Who Won the Campus Challenge

April 9th, 2008 at 3:49 pm

All of the schools put together some amazing final projects, but after counting all the legitimate votes, and calculating the judges’ scores, Western Kentucky emerged as our winner.The final vote total was:

Each of the judges ranked the projects from 1-10 (1 being the best), so a smaller sum total correlates to a better ranking. Their cumulative scores were:

Additionally, here is what the judges had to say about the projects (in no particular order):

Hofstra did a good job showing the struggles 1 billion people face on a daily basis around the world. Oftentimes it is easier for people to be impacted by a visual rather than a statistic – Great job showing everything from living conditions to limited food resources.

Western Kentucky showed hustle and energy and engaged the entire community which was impressive. Western Kentucky was savvy and the fact that they were able to get, for example, 160 people to send letters in support of the Education For All Act, showed a lot of tangible advocacy.

Kansas State did a great job reaching out to local media to spread more awareness.

The vigil was very powerful visual.

Campbellsville did a great job participating in a variety events that would reach different audiences. It is amazing how many activities you were able to host and be a part of. I hope the ONE group will continue to be involved in the campus and Campbellsville communities.

The fact that the UNLV students understood it was important both to praise a Senator supporting them and to push a Senator who was not was good, smart lobbying. Also, we can’t beat poverty on our own, and you did the best job of pulling other groups into the fight against poverty and got them to use their specific skills and interests to further the cause.

Brandeis – I loved the theme. The catchy theme was a great way to get people’s attention.

GWU did a great job demonstrating how cheap medications are for treatable diseases, it is important for people to understand something tangible like the cost of a pill. The petition delivery was the type of stunt that gets attention and sticks in people’s memories. Grade A advocacy right there.

Princeton did an amazing job inundating the campus with ONE materials the night before your campus event. I am glad you were able to make students comfortable enough to call their congressional members.

Wilmington – Engaging the local community is crucial. Hopefully you can start to build a sustainable group that bridges the campus and the community.

SHU did a great job with the playground and it was inspiring how they all were able to connect the local community to the greater global problem.

Announcement Coming Tomorrow

April 8th, 2008 at 3:39 pm

Taking care of the voting issues slowed us down a little bit, so you’re going to have to wait ‘til tomorrow for the official announcement of the winner.

Sorry about the delay.

Do What Daughtry Says

April 8th, 2008 at 12:14 pm

Take Action – AIDS Funding Senatometer

April 8th, 2008 at 12:11 pm

Our petition to ask your senators to co-sponsor the reauthorization of PEPFAR is live. Urge your senator to sign on today.

PEPFAR, America’s response to the global emergency of AIDS, malaria and TB, has already passed in the House with bipartisan support, 308 to 116, last month.

Now we’re trying to reach 50 co-sponsors for this legislation in the Senate. That level of support will help guarantee passage of this bill to increase funding – for proven solutions to these deadly but treatable diseases – from the $15 billion spent during the last five years to $50 billion for the next five.

We’ve set an aggressive goal of 50 Senate co-sponsors and we’ll be updating the blog and our “senatometer” regularly with the new signers.

The current co-sponsors are below. If you don’t see your senators’ name, send them a petition today.

Current Co-sponsors

Joe Biden (D-DE)
Richard Lugar (R-IN)

Cross-posted on the ONE Blog 

4 /8/08 11:30a.m.

Calculating Results

April 7th, 2008 at 9:48 am

We’re getting the judges votes in and going though all the votes one last time to clear out any fraudulent votes, especially ones that occurred after our last scrub on Friday afternoon.

Stay tuned, for the final result this week.

The Food Crisis

April 7th, 2008 at 12:48 am

It’s ironic that while obesity is easily Americas biggest threat (the leading killer of Americans is heart disease), about 1/6th of the world is still starving.

And things are getting worse.

Paul Krugman, an MIT-trained economist and New York Times op-ed columnist, just wrote a column about the reasons for the world-wide food crisis, who is to blame, and what isn’t being done.

He notes that the truth is, to be blunt:

You might put it this way: people are starving in Africa so that American politicians can court votes in farm states.

The ONE Campaign worked hard last year mobilizing activists to write dozens of letters to the editor, jam the phone lines in Washington and bury Congress in letters calling for Farm Bill reform. But unfortunately, we fell a few votes short in the Senate.

On trade and migration ONE is fighting a losing battle and its time to kick it up a notch, because in Krugman’s opinion:

Oh, and in case you’re wondering: all the remaining presidential contenders are terrible on this issue.

(ONE does not take positions for or against politicans or judge their policies. We are bi-partisan.)

The Center for Global Development has a lot of good work to read on trade and migration, including on its website Global Development Matters, which frequently references and applauds the work of ONE.

– Steve

It’s all about the farms

April 6th, 2008 at 10:59 pm

Most people living in extreme poverty are farmers. It’s a kind of bland fact that most people know but don’t think much of. It conjers up the images of barren rural areas suffering from drought with starving populations drinking dirty water and withering away from AIDS.

But for some scientists is a essential insight into the nature of extreme poverty. They ask “if poverty is mostly a situation where farmers aren’t earning enough money, why not focus on building technology to help them earn more money?”

Of course humans have been working on technology for farming for 10,000 years–we now have sophisticated methods of irrigation, fertilization, genetic engineering, crop rotation and more. More than a few economists put a heavy emphasis on the green revolution, a surge in crop yields across Asia, as major factor in laying the foundation for India and China’s success at rapidly eliminating extreme poverty.

The BBC did a great story on the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture and its eccentric leader that is well worth reading. They focus on doing applied science research within Africa for Africa’s needs.

Another organization working on helping farmers with improved technology is the International Development Enterprises, founded and led by Paul Polak. His new book, Out of Poverty, gives his take on the best ways to promote development, focusing largely on his work to sell income-generating technologies to poor farmers.

The largest and best publicized, to my knowledge, group working on improving farmer productivity–and focusing specifically on Africa–is the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa chaired by former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan.

All these organizations are doing great work, but have slightly different approaches that suit different tastes.

Cheaters Never Win

April 4th, 2008 at 6:29 pm

A team of us have been working all day, and we’re pretty confident we’ve cleaned up all the fraudulent voting. Here is what we did:

• Multiple votes from the same address do not count (this didn’t actually happen, but some of you were concerned).
• Pattern based emails (XXX1@ownmail.net, XXX2@ownmail.net, etc.) do not count.
• There were a couple of instances where schools were using more sophisticated methods of cheating. We didn’t count any votes from these instances.
• Through the entire process we made sure that the votes of anyone who was a ONE member before voting started was counted in the final tally.

With these fixes in place you should be able to see the new vote totals shortly. Voting will count for 60% of the final score.

Thanks to everyone for sticking with us today and coming together as a community dedicated to the fight against poverty.

Clue #7

April 4th, 2008 at 3:53 pm

One band recently appeared on mtvU’s Backstage Pass. Which means it’s one of the bands on this page.

Praise

April 4th, 2008 at 2:31 pm

You know what is ridiculous? The complete lack of confidence in the amazing projects ALL of the top 10 schools did. I know the vast majority of these schools don’t even *want* the concert – that all came secondary to actually making a difference. It’s not about getting a free musical performance – it’s about making a difference in the world. Everyone needs to take a step back from voting, stop pointing fingers, and realize that *this* is how we got into the situation our world is in to begin with.

Those involved with ONE stand for eliminating extreme poverty and disease worldwide. Why don’t we all look and see what POSITIVE things we can say about the schools in the top ten? Try not to compliment your own school – we already know that YOU love their project.

For one, I LOVED George Washington’s use of the “Fresh African Water” in their final video submission. It was awesome – definitly got the message across. Western Kentucky’s breakdown of all the Millennium Development Goals was incredible as well – super effective. Hofstra is helping to educate children in Kenya – I’d say that’s a worthy cause. Campellsville, Kansas State, and Brandeis all had incredible awareness events as well. Wilmington College’s aspects of planning for their project in itself is daunting.

Post something here so long as you’ve got a positive thing to say. Anyone think of a project that no one did? Anything super creative? Let’s keep it going with some positive reinforcement here…