Action Africa is a service club at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Virginia. We are trying to increase awareness of African issues and complete service projects at our school.

One of our ongoing projects is a pen pal relationship with a school in Bupoto, Uganda. Last year, as our big spring service project, we did literacy outreach with the Arlington Academy of Hope (AAH), a school in rural Uganda. We collected easy-reader books and recorded them on tapes, and then sent the books and tapes to the students of AAH in Bupoto.

We continue to learn about different issues, such as food security and AIDS awareness, and are working with ONE on many more events.

–Sydney Shrider, Thomas Jefferson High School, Alexandria, VA

Throughout middle and high school, my best friend Laura Whitman and I have been involved in PASC, the Pennsylvania Association of Student Councils. Each year, PA District 8 hosts a conference for student council members and their advisors to share ideas and communicate between schools. Laura Whitman and I have submitted a workshop on the topic of our choice for several years to share with other school’s student councils.

This year we chose to focus our workshop around ONE. On March 6th, we presented our workshop, “Be ONE in a Million,” to 60 students in District 8. Our workshop focused on ONE’s main priorities and growing ONE membership. The students also viewed numerous ONE videos which were all received very well. Each student received two wristbands and two stickers with the promise that they would wear one set and give the other set to a friend. Some students even won ONE t-shirts and ONE lapel pins through a raffle.

This workshop proved to be a learning experience for the presenters and the students, and was also a great experience to connect with other teenagers through tough issues like global poverty. Hopefully, Laura and I will be submitting our workshop to the PASC State Conference in November!

-Becky Guldin, Northern Lebanon High School, Fredericksburg, PA

ONE Volunteer Adam Stackhouse attended the Clinton Global Initiative University meeting this weekend at the University of Texas at Austin. CGI U brings together students, university presidents, nongovernmental organizations, and national youth organizations to make commitments to action against global poverty and injustice.

He wore his ONE shirt and even struck up a conversation with Paul Begala who told Adam that he was a big fan of ONE! He put on his white band and posed for a picture to show his ONE (and Longhorn) pride!

-Lauren Conn, VA ONE Field Organizer

Greetings from snowy Oslo, Norway, where government ministers, campaigners and education experts are currently gathered for the High Level Group meeting on Education for All. The conference is the eighth annual since the historic World Education Forum in 2000, which set forth the Dakar Framework for Action, a roadmap to achieve quality education for all by 2015.
 
Participants here in Oslo are acutely aware that halfway towards the target date set for achieving the goals set out in Dakar and the MDG targets on education, the world remains seriously off track: according to new statistics published a couple weeks ago in UNESCO’s annual Global Monitoring Report (GMR), there are still 75 million primary-school aged children out-of-school around the world, 35 million of whom are living in sub-Saharan Africa. 55% of these children are girls, and over one-third live in fragile states. If current trends continue, 29 million children will still be out of primary school in 2015.
 
Another common thread in many of the discussions here is that amidst the current global economic crisis, the case for expanding access to quality education is stronger than ever. Evidence shows that investments in education yield some of the highest returns in development. With its strong linkages to health, economic growth and gender equality, progress in education is central to progress on all the Millennium Development Goals. Take child mortality, the third MDG- the new GMR found that when mothers receive a primary education, the likelihood that their children will survive past age five increases by 25 percent. With a secondary education, this likelihood increases to 50 percent.
 
Also on high on the agenda here in Oslo is how to strike the balance between access and quality.  Many countries, especially in Africa, have made great strides in the past few years in expanding access to education- debt relief, for example, helped many countries  abolish school fees, opening school doors for millions of children in the world’s poorest countries. In both Ethiopia and Tanzania, for example, 3 million more children were enrolled in primary school between 1999 and 2006. However once these children are in school, the challenge is to make sure they are learning something.  A central component of this is ensuring that schools are equipped with trained teachers who have manageable class sizes. One startling finding of this year’s report is that 18 million more teachers will be needed by 2015 to achieve universal primary education (which calls for one teacher for every 40 students). This is a tall order for most developing governments, especially because donors are not doing their part to provide the long-term, predictable funding education ministers need in order to recruit and retain quality teachers. Currently only 17% of aid to basic education is available for teachers’ salaries, despite the fact that they account for 70-90% of education budgets.

Many are hopeful that strong language on what’s needed in teacher financing will be included in the Oslo Declaration, which will be finalized here later today. Check back here later for an update.

-Nora Coghlan, ONE Policy Analyst

I’m Maisie Pigeon, ONE’s Student Coordinator, and I’ll be managing this year’s OCC—a good-natured competition between universities to see which school will be the national champion at tackling extreme poverty.

Our quarterback is three-time Super Bowl winner and two-time Super Bowl MVP Tom Brady of the New England Patriots. An active ONE supporter since 2005, Tom visited health clinics, schools and other life-saving projects in Ghana and Uganda in 2007 with ONE. Hear what he has to say about OCC at:

Last year, more than 1,400 colleges and universities competed through seven months of rigorous activism, awareness-raising and action-taking. OCC students signed up over 33,000 ONE members, took 182,000 actions, and convinced campuses, cities and even states to declare their support for ONE. And they engaged candidates including Barack Obama and John McCain on the campaign trail, getting them to pay attention to and talk about global poverty and disease.

In January, the 100 top schools sent representatives to the Power 100 Summit, an exciting three-day conference in Washington, D.C. They heard from leaders of the global anti-poverty movement and influential members of the Democratic and Republican parties, and joined forces through workshops and forums to become smarter, stronger advocates.

This year’s ONE Campus Challenge is going to be even better, but we need you to help your school get started. Sign up here.

Game on!

-Maisie Pigeon and the OCC Team

On Friday, August 15, ONE members from the Pembroke Pines Charter High School, located in Pembroke Pines, Florida, met with Representative Alcee Hastings (D-FL) to talk about the accomplishments of the school’s ONE chapter, which has over 150 members including students and faculty.

The passionate students, along with their teacher Ms. Danielle De Pas, spoke about how they got involved with the ONE Campaign and how they are energizing their peers to become educated about extreme poverty. The school’s charter has been so successful that the ONE movement is now spreading beyond Pembroke Pines High School into the neighboring school districts.

In response, Representative Hastings talked about the importance of engaging young people in the political process early on so that they can help make a difference for generations to come. He hopes that the upcoming election will bring an unprecedented number of young people out to vote who want their voices heard on issues such as extreme poverty.

At the end, he commended the work of the ONE Campaign and slipped on the ONE bracelet to show his support. We thanked him for cosponsoring PEPFAR (The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) and urged him to continue to support legislation that will alleviate global poverty.

The students, who are organizing a ONE event to be held at the school in January, invited the Congressman to attend and provide a few remarks. We are hopeful that he will be able to be there to show his support.

-Sara Paterni, FL Field Organizer

(Photo from left to right: Andre Riley, Rafael Batista, Rep. Alcee Hastings, Danielle DePas)

My name is Maisie Pigeon and I’m the new ONE Student Coordinator. Right now, I’m working non-stop to make this year’s ONE Campus Challenge a success. The ONE Campus Challenge is a nationwide competition between universities where schools have the opportunity to earn points by taking actions against poverty. (Actions range from signing up your friends and family, to “ONE-ing” your campus mascot, to writing letters to your members of Congress.)

Currently we are working to get everything ready for the OCC 2008/2009-kickoff. The competition between schools last year was pretty steep, in the end Western Kentucky University won out over more than a thousand schools nationwide. This year the competition only looks to intensify. We can’t wait to see what tricks you guys have up your sleeves!

This will be my second year working with OCC, as I was a Regional Outreach Ambassador (aka – ROA) last year. I want to let you know that we’re currently looking to fill positions for this year’s crew of Regional Outreach Ambassadors. ROAs are active student leaders who help college students across the country promote ONE and fight extreme poverty by acting as liaisons between ONE staff and ONE student leaders across the country.

Find more information on becoming a ROA and pick up an application here. And stay tuned to the ONE Blog for more updates on OCC in the coming weeks.

-Maisie Pigeon, ONE Student Coordinator

On March 28th, we attended a presentation at Saint Luke’s Parish where we learned about the ONE campaign. The stories and faces in the photographs touched our hearts like never before. That very night, we persuaded our parents for a sleepover and started brainstorming on how we might develop a plan for a fundraiser at our school. It was important for us to raise awareness as well as money. We believed in the vision that ONE person can make a difference, and we were determined to make that vision a reality.

Our ideas started with selling cupcakes and before we knew it, we were designing t-shirts and wrist bands to sell at our school. With assistance from Abby Warren and Caroline Eckersdorff, Student Council Advisors, announcements were made everyday and a power point was played in every homeroom. We were up and running in less than a month and the ONE vision was contagious! Students, faculty, and staff all contributed to make our fundraiser a tremendous success. To culminate the week, we sponsored a walk- a– thon at school in which many students participated. . With everyone’s support we were able to raise $3,400 dollars in four days!

Our vision and dream came true. We were able to raise awareness and money at Middlesex and we hope to make a difference in people’s lives in Africa, one by one. We plan to hold our next fundraiser in the fall. Stay tuned!

-Mara Donoghue, Catherine Wilcock and Kate Ferguson

(The money Mara, Catherine and Kate raised for ONE will be donated to the group Africare.)

Last night the University of Colorado Student Union passed a proclamation declaring the campus to be a Campus of ONE. The unanimous decision reflects the University’s commitment to being a leader on social justice issues and standing up against extreme poverty and preventable diseases. What’s even more significant is that the committee is determined to be more than a quiet statement of faith, but to make it public with a signing event and active promotion of ONE on campus throughout the next school year.

The sponsor of the bill, Dan Omasta, described the bill as unique because in this election cycle we are constantly hearing about all the things we can’t agree on, it’s nice to talk about what we do share as common values. The passage of this proclamation makes the University of Colorado one of the largest school to become a Campus of ONE.

I’m very proud of my University and look forward to the work we have to do over the summer and next year.

-Matthew McAllister, Colorado ONE member and CU Sophomore

On Tuesday, May 5, Save the Children and Doctor and Former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist visited our school to launch the 2008 State of the Worlds’ Mothers Report. Who would think that learning to knit would bring so much excitement? Not the first second and third graders in Cordova, TN at Lamplighter Montessori School who knitted infant caps for Save the Children’s Caps to the Capital campaign!

Our students knitted the caps and sent them to Save the Children. Then they were invited to D.C to lobby with Save the Children. This week our school was chosen as The United States launch site for the 2008 report. Bright and early on Tuesday morning our students went on TV to promote awareness of the report. Later in the day, Senator Frist visited the school to talk about the simple and inexpensive ways children’s lives can be saved; warm caps for infants, hand washing, clean water and immunizations. The students showed Senator Frist the caps they had knitted in anticipation of another “Caps to the Capital” campaign.

Our Middle School students presented Save the Children, Senator Frist, Shelby County Mayor A. C. Wharton and ONE with student paintings to show our appreciation for the work being done to help children all over the world reach their first birthday.

-Terrie Sampson, Head of School, Lamplighter Montessori School

PHOTOS:

1- Lamplighter Students Ashley Buckingham, Naseem Yousef, Sutton Hewett, Dylan Beasley, Suzanne Bernstein and Michael Feather showing Save the Children’s Katheryn Bolls the caps knitted in anticipation of the next Caps to the Capitol Campaign.
2- Lamplighter student presenting ONE volunteer Carly Jackson with a painting creating by the students