ABC News wants to know who you support for the Presidency, and ONE is making it worth your while - ONE Campus Challenge is giving 2500 points to students who participate by doing the video, and 10000 points if the video is actually shown on ABC News . Submit the video via “create your own action” with the link to your video to get credit points. Check out the ONE Vote ‘08 Site (http://onevote08.org/candidatesvideos) to see where the candidates stand on ONE’s issues.

Read the following email for more information, and good luck!!!

ABC News would like to alert you and your volunteers/members of an opportunity for registered Democrats to participate in an upcoming segment. In fairness to both parties, We are reaching out to multiple student chapters supporting all the candidates.

Gearing up for “Super Tuesday” on February 5th, we want to hear from your members about which candidate they support & why.

How does this candidate represent the future of the party? Why do you think they are deserving of your vote? Tell us which presidential hopeful you endorse and why.

Submit your video response for the opportunity to appear on ABC News platforms.

DEADLINE: Monday, February 4, 2008.

HOW TO UPLOAD VIDEOS:

1) Using a digital camera (we don’t request any fancy equipment) record the 15-30 second video clip.

Do you own a digital camera? Most cameras have a video function that allows the user to record 30 second-1 minute videos. Once recorded, you can upload the video to your computer the same way you’d view digital snapshots!

2) Upload it to the website & VOILA!
http://ugv.abcnews.go.com/Player.aspx?id=1057823

Click on red “RESPOND NOW” Button.

Here is a sample of how your videos could be included in ABC News
programming:

Iowa Caucus: Which Candidate Do You Support?
http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=4086713

Hello fellow poverty fighters!

I have a really easy way for you all to help us spread the word about ONE. Since all of you are probably going to wake up tomorrow morning, roll out of bed, and immediately open up your computer and log onto Facebook like I do every morning, why don’t you take a couple of seconds to wish all of your friends a happy ONE day in your status?

We are working to make it official, but at Webster University the first of every month is going to be a ONE day on our campus. Each ONE day we want people to table, wear ONE shirts if they have them, and wish all of their friends a Happy ONE Day!

Tomorrow, my status is going to read like this:

“Nick wants to wish you a Happy ONE Day! Join the celebration at www.one.org/campus!”

If you want to celebrate a ONE Day tomorrow, then copy my status, and don’t forget to wish everyone you know a Happy ONE Day!

Happy ONE Day Eve!

Nick Stevens, Regional Outreach Ambassador and President of ONE Webster

Monday, January 28th, three members from MSU ONE (namely, Melissa Hill, our president, Emily Whate, our Director of Visual Media, and me, Eric Mayle…the V.P.) went to a Teamsters’ Hall here in Springfield, MO to hear John Edwards speak at what would be one of the last events of his campaign.

They had anticipated 150 people.  Closer to 1,050 showed up.  It was packed.  There were three paths to the stage, and each path was guarded by a ONE member with a pocketful of bands and a mind full of questions for the Senator.  Finally, the Teamsters’ President took the stage, introducing former Missouri Lieutenant Governor Joe Maxwell (a rowdy guy who has to hold the microphone around his waist to keep from messing up the sound system).

“It’s our turn!”  Maxwell yelled, “The big corporations have had their turn!  The rich have had their turn!  It’s middle America’s turn, it’s the working class’ turn, it’s OUR turn!”  Then, after the applause had died down, he said the words we’d all been waiting to hear…”Ladies and gentlemen, Senator John Edwards.”

Strains of Springsteen’s “The Rising” filled the Hall as Senator Edwards makes his way to the stage.   He is using Melissa’s walkway…things are going great…except he’s being crowded on both sides by adoring Union members!  He makes his way to the stage without any of us being able to talk to him.

He gave a great speech, perfectly tailored the the audience, who ate it up.  He didn’t take questions at the end, but as he was leaving, Melissa did a little elbowing of her own and was able to get into position to give the Senator a ONE band and tell him that ONE members will be thinking about poverty as we go to the polls.

Looking back, it seems irrelevant, but we don’t think it was.  We here at MSU ONE think that now Senator Edwards knows (as Governors Huckabee and Romney, and Senator Obama will hopefully find out in the next few days if they in turn come to Springfield) that even when he comes to a Union Hall in a small town, he will be talking to people who are concerned with ending global disease and extreme poverty.

I spent last summer in Tamil Nadu, India building houses for needy families as a part of the ICHEC-India Housing Project. ICHEC is a business university located in Brussels, Belgium. Student-led teams spend the month of July in rural villages constructing one home per team member for local families. The houses are no larger than a typical college dorm room, yet they house six to ten people. The experience was, needless to say, life changing, and it totally reaffirmed my involvement in the ONE Campaign. In Sankagiri, the village I was staying in, I met a 26 year old named Xavier who had a mental handicap. Xavier was always around to lend a helping hand, and even tried to offer the team gifts when we were leaving the village. Near the end of our stay in Sankagiri, the team learned that Xavier was actually homeless. He earned a bit of money from his work at a local church, but had no real source of income. He also took care of his older mother, who had no job. The priest at the local church asked if we could fund the construction of a home for Xavier, but we were already committed to building homes for specific families.

Upon return to the US, we learned that only $1200 was needed to put a solid roof over Xavier’s head. The members of the Clemson ONE Campaign decided to fund this expense with the money we had raised over the past three semesters by hosting fair trade festivals through the Ten Thousand Villages organization.

This is why I love the ONE Campaign! Normal people, normal students, band together as ONE to change lives thousands of miles away. I think our generation really senses the urgency of the poverty facing millions and millions of people around the world. Building one house has a small impact, but changing the way people think about poverty and the way our government addresses poverty can change millions of lives. KEEP UP THE GREAT WORK OCC-ers!!

We know that there is a Democratic debate tonight and the season premier of Lost is on, but if you can peel yourself away, please consider joining us on the ONE Campus Challenge conference call at 9 PM Eastern / 6 PM Pacific.

To get on the call dial 1-800-868-1837 and enter the conference code: 755351#

Hope to talk to you tonight!

Okay, so the last debates before Super Tuesday are being held in the next two days on CNN. January 30th is the Republican Debate and January 31st is the Democratic Debate. And, since we are the coolest (i.e. most technologically advanced) generation, we get to submit questions to the candidates through an online tool on Politico.com.

Well, I just looked through the 626 questions in the “foreign policy (not Iraq)” category on the Democratic side and, to my dismay, only found 4 questions that relate to global poverty!!

So I know this is a last minute blog, but they are still accepting questions for the democratic debate. I really encourage you all to get on there and either write a question about extreme poverty or vote for one! It literally takes a minute, and I think it’s a great way to show the candidates that we care about this issue and perhaps get the issue talked about on a nationally televised debate!

Oh, and if you need an extra push: you can snag some OCC points for each question under the “make your own action” category!

If you haven’t taken a look at the ONE.org blog recently, now is a good time. Two pretty cool blogs were posted today.

The first references a clip from Senator John McCain’s State of the Union response on MSNBC. While talking with Chris Matthews, John McCain actually interrupts himself to ask Matthews if he has heard of the ONE Campaign before!!!! Check it out here.

The second blog is a snippet from a David Brooks editorial in the New York Times. In the editorial, Brooks compares “the service generation of John and Robert Kennedy” to the “service generation of the One campaign.” I hope the other awesome advocacy organizations don’t get jealous! Then again, this is a campus challenge! Check out the blog here.

Nick Stevens, OCC Regional Outreach Ambassador

This last week we saw the number of people participating in the Campus Challenge jump in a way that we haven’t seen in a good long while.  To help keep this momentum going we’re going to keep handing out 10,000 points each Monday to the school that recruited the most people in the previous week.

So if your school is lagging, here is your chance to turn it all around.  Start spreading the word.

 I bet 50,000 points sounds pretty good right now. So we’re gonna let you have it. If you can win a weekly challenge that is. On that note, here is the next weekly challenge:

1/28 – 2/4: Create the Best Educational Project
Since awareness of the depth of extreme poverty and what we can do to help alleviate it is vitally important to making us all more effective advocates, we’re looking for a project that does just that. But the winning project will likely be something that doesn’t just serve to educate your campus, but can be used again in other venues (e.g. a great PowerPoint, video, or educational game).

You can submit your entry using our handy reporting form.

Last week the Campus Challenge got rolling again with contest to recruit the most new members in one week.  This morning when we took a look at the numbers we were blown away by the lengths that schools went to nab the prize.

Brandeis University came out on top with 350 sign ups in 7 days.  But hot on their heels was UNLV with an impressive 340 recruits.

Guess this is going to be one fierce competition from here ’til the end!