Dirty Picture of the Week

January 28th, 2008 at 11:58 am

Although the action is from last semester, Princeton just uploaded a few great pictures from their PEPFAR action, we decided that one of their “dirty laundry” pictures deserved the nod for picture of the week.

Some other great photos:

The Clemson Tiger in a ONE Vote ‘08 shirt:

Student at Missouri talking to Sen. Claire McCaskill and giving her a custom made ONE Mizzou shirt:

Airing Out the “Stinky” Parts of the PEPFAR Bill

January 25th, 2008 at 4:06 pm

Over the week following World AIDS Day, Princeton students tabled in their campus center asking students to sign socks. The campaign was part of a larger action to fix the President’s Emergency Relief Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPRFAR) bill which will soon be up for restructuring and reapproval. Rather than take the normal approach to writing letters to Congress, the students joined a campaign to “Air-Out-Your-Dirty-Laundry” on PEPFAR to sign personalized socks outlining which part of the bill you find “stinky.” The action was wildly successful and we quickly ran out of socks after 142 socks had been signed. The socks will now be brought to DC for Congressional visits to make sure all the students’ voices get heard (or their dirty socks get smelt).

Serious? Ya We Are…

January 25th, 2008 at 10:44 am

The name Bill Gates isn’t an uncommon addition to a conversation when talking about ending world poverty, but I know that I’m always pleasantly surprised when a new program is developed or new grants are made available with the Gates name attatched to it. The newest addition? Mr. Gates pledged $306 Billion in grants at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland to develop poor farms in third world countries, most of which are run by women. Talk about THAT for an allowance.

“If we are serious about ending extreme hunger and poverty around the world, we must be serious about transforming agriculture for small farmers, most of whom are women,” Gates said. He wasn’t the only one that had something to say either; UN Leader Ban-Ki Moon focused on issues ranging from malaria to climate change, and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown asked the World Bank to also focus efforts on climate change. Both old and new additions to Product (RED) were in attendance; Bono and Michael Dell of Dell Computers had more than enough to talk about.

It’s pretty cool to see some of our favorite leaders doing good around the world; I don’t know about you guys, but it definitly fills me up with a lot of pride and hope to be involved with something as effective and meaningful as the ONE Campaign. Huzzah!

Read the rest of the article here:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/01/25/davos.main/index.html

Write To Your Newspaper

January 24th, 2008 at 2:49 pm

Write a letter to the editor to your local paper and raise the profile of global poverty in the presidential election. We have a brand new tool that you can use to write and send a letter directly to your hometown paper. We even have some pre-written letters, talking points and writing tips to get you started. Check it out here:

http://www.onevote08.org/lte

If you submit an LTE this way you’ll pick up 500 points on top of any points you’ll receive later for having your letter published.

OCC TV Episode 4

January 23rd, 2008 at 3:03 pm

A quick recap of ONE staffers’ favorite things from the Power 100 Summit.

New Report on Child Morality

January 22nd, 2008 at 7:25 pm

Last fall UNICEF released a report showing global child morality had dipped below 10 million deaths for the first time in 2006. Another recent report from UNCIEF, State of the World’s Children 2008, noted that “62 countries were making no or insufficient progress towards a key 2015 child mortality target [Millennium Development Goal 4]” the BBC reported. An excerpt follows:

But the picture painted in the report is one of divergence, with the industriali[z]ed world and parts of the developing world making good progress. [. . .]

[In sub-Saharan Africa], the annual average rate of reduction in the child mortality rate between 1990 and 2006 was only 1% per year – meaning the rate will have to increase to 10.5% per year between 2007 and 2015 if the region is to meet the fourth MDG.

Despite the bleak diagnosis for some countries, the report stressed that these problems can be overcome with improved health delivery models/systems and political will. Generating the political will is the goal of the ONE Campus Challenge and you can gain 500 points for your school by sending a letter to Congress advocating action on child morality and reporting your action.

You Want Weekly Challenges? You Got It.

January 22nd, 2008 at 6:19 pm

At the Power 100 Summit we heard from several people that it would be helpful to know all of the weekly challenges in advance to help you plan out your semesters and take more effective action.  We got the message, so here are the challenges for this semester:

Now – 1/28: Recruit
Recruiting is still one of the best ways to make a difference, and bringing in new members is probably the best way to start off the new semester. The school that signs up the most new members between now and Monday will get 10,000 points on top of the points earned for the new recruits.

1/28 – 2/4: Best Educational Project
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. 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).

2/4 – 2/11: Best Off-Campus Project
Getting local media coverage and putting pressure on a local member of Congress is much easier when you team up with your local community. Anything from a lobbying visit with other local activists to getting your town declared a ONE city can count. The most creative and effective project will win.

 

2/11 – 2/18: Put Your Skills to Work
Whether you do a dozen lobby visits or 200 phone calls, this is your last chance to score big before we start handing out prizes to the top 10 schools. Whichever school does the best advocacy work during this week wins.

And if you ever feel like passing along a suggestion, like the one to tell you all the challenges in advance, please do send it along.

Mineral Springs Declared Second City of ONE in North Carolina

January 22nd, 2008 at 12:00 am

On January 10th, Mayor Rick Becker of Mineral Springs, North Carolina signed a proclamation declaring the town a City of ONE, and thus making it the second such North Carolina city in two months to do so. On November 19, 2007, Durham signed a similar proclamation to become the first City of ONE in the state after Duke graduate student Shawn Selleck petitioned the City Council for the proclamation. Selleck led the Mineral Springs effort as well. ‘After petitioning the city of my studies to be the first City of ONE in North Carolina, I only thought it appropriate that the second ONE city should be my hometown,’ Selleck said after receiving news of the signed proclamation. When he was in elementary school, Selleck’s family moved to Mineral Springs, where he resided until leaving for his undergraduate studies at N.C. State. He visited the Mineral Springs Town Council meeting on Dec. 13 to address the council and Mayor Rick Becker, who has lived in the same neighborhood as Selleck’s parents since the family moved to Mineral Springs. Before signing the proclamation, Becker said, “Poverty and disease do not carry the labels of ‘Republican’ or ‘Democrat’, and it is a responsible thing for a local government to acknowledge the benefits of working as a community toward ONE goal. Education, cooperation, innovation and communication are non-partisan keys to improving the lives of our fellow human beings worldwide.”

Chronicle of a ONE Member Abroad: One Week in Nicaragua, 2008

January 21st, 2008 at 2:43 pm

Nothing like starting the New Year with a good load of travel. In a perfectly coordinated travel plan, I left the Power 100 Summit in Washington DC to spend one week in Managua, Nicaragua, Latin America’s second poorest country. I went from sleeping under 600 thread-count luxury bedsheets at a Hilton Hotel to sleeping on a wood-board bed frame over a cement floor.

Could there be a better follow up to the Summit?

Now, I’ve never been to a developing country before, so I thought I would take it upon myself to make the effort and take a trip. A few months beforehand, I received an email advertising a one-week winter break trip to Managua thought CEPAD Nicaragua, a Christian, non-profit, non-partisan organization with a focus on social issues. The trip will encircle 7 days of touring Nicaragua with an emphasis on women’s issues in the country. Sign me up.

A few facts on Nicaragua: The Republic of Nicaragua is a small country bordered by Honduras and Costa Rica in beautiful Central America. As mentioned before, it is the second poorest country in Latin America (behind Haiti), with a GDP of $3,100 per capita and a growth rate of 3.7% (2006 est.). The economy has not faired well due to a civil war in the 1970s and two Category 5 hurricanes, Mitch (1998) and Felix (2007). The main currency used is the Nicaraguan Cordoba, and about 18.96 Cordobas make 1 US dollar. MDG-wise, Nicaragua signed a 5-year contract with the Millennium Challenge Corporation in July, 2005 for $175 million dollars

Luckily, the trip squeezed in just perfectly after the Summit, so there was no conflict of schedule.

I arrived at Augusto C. Sandino International Airport on Sunday morning, and the group was picked up and driven from to CEPAD headquarters. Driving through the urban streets of Managua was an early adventure on its own. My first impressions were, quite frankly, somewhat familiar. It reminded when I went to Mexico D.F. when I was little, and the view driving from the airport to my Grandma’s village: clumped commercial streets splashed with vibrant, uncoordinated colors, grass growing wildly through every cement crack in the streets, freshly discarded paper waste on the sidewalks, product advertisement on everything from billboards to bus-sides to home walls…actually, it kind of sounds like a description of most mega-urban cities.

Nothing beyond a simple tour of the main tourist sites is on schedule for today, which is great because jetlag can really get you. The schedule for the rest of the week seems very promising. We will be visiting a variety of organizations focused on women’s issues in Nicaragua, from health clinics to advertisement centers.

I also decided it would be interesting to have on blog post per day of travel. A mini-series, if you will, to a relevant topic from a new point of view. Stay posted! 

Read the entire blogpost at the ONE@USC blog! http://oneatusc.blogspot.com

Fred Thompson on AIDS, PEPFAR

January 19th, 2008 at 11:00 pm

At a recent campaign stop in South Carolina, former Sen. Fred Thompson (TN-R)
“was asked if he, ‘as a Christian, as a conservative,’ supported President Bush’s global AIDS initiative.” Sen. Thompson has yet to go On the Record officially at http://www.onevote08.org/ontherecord/ but he told ONE’s Matthew Bartlett that he will “do [his] best”to continue U.S. efforts to aid the poor overseas last year.

His response in South Carolina struck a different tone: “I’m not going to go around the state and the country with regards to a serious problem and say that I’m going to prioritize that.” ONE members have worked hard for months to tell candidates we want them to prioritize these issues. It would be great if ONE members and especially Thompson supporters stepped up their efforts to convince Sen. Thompson these issues are a priority to us.

In response to Thompson, Micheal Gerson wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post explaining why he believes, like ONE does, that “[s]upport for the fight against AIDS is not a matter of being a ‘Christian’ or a ‘conservative’ — or a liberal or a Buddhist. It is an expression of compassion and empathy, which also reflects a serious conception of America’s role in the world.” It is available here.