ONE harnesses social media to push voters’ global poverty concerns up election agenda

London- Anti-poverty group ONE today launched an innovative online and grassroots campaign designed to give new voice to voters’ concerns about global poverty in the run-up to the general election.

ONE Vote 2010 mirrors an award-winning campaign run by ONE in the United States during the 2008 election. It featured video statements from Barack Obama and John McCain, mobilized tens of thousands of supporters across the United States and helped shape both Republican and Democrat development policies.

“Extreme poverty is something many ordinary Britons care deeply about, in spite of the tough economic times,” said ONE’s Europe Director Oliver Buston. “This campaign uses exciting online platforms to help voters engage their local candidates on global issues – just as they did in the Obama campaign. This just wasn’t possible before the rise of social media.”

ONE Vote 2010 features video messages in which party leaders lay out their priorities for tackling poverty, and detailed questionnaire responses from all the parties. It gives voters information and tools to help them communicate with their candidates about global poverty using social media platforms such as facebook and twitter.

At the local level, ONE members in the UK are partnering with the Global Poverty Project. This global network uses a simple yet ground-breaking presentation in the mould of Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” to lay out key facts about poverty – and solutions. More than 40,000 people in the UK will see the presentation in 2010, including political candidates.

“Regardless of who wins the general election, we want to be sure the next British government continues the UK’s global leadership role on international development,” said Oliver Buston. 

“The political parties have already committed to keep Britain’s promise of spending 0.7% of national income on international development which is positive. But it’s about much more than this; it’s about how you spend that money effectively, and how it ties in with other policies in areas like climate change, trade and foreign policy.

“Our supporters want to have intelligent conversations with their candidates about these issues; ONE Vote 2010 is helping them to do this,” said Buston.

ONE will be live-streaming the Development Ministers’ debate later this month, and encouraging its members to submit questions to the Leaders’ televised Foreign Policy Debate on April 22nd.

ONE is a campaign and advocacy organization backed by more than two million people around the world committed to the fight against extreme poverty and preventable disease, particularly in Africa. It has 122,500 facebook fans and more than 430,000 followers on twitter.

Notes for Editors

• ONE Vote 2010 will launch on Tuesday April 13th at 7pm at the Future Gallery, 5 Great Newport Street, London WC2H 7HY. Media wishing to attend should contact Helen Palmer on 07500 797599 or helen.palmer@one.org.
• Interviews will be available with the team behind ONE Vote 2010 and key staff from ONE’s Washington DC office who were involved in the ONE Vote 08 campaign in the US.
• ONE Vote 08 featured exclusive interviews with nine leading candidates including Senators Barack Obama and John McCain.  The candidates recorded video statements about how they would tackle global poverty in response to calls from more than 60,000 ONE activists. The campaign was awarded the Center for Global Development’s “Commitment to Development” award for the impact it had in making global poverty a leading foreign policy issue.
• All political parties in the UK have pledged to ring-fence Britain’s international development assistance budget. It currently stands at just over £7.4bn a year – a tiny sum when compared to the £1trn spent on bank bailouts.
• The Department for International Development says its support helps lift three million people out of poverty each year. It has helped 33 million more children go to primary school and 380 million people access clean water.