learned so far and what message they want to pass along when they return to the States later this week.

Frist: What is ONE?

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.

Flying to Join the ONE Delegation

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…)

Touched Down in Rwanda

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: