October 27th, 2008 at 9:55 am | posted by Virginia Simmons
Last week, when Bono spoke at the California Women’s Conference, he passed along some of the startling stats (listed below) about women in Africa.
Nearly two-thirds of adults with HIV in Africa are women young women (age 15 to 24) in South Africa accounted for around 90% of new HIV infections in 2007.
In Africa, the likelihood of a woman dying in childbirth is 1 in 20 (compared to 1 in 2,800 in the US).
Although up to 80% of farmers in the developing world are women, they own less than 15% of land worldwide.
You can find more facts about women in Africa, as well as inspiring facts (like the one below) about the benefits of investing in women in the developing world, in this new fact sheet.
“Investing in women is considered smart economic policy because it can often yield higher economic returns than investing in men. Providing an extra one year of education beyond the average boosts earnings by 10-20%, compared to 5-15% for males. Increasing the share of women with a secondary education by one percentage point boosts annual per capita income by 0.3% on average. A study in Kenya found that agricultural yields could be raised by as much as 20% simply by reallocating existing agricultural inputs (seeds, fertilizer, education) more equally between men and women.”
October 26th, 2008 at 5:41 pm | posted by Chris.Scott
As you know, Bono spoke at the California Women’s Conference this past Wednesday. One volunteer Amy Quinn was in the audience, and had this to share:
I was one of the lucky 14,000 women to have attended the Women’s Conference in Long Beach last Wednesday. I left the conference with a renewed sense of purpose, which quite frankly, I desperately needed when I arrived at the conference that morning.
In particular, I was moved by Bono’s recollection of his experiences back in the mid 80’s - on his visit to Ethiopia during the horrible famine that occurred there. This is also when my “world vision or Weltanschauung” changed, and I, at the ripe old age of 14 - became a hunger/poverty activist. As Bono said - the flames of that continent sting your eyes - they sear your conscience… He said, “In my travels I have met kids the mirror image own and looked into their faces as they let go of life. And it makes me even angrier that their eyes are always free of accusation. It humbles me beyond belief that they don’t hold it against a world that couldn’t spare the twenty cent immunization that would have them back in the bosom of their family. Even their mothers and fathers…their grief is pure. There’s no blame, just acquiescence…”
As the mother of a six year old little boy - it was easy for me to substitute my son’s eyes for this image.
October 23rd, 2008 at 12:26 pm | posted by Chris.Scott
As we previously reported, Bono spoke at the 2008 California Women’s Conference last night. We’ve compiled the full footage of his speech, split into 5 parts, below. Enjoy!
PS- In his speech, Bono refers to a petition organized by the ONE Campaign to hold both presidential candidates accountable in the fight to end extreme poverty. Please sign here.
October 22nd, 2008 at 8:45 pm | posted by Virginia Simmons
Bono is scheduled to speak at the 2008 Women’s Conference in a few moments. You can watch live in the webcast player below. (Webplayer is after the “read more” jump.)
October 22nd, 2008 at 3:03 pm | posted by Chris.Scott
Bono will be speaking tonight at the WE Empower Women’s Conference in California at approximately 6 pm PST (9pm EST). Maria Shriver is hosting the event which features speakers such as Condoleeza Rice, Madeline Albright, Jennifer Lopez, and more. You can watch a live webcast of the event here.
WE Empower’s website describes the conference thusly:
Under the leadership of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver, The Women’s Conference has grown from a small government initiative for working professionals into a far-reaching organization, a life-changing experience, and an international network of women from all walks of life, backgrounds and perspectives.
The Women’s Conference event is the largest and most dynamic gathering of women in the nation. Recognized for its unparalleled capacity to empower and inspire women to become architects of change, the annual conference unites more than sixty internationally-acclaimed leaders and visionaries with 14,000 women in one arena, plus thousands more virtually, to share enriching stories of transformation and success, words of encouragement and life lessons.
September 26th, 2008 at 11:45 am | posted by Virginia Simmons
ONE co-founder Bono spoke with CNN’s John Roberts on “American Morning” this morning about recent successes and future plans in our fight against global poverty. You can watch the whole interview below, and read the full transcript on CNN.com.
An excerpt:
“BONO: We got good news this week. I know normally I’m on your program with bad news — the whingeing rock star — but it’s great. There’s a disease, malaria — it’s 3,000 African kids die every day of mosquito bites. Sounds mad, but it’s true. And people have committed and it looks like the funds are on the table so that that disease will be no more by 2015. That makes people like me punch the air and everyone who wears a ONE T-shirt and all our white band campaigners on college campuses all over the country — it was a great day for them yesterday so we’re celebrating that. I know it’s extraordinary, that while you’re having this meltdown on the markets, that people could even concentrate on this stuff, but I’m really grateful that they did. We had both [presidential] candidates make very powerful statements about the necessity for nonmilitary tools, for instance, in foreign policy. This is an America that both candidates want to show to the rest of the world — the greatness of America.”
September 25th, 2008 at 4:00 pm | posted by Emily.Bergantino_MalariaNoMore
Reporting to you live from outside the 2008 MDG Malaria Summit…
At the 2008 MDG Malaria Summit in New York today, global leaders in health, government and business announced over $3 billion in new malaria money to help spur the world toward ending malaria deaths by 2015 - making it the single biggest day for malaria announcements in the history of the fight against the disease.
Speakers including Bono, Gordon Brown, Bill Gates, President Kagame of Rwanda and President Kikwete of Tanzania discussed how far the world has come in recent years to combat malaria and how far we still have to go. Peter Chernin, President and COO of News Corporation and Malaria No More Chairman, helped moderate the event, adding that malaria is not an isolated disease but both a consequence and cause of extreme poverty.
Two of the biggest announcements were from the World Bank and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Robert Zoellick, President of the World Bank, announced $1.1 billion as funding for Phase II of the World Bank Booster Program and Rajat Gupta, Chair of the Global Fund, announced Round 8 funding recommendations for malaria control efforts totaling $1.62 billion.
In celebrating the new commitments, grassroots support and political will that is driving the worldwide effort to end malaria deaths, event host UN Special Envoy for Malaria Ray Chambers urged the community not to become complacent. While today represents a big step forward, the race to end deaths - 3,000 children every day - is far from over.
September 24th, 2008 at 6:35 pm | posted by Virginia Simmons
Bono continues his liveblogging from the UN special summit on the MDGs this week. Some excerpts from his latest entry are below. See the full post on FT.com.
The ONE campaign has two and half million members, who urge us to make the case for increased aid as a key plank in America’s new foreign policy. ONE T-shirts have been turning up in town hall meetings for 18 months now, haranguing, hassling, but ultimately endearing themselves to all the presidential campaigns. They want the world to see what America has to offer the billion people who live on less than a dollar a day - practically speaking: medicine, new seed varieties, technology, know-how; policy speaking: what should America do more of? what should America do less of?
…Anyway we’ve now met with nearly a dozen of the presidential candidates in the course of their campaigns and of the four candidates left, three have declared their positions at onevote08.org/ontherecord, if you want to check them out.
On AIDS for example, Senators Obama and McCain both cosponsored the historic $48bn US AIDS initiative this year - an effort lead by Joe Biden - who I might add also fought in the trenches for debt cancellation for the poorest of the poor when I first started down this road. So it will be interesting to find out where Governor Palin stands.
September 24th, 2008 at 10:38 am | posted by Virginia Simmons
Bono continues his live blogging today from UN Special Summit on the Millenium Development Goals. You can see all his posts on the FT.com Blog site.
Below are some excerpts from his blogging late last night.
Aid is a leg-up, not a hand-out
“Lots of speeches etc going on inside the UN… President Bush, President Sarkozy. We’re on the outside today, meeting activists from Africa, India and Europe to talk about holding the people on the inside accountable for their promises.
The promises in question this week are the Millennium Development Goals or MDGs….
For those of you, the many of you, questioning aid on this site, you’re not wrong to suggest that it’s not the only answer. Of course it’s not. It’s trade, it’s governance, it’s private investment. But aid is critical… ask Germany, ask Ireland. See it as a leg-up, not a hand-out.
I’m not talking about the aid of the 20th century by the way. For too many years, much aid was wasted and ended up redecorating presidential palaces instead of building hospitals. That was our corruption as well as theirs. Handing over billions of dollars to a corrupt dictator because he isn’t a Commie, knowing he will use it to suppress discontent and swell personal bank accounts - that makes you complicit. But, this is a new century, and a new understanding of aid and partnership means that we are starting to see different results.”
September 22nd, 2008 at 5:37 pm | posted by Virginia Simmons
Bono has been blogging today from the United Nations’s Summit on the MDG’s in NYC. The below post he wrote after meeting with the President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy. You can read his complete posts at FT.com.
Tough meeting with the Président de la République of France. He’s a tough guy. We like tough guys because they get straight down to business. They don’t waste their time or yours. The French budget is out this Friday and in it we will see if France intends continuing its leadership role on the continent of Africa. In the last few years, French aid has been falling.
My point was that as much as Africa needs French aid and the energy that Sarkozy himself provides, he/we need Africa. Why? Africa has never been so strategically important as it is now, economically and politically. Just ask…
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