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U2 360 and ONE: Astronaut becomes ONE member in opening show!
Thanks to U2’s support of ONE, we’ve been given a chance to work with their current 360 tour. We’ve been working on this for months now, and finally, yesterday, we saw the first show.
I arrived last Friday to put together ONE’s booths at the concert and coordinate our volunteers. I’ve never seen a rock concert in the making, much less a stadium show for a crowd of 90,000. Within 10 minutes of arrival I was standing at the front of the stage looking out into an enormous sea of empty seats. The scale of the whole thing was overwhelming — and that was without lights, sound, or a crowd.
Between Friday and the first show yesterday, I worked on getting together the ONE booth and lining up volunteers for the shows. We have two booths at the venues where volunteers explain ONE and invite people to join up. New members get one of our special edition ONE wristbands, and can have their photos taken as part of “The Future Needs a Big Kiss” - a concept that fits perfectly with ONE’s optimistic view of shaping and embracing the future. The band are using these pictures in a segment of the show, so there is a chance that the best kissers and huggers will end up seeing themselves on the ginormous IMAG screen during the show.
Monday afternoon we ducked outside of the front gates where loyal fans had been queuing for days to ensure they got the best spot next to the stage when the gates opened. The fans came from all over the world, from Spain to Ireland to Chile. Lots of smooching going on. I think some new aquaintances may have occurred. One fan appeared at the photo booth dejected that she didn’t have anyone to kiss. A group of willing volunteers wasn’t far behind offering to help remedy that problem.
Tuesday was a long time coming, and my adrenaline kicked in as I watched the gates open and the fans rush in. For the next few hours we signed up as many fans as we could physically talk to, and took over 300 pictures of people giving their kiss to the future. As U2 started up, we packed up our booths as everyone was inside the stadium, and it was high time that we joined them.
The concert itself was stunning. I’d heard the rehearsals, but the show itself was an order of magnitude more powerful, punctuated by a stadium literally shaking as fans jumped up and down to the music. There were some amazing moments of the show that talked about ONE. First, they linked up to the International Space Station and Bono asked Frank de Winne, the UNICEF ambassador and astronaut, to join ONE, which he enthusiastically agreed to — a spaceman has signed up for ONE!! Later on a giant Archbishop Desmond Tutu appeared on the screen, talking about the people who’ve made great social changes throughout history and how we all are those same people, especially when we act together as ONE. And finally, Bono introduced the song “One” with the Kiss the Future photo montage, urging the audience to sign up as they watched the ONE pictures floating across the screen.
I left the show with a silly grin on my face as I packed up all our stuff and headed home for some much needed sleep. With all the excitement I hadn’t realised how much being on my feet all day in the 34 degree celsius heat had taken out of me. It was the best type of tired there is.
Ill be blogging from every show… Next time I’ll be shorter I promise, just wanted to catch you up.
-Weldon Kennedy
Sister Cities Take Action
I recently met with the President of the US Africa Sister Cities Foundation (USACF), Shirley Rivens Smith. She told me that the Foundation is an arm of Sister Cities International which creates partnerships between cities around the globe. The purpose of sister city relationships is to promote friendship and mutual understanding between two cities and their citizens, based upon the principals of mutual respect, mutual benefit, and cooperation. USACF exists to create greater awareness of the 97 sister cities in Africa, address issues that affect Africans, and promote public awareness through African Sister Cities relationships.
I was really impressed to learn from Shirley that USACF has a network of 4500 individuals, including mayors, who receive periodic updates from her. When I told her about the Senator Paul Simon Water for the World Act of 2009, she offered to send around the petition to USACF members. I’m certain that without the actions of people like Shirley, we couldn’t have reached our goal of 100,000 signers! We owe a big thanks to USACF and all the other organizations and individuals who helped spread the word! Thank you!
-Ranna Lanagan
Matt Damon, ONE and a Tractable (Yes, there is one) Global Problem
Update! We are now within just a few hundred signers of our 100,000 goal. If you’ve not already done so, please sign our petition in support of the Water for the World Act. On that same topic, check out this great post from John Sauer and Katryn Bowe of Water Advocates:
More than 99,000 Americans have signed an unprecedented petition to the Senate in support of global access to clean water and sanitation. The petition calls for more Senators to join Sen. Durbin and Sen. Corker to sponsor the Senator Paul Simon Water for the World Act of 2009 (S.624), a landmark bill that would commit the United States to providing 100 million people with first-time, sustainable access to clean water and sanitation by 2015.
The advocacy organization ONE galvanized the campaign with the help of Matt Damon, a clean water champion. “Water is one of the smartest poverty fighting investments we can make,” wrote Damon.
The outpouring of support reveals the growing momentum for solving this global crisis. More journalists, universities, and politicians than ever are beginning to recognize how shameful it is that the United States has not done more on behalf of this preventable issue. And they are acting – louder than in recent memory – to do something about it.
884 million people in the world lack access to safe water, and 2.4 billion people do not even have a proper latrine to dispose of their human waste. This creates a catastrophic burden on women in developing countries (who must walk miles to fetch water), causes 1.6 million children to die of diarrhea yearly and chokes economic growth.
The solutions are known and affordable– but will only be used if there is enough political commitment to funding them. Universal access to water and sanitation is still a pipe dream for many poorer countries, especially nations in Africa. At the current rate the African continent will not even cut in half the proportion of those living without access to sanitation until 2076. This is an international travesty, but the US Government is in a position to kick-start momentum so as to greatly reduce the burden of the international safe drinking water and sanitation crisis.
Already the petition is having an impact. Since the start of the campaign three weeks ago, four Senators have signed on as co-sponsors bringing the total to 10. The petition delivery is scheduled for this week and advocates hope more Senators will sign on. The related bill (H.R.2030) has been introduced in the House by Rep. Blumenauer of Oregon, and has been referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
This bipartisan legislation is critical for the water, sanitation and health community. If the American public and politicians commit to solving the water and sanitation crisis, the Millennium Development Goals would be closer to being reached and a push can be made for universal access to water and sanitation—the ultimate goal.
The legislation builds off of the ground-breaking Senator Paul Simon Water for the Poor Act of 2005, which made addressing the water and sanitation challenge a priority of US international development policy.
We all saw how public support for AIDS was a catalyst for life-saving action. Now the same might be done for water and sanitation.
-John Sauer and Katryn Bowe, Water Advocates
ThisClose on Water!
We’re thisclose to our goal of 100,000 signers on our Water for the World petition, but we need your help to get there before next week. If you haven’t already, please sign the petition, here. And if you’ve already signed, please share it with your friends through a friendly email or posting the link on Facebook, Twitter or another social networking website.
More than 90,000 ONE members from across the country have signed our petition calling on senators to cosponsor the Paul Simon Water for the World Act of 2009. This critical legislation will put American ingenuity and resources behind the global effort to bring clean water to the 884 million people who struggle to survive without access to this most basic resource.
But just as dirty water is a major obstacle to ending global poverty, a lack of Senate cosponsors is the biggest obstacle to passing the Water for the World Act. The bill is currently stuck in the Foreign Relations committee and needs more cosponsors to get the attention of senate leaders. Our campaign has already helped convince one senator to cosponsor the Water for the World Act — just imagine how many more will jump on board when we show up to deliver a call to action from thousands of their constituents.
Next week, ONE staff and volunteers are going to deliver this petition directly to Senate offices on Capitol Hill. That means we only have a few more days to spread the word about this important campaign. Please help by signing the petition if you haven’t already, and sharing it with your friends if you have.
It’s going to take at least 100 thousand of us to help bring first-time, sustainable access to clean water and sanitation to 100 million of the world’s poorest people in 2015. Together, I know we can do it.
-Emily Stivers
“Enough” Hits Bookshelves This Week
Roger Thurow has been a Wall Street Journal foreign correspondent for twenty years and has reported from more than sixty countries, including two dozen in Africa. His new book Enough: Why the World’s Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty, co- authored with Scott Kilman, hit bookshelves this week.
When it comes to world hunger, it’s time to say, “Enough is enough!”
Several weeks ago I had the honor and great pleasure of addressing the ONE leadership retreat and presenting a preview of my book ENOUGH: WHY THE WORLD’S POOREST STARVE IN AN AGE OF PLENTY. This week ENOUGH hit the sturdy shelves of the bookstores and the virtual shelves at amazon.com.
In the days in between, the United Nations’ food agencies confirmed what we all feared: global hunger is getting worse. The number of chronically hungry people is soaring past 1 billion – the highest number since before the Green Revolution in the 1970s and an increase of more than 11% from just last year. And for the first time in nearly 40 years, the prevalence of hunger is climbing; 15% of the world’s population is now hungry, up from 13% in the middle of this decade.
So ENOUGH, which I wrote with my Wall Street Journal colleague Scott Kilman, is more timely than ever. During the writing, we held fast to an abiding mantra: outrage and inspire, outrage and inspire. We hope that is indeed what our book does:
Outrage, that we have brought hunger with us into the 21st century in ever-increasing numbers.
Inspire, that hunger can be conquered. A mighty grassroots movement founded on a new will to end hunger is rising.
ONE is a vital leader of that movement. We hope that ENOUGH will fuel the outrage and the inspiration to continuing shouting loudly, “Enough is enough.”
-Roger Thurow
The Partnership for Eritrea
On Friday evening I had the great fortune of attending a Physicians for Peace’s dinner in Virginia Beach where I learned more about the incredible work that our partners are doing in Eritrea. The Eritrean Ministry of Health, The George Washington University Medical Center (GWUMC) and Physicians for Peace have come together in the “Partnership for Eritrea” to bring the first post-graduate medical training programs to this Horn of Africa country. This remarkable collaboration is addressing the desperate need for healthcare providers in a country where there are only five physicians for every 100,000 people.
Among the honored guests was the Honorable Ghirmai Ghebremariam, Ambassador of the State of Eritrea to the United States. Dr. Jim Scott, Dean, GWUMC and Dr. Ellen K. Hamburger of the Children’s National Medical Center spoke of the pediatric and surgery residency program and Dr. Judy Sondheimer provided a testimonial about her personal experience as visiting faculty in Eritrea. Their presentations were truly inspired and the success of the Partnership could very well become a model for reducing “brain drain” throughout the continent. Learn more here.
-Lauren Conn
Live from the UN
We spent yesterday in the United Nations headquarters in New York for the UN Conference on the global economic crisis and watched the opening plenary session live on a big screen in a designated room with our NGO colleagues.
Mr. Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, the President of the General Assembly, stated at the outset of his speech that we are meeting because “we are going through the most singular moment in human history when our common future is at stake.” He said we must acknowledge that the current economic and financial crisis is the result of “an egotistical and irresponsible way of living, producing, consuming and establishing relationships among ourselves and with nature that involved systematic aggression against Earth and its ecosystems,” which masked social imbalance and global social injustice. He called for “a sustainable way of life,” which stems from a shared vision of the values and principles that promote the well-being of present and future generations, and a creation of a new global ethic to share our common global good that is the “Mother Earth.” This should be extended in dealing with the concerns of environment as well as humanitarian issues including poverty, which is a “time bomb” against humanities of all societies. He concluded his moving speech with a plea that that we “arm ourselves with solidarity and cooperation in order to make a qualitative leap forward to a future of peace and well-being.” You can read a transcript of his speech here.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon also raised concerns that the world is “still struggling to overcome the worst ever global financial and economic crisis since the founding of the United Nations more than 60 years ago.” He called the international community to take three urgent actions. First, he stated the need for real time data on the vulnerability of the crisis to the poor. In this regard, he informed us that the UN is leading the construction of a global crisis alert mechanism. Second, the international community must keep their commitments on their development targets including the 2005 Gleneagles commitments made by the G8 leaders. Third, he called for the international community to work together to reform the world institutions. “The world institutions created generations ago must be made more accountable, more representative and more effective.” Ban Ki-Moon also said he had just sent a letter to leaders of the G8 urging “concrete commitments and specific action to renew our resolve.”
Yesterday afternoon, we attended a dialogue between the civil society participants and the Commission of Experts on the Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial Systems, convened by the President of the General Assembly. Professor Joseph Stiglitz, the chair of the commission, gave an overview of the recommendations that was released ahead of the Conference and answered questions from the civil society participants. He called for a package of strong, coordinated and effective actions to stimulate the global economy and a number of systemic reforms of the current financial systems, including the creation of a new global reserve system to better deal with risks, and better surveillance systems. He criticized the recent G20’s attempt in tackling the financial crisis, as follows– grants should be provided to the poor rather than debt-incurring loans, their agreements on regulation were more cosmetic than real, and too much of the new resources to the poor will be provided by the IMF, who has been criticized for imposing harmful conditions in return for IMF funding. In his closing remarks, Stiglitz reminded us that the financial crisis is an opportunity for us to change the current skewed global financial and economic system, but that there is a real danger that real reforms will be blocked by a number of governments who do not want to make those changes. Encouragingly, the Commission added that continuous pressure by civil society on governments to make the necessary reforms will be vital in preventing this from happening. The Commission’s report can be found here.
Check back for more updates from the UN!
-Mikiko Imai
Every Drop Matters
As I prepare for a trip to Uganda and Kenya to visit WASH projects in schools that have been completed in the past year by students from around the United States, I reflect upon the passion and commitment that young people display when given a challenge. Three years ago, I introduced a service learning project to students at Highview Middle School in New Brighton, MN after receiving a plea for help from a community in Kenya to fund a water project for their community. As a long time middle school teacher, I knew the students would either embrace the project and make it fly, or it would drop like a stone in the water! Our students heard the statistics that accompany the water crisis such as:
- Every 15 seconds a child dies due to water borne diseases.
- Women and girls walk for hours daily to collect water-usually contaminated!
- 2.5 billion People do not have access to adequate if any sanitation.
- 1.1 billion People do not have access to clean water.
- Once reaching puberty, girls stop attending school without access to sanitary facilities.
The students were shocked and wanted to do something to help! Our 8th grade club, named the project H2O for Life and added “help to others” as part of our Logo. Our mantra became: “A Drop in the Bucket”
The students successfully funded the project for Kathungu village in Kenya, and more importantly weren’t ready to quit after one project. Student advocacy lead to the creation of H2O for Life as a vehicle to get other schools involved in taking action to make a difference by providing water, sanitation and hygiene education projects (WASH Initiative) to schools around the world. So far this year, over 110 schools, churches and clubs have raised, $248,000 for projects. Every dollar raised is matched by the in-country NGO implementing the project. Never did I imagine that our “Drop in the Bucket” campaign would lead to this!
H2O for Life schools received and forwarded ONE’s call to action to schools to sign the petition in support of the Water for the World Act of 2009. Let’s work to encourage our senators to co-sponsor this legislation to help 100 million people have access to clean water and sanitation by 2015.
I hope that our story will inspire other schools and organizations to take action to confront the water crisis. We can make a difference if we work together!
-Patty Hall, H2O for Life
Bill Frist talks preventable diseases on Morning Joe
Former Senator Bill Frist was on MSNBC’s Morning Joe this morning and spoke at length about deadly and preventable diseases in Africa. He also spoke about the need for clean water and what a long way that goes in saving children’s lives.
Senator Frist also has an op-ed in today’s Washington Times on the state of Africa’s children which you can read here.
You can check out the clip here, partial transcript below:
These deaths are preventable, and it’s cheap and we know how to do that. And people think of malaria and HIV and tuberculosis– all very serious– but the number one disease is cardiovascular disease. And we must continue to focus on malaria and bed nets, but simply clean water can go further in saving lives inexpensively around the world.
-Chris Scott
SMART Aid and private partnership helps Tanzania make bed nets for Africa
A to Z Textile Mills in Arusha, Tanzania is an example of what can be achieved when aid works in tandem with private partnerships to support industry and employment - and when African countries reform their business climates to welcome investors. A to Z is the only African factory that manufactures long-lasting insecticide-treated mosquito nets to protect families from malaria, the leading killer of children throughout the continent. It’s a joint venture with a Japanese company Sumitomo Chemical, which gave A to Z a royalty-free technology license to produce the special nets which last at least five years without retreating. The nets are bought by the Tanzanian Ministry of Health, donor agencies and non-governmental organisations including UNICEF and Population Services International (PSI). They are used to fight malaria across Africa. The A to Z factory has the capacity to produce more than ten million nets a year. It employs 4,600 Tanzanians, mostly women, each supporting an average of six people. A to Z will be opening a stitching facility in Ethiopia in June 2009 and a factory in Nigeria in the near future.
-Beth Adler
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The ONE Blog is a daily log of the anti-poverty movement. The site is operated by ONE staff, with frequent contributions from volunteers, members and partner organizations.
The ONE Blog updates readers daily with the latest in global development news and analysis and what ONE members and our partners are doing around the world to influence world leaders in the fight against global poverty.
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TAGS: Bono, Music, ONE, U2 360 Tour