So, how do you pull together a full-length album featuring a team of 11 producers and 50 local performers that highlights the diversity of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s music scene while relating to listeners around the world?
Erin Hohlfelder is out in Seattle, Wash., this week covering the Gates Foundation’s 2011 Malaria Forum. She’ll be sending out blogs posts and tweets throughout the week, so follow this space!
Photo credit: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
After spending the first day at the Gates Foundation’s Malaria Forum, I can report without question that Seattle is — excuse the pun — buzzing with excitement over the work that’s been done to fight this deadly disease. Hundreds of the world’s foremost malaria scientists and advocates have gathered, #endmalaria is trending on twitter here, and dozens of panels and videos have highlighted the remarkable progress we’ve made in the malaria agenda.
ONE Mom Rachel Fox talks about why she’s excited about Carolina for Kibera’s latest challenge, Kibera for a Day.
This summer, while standing in the middle of the Kibera slum of Nairobi with the other ONE Moms, I felt a disconnect. As I was walking on waste and trash, past 10×10 after 10×10, smiling at the small children repeating “How are you?” I wondered how I could ever translate what I was witnessing into words. I needed a concrete action — I wanted to walk in their shoes, if only for a day. Imagine my enthusiasm when Rye Barcott, co-founder of Carolina for Kibera and author of “It Happened On The Way to War: A Marines Path To Peace,” announced the launch of Power of 26, a 26-day challenge to show people what life is like for the estimated 1 billion people that live in urban slums globally.
Only three days after my trip with the ONE moms, I had my family geared up and signed up to begin #powerof26! Every evening, we received a new email informing us of the next day’s challenge. From washing our clothes by hand, cleaning up trash in our community, sleeping in the smallest room of the house, to sharing Kenya chai with our neighbors, we were getting a small glimpse of what life is like for those living on less than $1 a day.
At ONE, you will often hear the jargon “siloed,” “cross-cutting” and “lens” when referring to our issues affecting global poverty. In reality, all the issues are cross-cutting and work hand-in-hand toward worldwide development. One lens that is important to ONE and gaining the attention of the international community is gender and its role in development objectives. So, let’s put on our gender glasses and take a look at what is happening around this topic.
Erin Anderson of Malaria No More shares an incredible opportunity for ONE members to become spokespersons on malaria.
Malaria No More and ONE are looking for passionate individuals to apply to the third course of the Malaria Griots Project! Based on outstanding success in the first two courses, we are eager to start teaching another class of Malaria Griots how to be advocates in their communities and to help achieve the first great humanitarian victory of this century -– an end to malaria deaths.
With all the excitement going on this week at the UN Meetings, the launch of the Open Government Partnership, the Clinton Global Initiative, and the World Bank–IMF Annual Meetings, you may have missed that this week is the one year anniversary since President Obama released the first ever Presidential Policy Directive (PPD) on Global Development!
Just as a refresher for those who haven’t heard much about it since then, we first reported last year that the PPD was an exciting move by the administration to elevate development as a key pillar of America’s foreign policy (along with diplomacy and defense), and that laid out clear goals and objectives for US foreign assistance. These goals were meant to direct all agencies across the US government that implement foreign assistance funding to orient around a common purpose and better coordinate to achieve sustainable development impact.
Please welcome ONE President and CEO Michael Elliott to the ONE Blog. In his first piece, he writes about ONE’s commitment to the famine at the 2011 Clinton Global Initiative.
As a consequence of the famine in Somalia and the wider crisis in the Horn of Africa, more than 30,000 children have died in just three months — and the lives of more than 13 million men, women and children are at risk. None of us can simply stand on the sidelines and watch, and it is for that reason that at ONE we made a commitment today at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) — an annual meeting in New York that brings together global leaders to implement solutions to the world’s most pressing issues — to launch a multi-year campaign called “Drought is Inevitable, Famine is Not.”
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.
Photo credit: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
