As we continue our campaign to protect critical Canadian international development funding, ONE member Sarah Stone, from Waterloo, Ontario, reports back from meeting her local member of parliament.
As a constituent and on behalf of ONE I had the opportunity recently to meet with Peter Braid, Conservative Member of Parliament for Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario.
ONE member Sarah Stone and Peter Braid, Conservative Member of Parliament
Mr. Braid had recently returned from a trip to South Sudan as part of his role as the vice chair of the Canada-Africa Parliamentary Association, the main purpose of which is to discuss trade, aid and strengthen ties with African parliamentarians. During this trip, and on previous trips to Africa, Mr. Braid has seen firsthand the benefits of Canadian foreign aid. We discussed my involvement in the Griot Project, and my recent trip to Washington this past December to participate in #ONErocksDC, a lobby day on Capitol Hill and the White House with ONE.
Although President Obama did not mention our issues during the State of the Union last Tuesday, he did discuss and defend foreign aidduring his Google+ Hangout session this week, which aimed to give Americans a chance to personally ask him about his policies and administration through social media.
A homeless veteran in Boston asked President Obama why the US should be spending so much on foreign aid when so many Americans are hurting at home. Obama responded, “We only spend about 1 percent of our budget on foreign aid. But it pays off in a lot of ways.” It goes toward helping countries improve their economies and prevent famine, avoiding “some military crisis somewhere down the road that could be even more expensive.”
He goes on to say, “So, aside from it being the right thing to do, as a very wealthy country… it’s also important to make sure that people understand this is part of our overall security strategy.”
Listen to his quote here:
ONE members were asked last week to vote on a question on the beginning of the end of AIDS from ONE member and University of Florida student Liz, but it was not chosen for Obama’s Google+ event. We will continue to keep HIV/AIDS on the president’s radar at events like this one and beyond.
Sliding in just before the holidays, the OECD-DAC released its final update to the 2010 data on official development assistance (ODA) flows. The DAC — or, Development Assistance Committee — is a grouping of the world’s wealthiest donor countries. It tracks donor spending on development finance and helps coordinate development policy globally to improve spending practices.
The adjusted numbers released in December 2011 reflect final spending by countries in 2010, updating the preliminary figures released in April, and what ONE used in the 2011 DATA Report monitoring the G7’s commitments to Africa. As such, we can look at these numbers as the final report for how the G7 countries met their 2005 Gleneagles commitments to increase development assistance to Africa.
Based on the preliminary figures, ONE’s DATA Report found that the G7 delivered 61 percent of the Gleneagles commitments for sub-Saharan Africa. The final figures show that in fact the G7 delivered 60 percent of their total promises. The difference was mostly due to Japan, Italy, the UK and the US all delivering lower amounts of ODA than they originally reported in April. However, despite the revised figures, there were no changes in whether or not a country met its Gleneagles commitments. Net of bilateral debt relief, the G7 delivered a total of $28.5 billion of ODA to sub-Saharan Africa in 2010.
At around just 2 percent of the annual federal budget, Canadian foreign aid is achieving real results in the lives of the world’s poor. From providing life-saving vaccines and treatment for deadly diseases, providing food aid to reduce starvation, to investing in agriculture and farming to fight poverty and hunger, it is making a massive difference.
But Canada’s spending on international development has been frozen for some time, and there are now discussions to cut that budget even more as the government looks for ways to reduce the deficit.
Jonathan Morgenstein, a Marine Corps Reserves captain and fellow at the Truman National Security Project, urges Americans to stand by international development for the sake of national security.
During my 20 years in the Marine Corps reserves, including two tours in Iraq and one in Bosnia, I learned deep lessons about the awesome capabilities — and realistic limits — of American military power.
A strong military is key to American security, but military alone cannot solve all of our challenges. America needs stable friends and allies worldwide able to help us prevent and eliminate these threats.
This week, five former Secretaries of State, representing both Democrats and Republican administrations, sent a letter to Congress raising concerns about additional cuts to diplomacy and development programs in the FY12 appropriations. Former Secretaries Madeleine Albright, Henry Kissinger, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and George Shultz wrote they “have seen first‐hand how the International Affairs Budget is a strategic investment to advance America’s interests throughout the world” and urge members of Congress to oppose devastating cuts to these vital programs.
When the ONE intern team went to Capitol Hill a couple of weeks ago to deliver your signatures from our petitions to the Senate, I know that we were all struck by the power that your names can have on decisions made by Congress.
With this in mind -– and with foreign aid currently at risk of devastating cuts –- we began to think of ways to remind our senators that with just 1 percent of the federal budget, the US can save millions of lives every year. Soon enough, we had our event: ONE Photo for Foreign Aid. Partnered with the ONE Campus Challenge (OCC) chapter at George Washington University here in DC, we had the chance to talk about the importance of preserving foreign aid and offered complimentary hot cocoa (complete with whipped cream and marshmallows, of course!) to everyone willing to stop and take a picture in our photo booth in support of our petition.
Thrilled by the great response we received from everyone involved, we took more than 120 photos of students and staff against the cuts in just three hours, and discussed ONE’s work in fighting extreme poverty with many more.
To generate an even greater buzz, we also gave other OCC chapters across the country the opportunity to run their own photo booth petitions as part of their third challenge of the semester. As with all their projects, the enthusiastic responses of campus leaders from Michigan to Florida to Wisconsin have been fantastic, reminding us all that with our members’ support, there is so much we can achieve.
Take a second to check out all our photos from the event on our ONE Photo Booth Flickr account. And be sure to stay tuned for more updates -– we’ll be delivering all our photos to Congress before they vote on the budget next week.
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.
