Barack Obama

ONE members visited Senator Feinstein’s San Diego office to thank her for her support of legislation related to fulfillment of the Millennium Development Goals. Seated in a conference room with Field Representative Laura McGann, we voiced special appreciation for the Senator Feinstein’s re-authorization of PEPFAR, support for the Lugar-Casey Global Food Security Act and most recently endorsement of the “Water for the World” Act. After hand delivering a petition signed by over 16,000 Californians and visiting her offices around the state, Senator Feinstein recently co-sponsored Water for the World Act of 2009.

Recognizing the disproportionate impact climate change has on the poor, we requested Senator Feinstein work to direct 5% of the revenue from current and future climate related legislation to assisting the poorest on our planet. We look forward to a new open door with Laura in the future and always enjoy working with other ONE members. If you are around San Diego you can join us at our next event: Stand-Up Against Poverty on Sunday, October 18th at 4pm. You can RSVP here.

We hope to see you there!

-Marlaine Cover, ONE San Diego

You can watch him live here:

The text of the communique is below.

Leaders’ Statement: The Pittsburgh Summit
September 24 – 25, 2009

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UPDATE: Check out the transcript for President Obama’s remarks here.

What a difference a year makes. Almost exactly this date one year ago, then Senator Barack Obama– along with Senator McCain– addressed the 2008 Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting. We covered his remarks here.

Tonight President Barack Obama had a chance to address the 5th Annual CGI Meeting. He spoke powerfully about the need for greater public service both in the US and abroad, commending President Clinton’s work to establish such programs as Americorps during his presidency. He also commended President Clinton’s work post-presidency in establishing CGI.

President Obama spoke extensively about being shaped by examples of public service early in his life, most significantly his mother’s work with microloans. He went on to talk about a “transformational moment in world history” when the world is more interconnected than ever. Tools that can help and aid people can also allow people to do harm.

Today’s world, Obama explained, requires “creative collaborations and a renewed spirit of partnership.” He described Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s travels abroad– some of which we’ve covered here on the ONE Blog– as an example of his administrations focus on reaching out to citizens and promoting greater partnership. The military and the government can work to disrupt extremist networks around the globe, Obama said, but we also need to make clear the kind of world we want to build across regions and religions.

He noted the need for historic investments in clean energy and cutting emissions, and the need for businesses and nonprofits to end the threat of climate change. This line particularly stuck out to me: “Foreign assistance is not an end in itself. The purpose of aid is to create conditions where it’s no longer needed.” Development is a key part of a foreign policy strengthened not by lecturing the world but seeking great understanding– what Obama called “standing together, working together, and building together” to leave the world better than we found it.

Keep your eye on the ONE Blog for more updates.

-Chris Scott

Thanks in part to the efforts of more than 107,000 ONE members, we’ve hit our target of 20 cosponsors for the Durbin-Corker Water for the World Act — which would provide 100,000,000 people with first-time access to safe drinking water and sanitation on a sustainable basis by 2015.

Our thanks to Senators Harry Reid and Dianne Feinstein, who signed on to cosponsor the bill last week. Here’s the full list of cosponsors:

Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL)
Sen. Bob Corker, Bob (R-TN)
Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA)
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME)
Sen. Roland Burris (D-IL)
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH)
Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA)
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA)
Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI)
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH)
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)
Sen. Byron Dorgan D-ND)
Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA)
Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT)
Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO)
Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT)
Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD)
Sen. Bernard Sanders (I-VT)
Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV)
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)

ONE’s Government Affairs team is following the bill’s progress closely, and we are hoping for a hearing this fall. We’ll post another update when things get moving.

Meanwhile, let’s not stop at 20 — this bill and the 884 million people globally who lack access to clean water deserve more attention. Sign the petition here, and don’t forget to share it with your friends.

Thank you,

-Emily Stivers

As Americans, our well-being is linked to the lives of others around the world as never before. Today’s global challenges — poverty, hunger, conflict, disease and climate change — threaten prosperity and security in the U.S. and globally. Smart U.S. foreign policy requires not just military strength but also skilled diplomacy, sound economic policy, and innovative approaches to global development. Our foreign assistance programs are a critical part of how we engage the rest of the world.

Unfortunately, the law governing U.S. foreign aid policy is out-of-date. It was written in 1961, and the world has changed drastically since then. We need to upgrade our foreign aid laws and policies to tackle today’s global challenges and make sure our foreign assistance dollars serve us as best they can in the fight against global poverty, hunger and disease. The people we are trying to help deserve no less.

The Foreign Assistance Revitalization and Accountability Act of 2009 (S. 1524) is a real opportunity to “upgrade aid”, and has bipartisan support. Introduced by Senators John Kerry (D-MA), Richard Lugar (R-IN) in July, it was immediately cosponsored by Senators Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Jim Risch (R-ID), Ben Cardin (D-MD), and Bob Corker (R-TN), and has since earned the additional support of Senators Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Robert Casey (D-PA), Tim Johnson (D-SD) and Jeff Merkley (D-OR).

The Kerry-Lugar bill recognizes the importance of global prosperity and security to the national interests of the United States and takes several, critical steps to strengthen U.S. foreign assistance:

1. Establishes that it is U.S. policy to promote global development, good governance and the reduction of poverty and hunger.
2. Restores planning, policy, evaluation and innovation capability to USAID, the U.S. agency responsible for fighting hunger and poverty around the world.
3. Creates an independent evaluation and research innovation group to measure the impact of U.S. development and foreign assistance programs to determine what works, and what doesn’t.
4. Calls for U.S. citizens and foreign aid recipients to have access to web-based, timely, and comparable information on U.S. foreign assistance programs, presented on a program-by-program and country-by-country basis.
5. Enhances USAID’s personnel and human resources capacity to ensure the agency has the technical and policy expertise required to confront today’s global challenges.
6. Creates a single U.S. voice on the ground in developing countries to coordinate and align U.S. development programs with country needs.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will be marking up S. 1524 on Tuesday, September 22. Though the bill already has 10 cosponsors, additional Senate cosponsors — especially from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — are needed to demonstrate the growing U.S. support for making our foreign assistance programs better and smarter.

For instructions, talking points and to tell us about your call, click here.

-Emily Stivers

President Obama signed a Presidential Study Directive (PSD) on Monday calling for a government-wide review of U.S. global development policy. According to White House staff, the president has asked National Security Adviser Jim Jones and National Economic Council Chairman Larry Summers to lead the review. The review will include all U.S. government agencies involved in global development as well as Congress and constituents. Findings and recommendations from the review will be provided to the president in January. All of this is welcome news to many in the development community who have been tracking the growing momentum in Congress and the executive branch to strengthen U.S. global development efforts. And the directive signals that the White House is seriously thinking about how the U.S. engages with poor countries and promotes global development, including but not limited to stronger and smarter foreign aid.

While we wait to read the full details of the latest Presidential Study Directive (PSD) on global development (it’s not yet publicly available), we know that PSDs initiate reviews of policy procedures generally pertaining to national security and President Obama’s first PSD, Organizing for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, might serve as a good guide for what we can hope to see in the global development PSD. I’d like to see the global development PSD keep similar language calling for:

1. A full, interagency review of how to reform the White House organization to create an integrated, effective and efficient approach, in this case to strengthen U.S. and global prosperity and security;
2. Full participation from all the U.S. government agencies involved in global development (from State, to USAID, MCC, Treasury, Defense, Centers for Disease Control, Department of Agriculture, and many more) and a commitment to consult important stakeholders in Congress and among outside experts during the course of the review; and
3. Consideration of the recommendations from numerous bipartisan and expert studies on the issues (from the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network’s New Day New Way; the Center for Global Development’s White House and the World: An Global Development Agenda for the Next President; the Brookings/CSIS’s Security by Other Means report; and many others).

Unlike the first PSD on counterterrorism, I hope that the global development PSD will include the USAID administrator among the addressees (even better if we soon have a new USAID administrator appointee—those growing impatient are casting their votes for the next administrator here!). I also hope to see some language encouraging the review to address the full range of U.S. policies—from foreign aid, to trade, climate change, migration and more—that affect how the U.S. engages the rest of the world, including developing countries. I’m also eager to learn how the White House will engage the multilateral development institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in the review and potentially other development donors from the UK, Germany, France, Japan, and elsewhere.

The White House call for a presidential study directive on global development comes on the heels of announcements from both the executive and legislative branches aimed at strengthening U.S. global development efforts including:

1. The Department of State has said it will undertake a Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR);
2. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman (D-CA) and Mark Kirk (R-IL) introduced the Initiating Foreign Assistance Reform Act (H.R.2139) that calls on the administration to develop a national strategy for global development and now has 100 Republican and Democratic co-sponsors;
3. Senate Relations Committee members Kerry (D-MA), Lugar (R-IN), Menendez (D-NJ), Corker (R-TN), Cardin (D-MD) and Risch (R-ID) introduced the Foreign Assistance Revitalization and Accountability Act of 2009 (S.1524) that calls for strengthening the U.S. Agency for International Development and monitoring and evaluation of aid programs; and
4. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Berman and his staff have begun the process of rewriting the outdated 1961 Foreign Assistance Act.

Together, these are welcome signals that the executive branch and Congress are committed to strengthening U.S. global development. The trick, as Sheila Herrling at the Center for Global Development points out, is going to be figuring out how to put them all together so that you end up with a smart, coordinated U.S. strategy for confronting poverty, inequality, conflict and disease that threaten prosperity and security globally and at home.

-Sarah Jane Staats

Your senators are coming home for August recess, giving you a great opportunity to meet them at their district offices and help advance the fight against global poverty.

Check out ONE’s August recess meetings in your state, and RSVP for the one nearest you.

Over the coming months, the Senate will make critical decisions about helping the world’s poorest people deal with the impact of climate change, as well as the Water for the World Act, funding for programs including the Global Fund, and other aspects of development policy. Your senators care what their constituents have to say, and a face-to-face meeting is the best way for you to voice your concerns.

This is our chance to demonstrate real grassroots support for proven, affordable solutions to extreme poverty and preventable diseases.

Right now, all you have to do is let us know—through your RSVP—which district office you’d be interested in visiting. We need constituents to make the phone calls to set up the times and dates for these meetings, so we’ll fill you in on that information later.

RSVP here.

See you in August!

-Kim Smith

The White House just released this very well done piece on President Obama’s visit to Ghana, along with a transcript of Obama’s remarks which you can find here.

Check it out:

Also, for those who missed the speech, here’s the video in full:

-Chris Scott

We’ve just posted video of Obama’s speech “A New Moment of Promise,” given this morning in Ghana’s Parliament.

Click on the image of the page or link below to watch and join this afternoon’s live chat, hosted by our policy team:

http://www.one.org/us/ghanaspeech/index.html

Sena Atoklo is a broadcast journalist and resident of Ghana who has worked with the BBC and ITV in the UK, and ETV South Africa. Over the next week, he’ll be sending in posts to the ONE Blog on Obama’s visit to Ghana and how Ghanaians are reacting to it.

Ghanaians are excited and waiting with baited breath for the arrival of U.S President Barack Obama at exactly 20:30GMT when Air force One touches down at the Kotoka International Airport today. The fever did not really grip Ghanaians until this week. A number of them were expectant but when the months and weeks became days, the reality hit them that the U.S President was indeed visiting.

The Ghanaian media is making sure that it is not left out of the whole frenzy of welcoming President Obama. Screaming headlines of President Obama’s visit greets everyone in the mornings. This week has seen a lot of coverage on the Obama visit. The debate in the media is whether it was the current NDC government that lobbied for his visit to the country or if the trip had been planned a while ago and that no matter the party in government he would be visiting Ghana anyway. Remember, Ghana had a closely fought general election last year, and it is not strange to see Ghanaians still divided along political lines. The media plays a part in influencing the thoughts and feelings of the ordinary Ghanaians. And since the big headlines about his visit has given Ghanaians something to talk about, the media at this point are still scrambling for accreditation. Trust me that they will have more than enough news stories to churn out for at least the next four weeks.

-Sena Atoklo