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.”

Read his full post here.

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…

Read the full post here.

-Virginia Simmons

Right now, 30 countries are in immediate need of emergency food assistance and essential seeds and fertilizer.

As world leaders meet in NYC this week to discuss the Millennium Development Goals at the UN Summit, ONE members are signing a petition to the G8 leaders asking them to commit critical funding to address the world food crisis. Without addressing this crisis now – all other poverty-fighting efforts will be blunted.

If you haven’t already, please sign today. And if you have, please forward this on to your friends.

Petition text:

Please provide life-saving food and essential seeds and fertilizer to the 30 countries that need it most by filling the 2008 food and agriculture funding gap of $1 billion without delay.

-Virginia Simmons

All this week, Bono and Jeffrey Sachs will be blogging for the Financial Times from the United Nation’s summit on the Millennium Development Goals.

As a precursor, the Financial Times conducted a Q & A with Bono. An excerpt is below, and the full piece is at FT.com.

AB: What is this week [and the Millennium Development Goals summit] all about?

Bono: Most of us woke up on New Year’s Day 2000 with a hangover and a hazy memory of a night of pleasant fanfare and dumb parade. However, the new millennium was also celebrated by our commitment to eight goals that would change the planet and demonstrate to the developing world how we might, through a combination of know-how and resources, partner with them in efforts to help millions out of desperate poverty. We gave ourselves 15 years, we’re halfway there. How do we measure up?

AB: What are the two or three goals you want to achieve this week?

Bono: 1. Blogging for the FT, being your roving reporter in the canyons of Manhattan. While the world upends on Wall Street, I’ll be mostly midtown at the UN and the Clinton Global Initiative talking about the resilience of the world’s poor while the world’s rich find out how fragile life can be.

2. Unlock €1bn of unspent European Union Common Agricultural Policy money. This year our farmers don’t qualify for it, food prices are high. African farmers desperately need it.

3. Show what’s working as well as what’s not. Bad news about Africa travels much farther than good news. There will be a historic and innovative announcement on malaria on Thursday – watch out for it. Thanks to debt relief, aid and African leadership, 29m more children are going to school.

Read the full Q & A here.

On September 25th, world leaders will convene in NYC for a United Nation summit to renew commitments to achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015.

While all aspects of the MDGs are critical to our work, the reality is that if world leaders don’t immediately address the ongoing devastating world hunger crisis, all other poverty-fighting victories will be blunted.

There are 30 countries in immediate need of emergency food assistance and essential seeds and fertilizer.  These countries have created specific plans to feed the hungry and prevent future crises by enabling people to provide for themselves. Meeting these emergency needs requires $1 billion in funding by the end of this year.

Please click here right away to sign our petition to world leaders.

Petition text:

Please provide life-saving food and essential seeds and fertilizer to the 30 countries that need it most by filling the 2008 food and agriculture funding gap of $1 billion without delay.

As world leaders gather at the UN Summit on the 25th, let’s close the book on the world hunger crisis.

-Virginia Simmons

I wanted to pass along this bit of news breaking today. The popular mega-search engine Google today announced plans to work with partners to bring internet access to 3 billion people in Africa. This ambitious plan will require launching 16 low-earth orbit satellites into space. Larry Alder of Google said the project “really fits into Google’s mission [to extend internet use] around the developing world.”

Learn more about the project here.

-Chris Scott

Rudy Giuliani came to speak to Iowa State students on campus last week and was greeted by a crowd of over 400 – including several ONE supporters. Mr. Giuliani spoke for a while and then took questions from the audience. When I asked him what a Giuliani Administration would do to support the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, he said, “I would work very hard to continue the programs that President Bush has supported and increasing them.” Seeing my ONE T-shirt, he added, “You do great work!”

After the event, I got the chance to shake Mr. Giuliani’s hand and offered him a ONE wristband which he wore as he posed for a photo and continued to shake hands with the crowd!

-Nora Tobin, President of Iowa State ONE Chapter

With the 2015 deadline for the Millennium Development Goals quickly approaching, the United Nations has partnered with Google and Cisco to create an online monitor to chart the world’s progress.

The monitor includes a map where you select 1) a measurement for one of the 8 MDG goals, 2) a country, and 3) a year.

For example, I chose the stat “percentage of population between the ages of 15-19 years old living with HIV,” the country “South Africa” and the year “2005,” and found out that 18.8% of South Africans were living with HIV in 2005.

Next, I chose the stat “percentage of children under the age of 5 moderately or severely under weight,” the country “Mali,” and the years “2000-2004,” and found out that in 2001, 33.2% of Mali children under the age of five were moderately to severely under weight.

You can check it out the map and roam the whole site here

-Virginia Simmons