Whether you are one of the Top 10 schools or hoping to grab the wild card spot in the final competition, you’ll be excited to know that you can now start reporting your efforts for consideration.

You can fill out the reporting form here.

Make sure to include as thorough a description as possible, and make sure to get it reported by the end of the day tomorrow!

State of the Planet 08, a conference hosted by The Economist and the Earth Institute at Columbia University, is happening right now! Topics discussed include eradicating poverty, addressing conflict, and sustainability and climate change. You can watch it online at www.stateoftheplanet.org.

Speakers include former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Jeffrey Sachs and many others. I’m listening to a panel right now on Eradicating Poverty as the Poor Population Expands.

Check it out!

Nick Stevens, OCC Regional Outreach Ambassador

ONE is a movement that is uniting people from across the United States–progressives and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats, even both Yankees fans and Red Sox fans*, and, of course, people from every religion.

But sometimes people think this non-partisanship is a subtle way of asking people to leave their faith or politics at home. It’s not.

To share an anecdote: At the Power 100 Summit, Paul Begala came to speak to us about communication. As you may know he became famous by advising Bill Clinton in his successful run for president in 1992. He’s a partisan Democrat and devout Catholic, and one student asked him a question that went something like this, “I’m a person of faith and sometimes I feel we can’t talk about that much with politics. What about your faith motivates you in politics?”

He went on to explain he was proud to be a Democrat because as the Bible says, we should be our brother’s keeper–treat our neighbors as we treat ourselves. That is why he feels strongly about global poverty and came to speak for the ONE conference.

Whether your faith makes you believe strongly in the responsibility to care for your global neighbors or you feel motivated by your belief in the sanctity of life, or maybe something else entirely, don’t be afraid let your faith motivate your work for ONE.

This week is Holy Week and this Sunday is Easter Sunday. If you want resources to help your parish or church get involved in ONE this holiday there are many resources (and people to contact) at the ONE Faith website.

Several of ONE’s partners and member organizations have resources as well including Jubilee U.S.A. and Bread for the World.

To end with a personal note, a quote from my patron saint:

“The Most Blessed Sacrament is Christ made visible. The poor sick person is Christ again made visible.” -Saint Gerard Majella

– Steve

* - And even some of the dozen of so Tampa Bay Rays fans that exist. I would know, I’m one of them!

On Monday the luck of the Irish was with the ONE Campaign. New Jersey members of ONE and our partner organization CARE met with Senator Robert Menendez to discuss his support for several anti-poverty bills going through Congress. For my part in the meeting I thanked the Senator for co-sponsoring and voting for the Biden/Lugar amendment to the FY09 International Affairs Budget which, as many of you might know, restored $4.1 billion dollars to the bill that will help fight malnutrition, poor sanitation, and illiteracy.

Yet we assured the Senator that as his constituents we were not satisfied with the fact that many essential commitments such as funding for maternal and child health programs attracted fewer resources than were justified. To our delight Senator Menendez not only matched our enthusiasm about these issues, but raised us to engage and education more citizens in the vast inequality that exists in our world. Only then, he stated, will all members of the New Jersey delegation to Congress be commanded by voters to take on the challenges of extreme poverty and disease.

Well Senator, we are much closer to that reality than you might think as New Jersey has 10 college campuses engaged in the Campus Challenge, several community based ONE groups, and an ever growing network of voters ready to call and write you to take action against AIDS, hunger, education, and all ONE issues.

Call or write your senator today to thank them for their support of the International Affairs Budget or stress why further funding is needed (report it here).

Earlier this year ice cream guru Ben & Jerry’s released their latest flavors, and included is an ode to the ONE Campaign: ONE Cheesecake Brownie.

Ben & Jerry’s and ONE have teamed up to offer this Ice Cream as a way to raise awareness. Each container includes information about the ONE Campaign in addition to some incredibly delicious ice cream.

Strolling through the mall last Friday during spring break I came across a Ben & Jerry’s stand and saw the ONE Cheesecake Brownie. Being a die-hard brownie fan and a new convert to cheesecake, not to mention my affinity for the ONE Campaign, I had to have a taste.

Since I was in St. Louis (I know, not quite the spring break hot spot) I had to choose the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair creation: the waffle cone. As a long time fan of Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough and Chocolate Fudge Brownie I must say that the ONE Cheesecake Brownie definitely lives up to the Ben & Jerry’s name. While I couldn’t really taste the “ONE” in the ice cream I still achieved a euphoric state thanks to the delicious cheesecake and brownie.

To learn more about the collaboration check out www.ONE.org/benjerry. I suggest picking up a container next time you drop into the grocery store, but if you can wait Ben & Jerry’s will host a free cone day on April 29th at all participating Ben & Jerry’s shops.

Nick Stevens, ONE Regional Outreach Ambassador

When talking to people about ONE I can’t count how many times someone has said, “Oh yeah, I saw [insert celebrity name here] on TV talking about that.”

There have been several times that statement has been followed by, “but what do they really know about poverty?” It is a fair question and one that I’ve thought about a lot given that much of my inspiration for this cause has come from Bono.

A lot of my questions were answered in a recent article entitled The Celebrity Solution published in the New York Times. Celebrities have an uncanny ability to get appointments with legislators and world leaders. They have the ability to make issues clear not only for their fans, but also for politicians. NYT’s James Traub writes:

Donald Steinberg, of the International Crisis Group, talks about ‘a simplicity on the other side of complexity’ that some stars he has worked with, like Angelina Jolie, are able to summon — a ringing clarity that is not simple-minded. Bono likes to say that ’statistics don’t rhyme,’ but he has a gift for making them rhyme.

The full article is a little lengthy, but worth the read if you want to be able to answer people when they ask what Bono, Brad Pitt or George Clooney know or can do about poverty. Read the article here.

Nick Stevens, ONE ROA

This new story about corruption in Nigeria is not good news and not my typical basis for a post. But I think its important to address these issues too, even if its more difficult:

In the 90s corruption was the big buzzword as far as development assistance was concerned. The logic went that because money went to Africa was inevitably wasted by corrupt dictators as “money down the rat hole,” we had to choose between “grandma or Ghana” and that meant as little money for aid as possible.

The situation got so bad that the Jubilee Campaign–which was in many ways the precursor to the ONE Campaign–had an uphill battle trying to even talk about the issue as late at mid-2000.

The irony was that the Jubilee Campaign was writing off the debt incurred by corrupt governments, giving more legitimacy (and capacity) to the current, more effective governments, as verified by several benchmarks. In effect it was anti-corruption! Some argued, then and now, that forgiving debt provided an incentive for corruption by writing off the cost and removing the disincentive not to waste money. This makes some economic sense, but the big holes in the theory are that the cost of corruption is not being payed by the beneficiary (the corrupt government benefits, the people pay), so it has no deterrent effect to start with and furthermore, by burdening fledgling new governments the expectation is more corruption and less development by most economic models.

With that in mind the BBC reported an important story today about corruption in Nigeria. It turns out that the former president, who was a champion of efforts to tackle TB, was handing out no-bid contracts to friends who it appears never planned to fulfill the contracts. It’s bad news, and corruption is a problem.

But its good news that this is making the news. It’s good the Nigerian legislature is investigating these activities and cracking down on abuse. It’s good that Nigera had plans to build capacity to start with even if there were hiccups along the way. It’s not shocking that there will be some problems, some corruption; the U.S. had plenty in its early days and even in recent years here there has been a firestorm of controversy over no-bid contracts.

It’s not good news, but its news that show things are working as expected. Not everything in development is a success story but we can’t lose faith when a country wastes from aid or when an amendment we supported fails.

We’re just warming up . . .

P.S. The Biden-Lugar amendment, which restored $4.1 billion in funding to the Senate’s version of the international affairs budget, passed by a vote of 73 to 23. Check how your Senator voted and call and complain if they voted no!

The vote for the Biden-Lugar amendment, which would save $2.6 billion and add another $1.5 billion in funding to the International Affairs budget, is today!

Now is the time to call your senators if you haven’t already. For a calling script, phone number and a list of the senators who have signed on click here.

This is our last chance to save billions of dollars in funding to fight poverty!

Nick Stevens, ONE Regional Outreach Ambassador

Currently the Top 10 schools (in terms of points) are working hard on their final activist projects that will determine the winner of the Challenge. I hate to say it but slowly the OCC is wrapping up.*

Fortunately, ONE’s work never ends. I hate to plug this again but if you haven’t signed the petition to save $2.6 billion to fight poverty, do it and then spread the word! To put things in perspective, if you wanted to raise that much money with bake sale fundraisers by the ol’ girl scouts method you’d better pre-heat every oven on campus and reserve about 10 large buildings for the 200,000,000 cookies you’d be baking.

Then make a phone call (see previous post by Nick). If you can show you parents you changed U.S. foreign policy maybe they’ll pay to upgrade your plan.

In other news: you may have heard the name Jeffrey Sachs throw around a lot when people talk about development economics and you might be interested in his ideas. These lectures he delivered last year summarize his latest research and are the basis for his new book, Common Wealth coming out next week.

Finally, I’m an ROA for New England (the southern half) so I don’t want to sound too confident lest we get our hopes up and get crushed–like, say, in the Super Bowl–but go get ‘em Brandeis and Sacred Heart!

* - Don’t worry, as far as I know, the OCC is like the Hess truck: it’ll be back and better than ever next year.

There’s a good chance that ONE will be asking us OCCers to start making calls to Congress on the FY09 budget and PEPFAR soon. It might be a good idea to begin planning some ways to get your fellow students involved.

Making phone calls is a very quick and effective way to get congress to listen. It takes less than 30 seconds to call a congress person’s office and the process is very simple.

ONE Webster did a “Call Congress Pizza Party” a couple of weeks ago for the Global Child Survival Act. For every phone call a student made to Congress we gave them a slice of pizza. The party was a huge success. Unfortunately, we ran out of pizza, but some people made calls without even taking a slice.

Some people tripped over their words, and almost all were a little nervous if it was their first time making a call to congress. It’s alright to stumble over your words, just make sure the staffer you talk to knows that you are a constituent, and what bill or issue you are calling about.

These phone calls do make a difference. Last year as the FY08 budget was being approved, Congress decided to take away more than one billion dollars that would go to fight poverty. ONE members made more than 200,000 phone calls and emails to Congress and they listened! Congress not only put back the one billion, but added an additional 400 million to fight pvoerty!

The bottom line is: phone calls make a big difference, but are not a big deal to make! If you convince someone that their voice really does matter, they will make the call! It helps to throw in a little incentive, but the important part is telling them that 30 seconds of their time can save millions of lives.

Nick Stevens, ONE Regional Outreach Ambassador and President of ONE Webster