Western Kentucky University is no stranger to throwing successful events to engage their student body and increase awareness about extreme poverty and global disease.
The reigning ONE Campus Challenge champs went big again for the international days of poverty-awareness, Stand Up and Take Action on October 17-19. The ONE Hilltoppers teamed up with their campus’s chapter of Americans for Informed Democracy to engage students, faculty, and university staff to take the $2/Day Challenge and live on less than $2/day on October 17 to emulate life in a severely impoverished part of the world.
WKU successfully promoted the $2/Day Challenge both on their campus and in their local community. WKU-ONE and AID members even succeeded in convincing the WKU president and the mayor of Bowling Green to participate in the Challenge.
In addition, WKU held multiple tabling events throughout their campus on multiple days throughout the week, promoted Stand Up through their campus dining services, hosted a speaker who had lived in conditions of extreme poverty in Kenya, created a website for participants, and launched an “On the Record” campaign.
Whew. WKU is the rightful recipient of 20,000 points and a big Huzzah! From the OCC Team.
Thanks to ALL schools that participated in the Stand Up and Take Action days! As far as this week’s challenge, we’re testing your ability to push your way to the front of a crowd. Stay tuned to the OCC blog for details.
Check out how your campus can earn 2,500 points for hosting a Knit One, Save One event. Involve students in this exciting campaign by making caps for newborns around the world, raising awareness and writing letters to the President-elect asking for greater funding and support for child health programs!
-Margaret McDonnell, ONE’s NGO Partnerships Team
Knit One, Save One is an exciting campaign led by Save the Children and Warm Up America Foundation asking knitters, crocheters and others to help save newborn lives by making baby caps. Baby caps are a simple and effective tool used to help prevent the deaths of 4 million newborn babies that die every year during their first month of life. Participants can also take action on behalf of newborns by writing to the President-elect and by raising awareness and support for cost-effective solutions, like providing newborn care kits to new mothers in developing countries.
Lisa Edelstein, star of Fox Television’s “House” series, is one of many celebrities that is championing this effort by making a baby cap and bringing attention to this important issue. “It’s a simple and easy way to help, and sends a message of love and support to moms and babies around the world,” said Edelstein who knit the featured pumpkin cap.
To get started planning your Knit One, Save One event on campus:
Visit the Knit One, Save One website to learn more about this campaign, download our Action Kits and to check out all of the celebrities that have joined us in knitting and crocheting for newborns.
Contact me at Tpuskar@savechildren.org for support and resources for your event, including free Action Kits, videos, yarn, crochet hooks, knitting needles and assistance in getting speakers and media coverage to your Knit One, Save One event.
Your cap can help save a life, your voice can help save millions more!
-Tricia Puskar, Associate Director of Outreach-Survive to 5, Save the Children
Webster University held an event for the Stand Up and Take Action days on October 17-19. ONE-Webster members gathered in high-traffic areas of campus to raise awareness about the progress that has been made globally towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals.
Signs contained information about debt relief, universal education, and preventable disease. It is noteworthy that Webster held an event regardless of Stand Up and Take Action coinciding with their Fall Break. Good show, Webster – 1,000 points for ya.
Several students and professors at Baylor University associated with an organization called Engineers with a Mission are working through innovative projects to combat extreme poverty. These projects range from local to international levels as well as from service to research.
Some examples:
-Baylor students Elisa Guzman, Stanton Greer, and Anna Morton are working with their mentor, Dr. Walter Bradley, on ways to add value to the simple coconut. In many impoverished countries near the equator, coconuts are an underutilized natural resource that can be used for building materials, biofuels, and of course, food products.
-Mechanical Engineering and MBA student Ryan McGhee is working with other Baylor professors to develop franchise-able village-level electric companies that generate electricity with renewable resources in order to deliver it to homes, schools, medical clinics, and churches in rural Honduras.
-Students from Engineers with a Mission are partnering with World Hunger Relief Inc. to build a wind turbine to help train their interns studying sustainable agriculture.
Finally, others from this group volunteer weekly at Waco’s Compassion International, a facility to help homeless and near-homeless families. Students maintain a network of computers used for job training and education, as well as play with kids while their parents are in training.
As the president of the ONE Campaign at Baylor, it is refreshing to see such dedicated professors and students working on real life applications towards fighting extreme poverty.
Sic ‘Em Engineers with a Mission!
-Justin Kralemann, President of the ONE Campaign-Baylor
The University of Florida Women’s Rugby team is just one additional club to join in the fight against poverty and AIDS, but they will tackle these issues as aggressively as possible! When the team starts this year defending their USA South Championship Title, they’ll also be lending a hand toward participating in UF’s ONE Chapter events.
Several of the team’s members and officers have already become part of the campaign, and they are continuously active in their community with various events around the city, such as the Oct. 16 declaration of Gainesville as a ONE City! These girls show that even though the issues may be lofty, tackling them head-on is the best way to address them!
Check out the post below from Carly Pildis, Jubilee USA Network Outreach Fellow, about their “Picture New Leadership Campaign.” Submitting such a photo will earn your campus 350 points! It will automatically be entered into the best photo of the week contest for a possible 1,000 points. Consider taking the photo at your Stand Up and Take Action event on campus October 17-19th!
-Margaret McDonnell, ONE NGO Partner Relations Team
In last week’s presidential debate, Tom Brokaw asked the candidates who they had in mind for Secretary of Treasury. Many people don’t realize how much the Secretary of Treasury influences global poverty issues like debt relief. The Jubilee USA Network, an NGO partner of ONE, has recently launched the Picture New Leadership Campaign. The intent is to reshape our nation’s leadership in the world and make a call for U.S. leadership that prioritizes global poverty and justice. The Picture New Leadership Campaign calls on Senator Obama and Senator McCain to make the fight against global poverty a priority of their administration if they are elected. Specifically, the campaign calls for the candidates to promise to appoint a Secretary of Treasury who will be a world leader against global poverty. Since this was mentioned in the debate, scrutiny on possible appointees will be at an all time high. Let’s keep the momentum going!
Getting involved is really simple: 1) Gather people from your community, friends, family, campus or worship community; 2) Take a picture of them holding a sign reading “Picture an End to Global Poverty: Cancel Debts! More and Better Aid!” and 3) Submit the photo here.
The goal is to have thousands of debt and poverty advocates from around the country send a clear message to the presidential candidates: “Picture an End to Global Poverty: Cancel Debts! More & Better Aid!” Help give our future leaders a clear picture of what real leadership on debt and extreme poverty looks like.
-Carly Pildis, Jubilee USA Network Outreach Fellow
Yesterday we blogged about this year’s Stand Up Take Action events that will begin on Friday. Many of you will be hosting Stand Up events, big and small, in your local communities—and you won’t be alone! Check out some of these great events occurring around the world:
In Spain, thousands of people are expected to gather to march against poverty in Madrid on October 17 under the “Rebélate contra la Pobreza” initiative. Simultaneous anti-poverty mobilizations will occur on October 17 and 18 in more than 20 cities, including Palma de Mallorca, Sevilla, Zaragoza, Donosti, Bilbao, A Coruña, Badajoz, Cuenca and Valencia.
In Santiago, Chile there will be a walk between Arms Square and Constitution Square on October 17 featuring a moving wall on which people can take action by writing messages. At the event, citizens will ask municipal candidates to sign a commitment against poverty.
In Italy, 80,000 people are expected to take part in 10 simultaneous Stand Up events in 9 cities including Venice, Bologna, Florence, Milan and Rome on October 18. Nine huge chairs without seats will be installed simultaneously in 9 squares to signify that people will not remain seated until their government delivers more and better aid. On October 19, 300,000 supporters are expected to Stand at the Italian Premier League football match.
In Delhi, India, members of the National Conference of Dalit Organizations and Amnesty International, India will meet with Parliamentarians on October 17 to demand resources for the most vulnerable and socially excluded groups. Also in Delhi, celebrities and more than 10,000 people are expected to gather for a mass mobilization on Parliament Street.
In Lagos, Nigeria, 100,000 people are expected to gather on October 17-19 for a concert by Fema Kuti to commemorate the life of renowned Nigerian Musician Fela Kuti and demand that the government pay closer attention to the country’s poor people by investing more petro dollars in education, healthcare and other pro-poor development programs.
As you “STAND UP” against poverty this week, are you still looking for a great way to “TAKE ACTION”? A great way to engage your campus and bring home the challenges of living in extreme poverty is to take the $2 A Day Challenge. Sponsored by ONE’s partner organization Americans for Informed Democracy the $2 a Day Challenge asks that you:
Day 1, October 16th— Spend as you normally spend, but keep track of your spending. Track the costs of anything you spend cash, credit or debit on, this includes meal plans as well as the resources you use during that day, for example, gas.
Day 2, October 17th — Commit to spending only $2 and document your experience on film and upload your video to YouTube. Tag it “AID $2 Challenge” plus your school, then email the link to Sarah@aidemocracy.org. If you are holding a STAND UP event on that day you can discuss the challenge and ask people to speak about their experience.
Day 3, October 18th — Calculate the monetary difference between what you normally spend per day, as documented on October 16th, and the $2 you spent on October 17th. Click here and donate the difference in your spending to the development project of your choice!
Click here to officially register to take the challenge and encourage everyone you know to live in the shoes of 2.5 billion people around the world who live on less the $2 each day.
Last year I attended the Power 100 Summit in January, where we were told a bit about BeadforLife and the story behind the organization. Each of us were given a bracelet in our gift bag, and we were told that the beads on it were made out of recycled paper by women in Uganda who had been living on less than $1 a day before becoming employed with BeadforLife. I was very intrigued by this organization, and desired to put an event together for it all last year, but the timing just never worked out. This year I was determined to see it through!
We first contacted BeadforLife and ordered our beads (there are three different size packages, I opted for the medium sized package); the organization pays for all shipping and handling costs to encourage volunteers to sell, they even sent me a pre-paid shipping label to ship the leftover beads back! We then held a meeting to discuss our potential outreach areas and got to work on advertising. We made flyers and hung them up around the school and I contacted our school paper, the Indiana Daily Student (IDS), to let them know about our event. We then had to organize a schedule of who could work when in order to ensure that the table was manned at all times, which did actually take a bit of work because of so many last-minute changes that came up! Our sale went from Tuesday, October 7th through Friday, October 10 from 12:30 to 6pm every day. The next step was to figure out supplies, dividing up who would bring what to the sale. We had to improvise and use baskets and colorful drinking cups to string the beads around, but the cups were actually a huge hit, and we received many compliments on how well they went with the beads! Just goes to show you that a little improvisation goes a long way
The IDS was very intrigued and sent a reporter over to the booth the first day of the sale to learn more. We told her not only about BeadforLife, but also about what ONE stands for and why this event was so important. When we opened the paper the next day, there was a half-page article about our event on page 2! We were all stoked, and our sales from that second day more than doubled as a result of the article. I sent the writer an email the next day, thanking her for taking the time to investigate our sale and give us publicity; the media is such a powerful tool, and it’s important to maintain a good relationship with its team members!
Overall, we raised over $1600 to benefit these Ugandan women, which is more than we had ever expected! This money goes back to them and provides them a way to obtain food and clothing, purchase school supplies, and pay for education costs, medications, and ultimately give them hope for a better future. Most of the women employed are either HIV positive or are refugees of civil war, living in poverty with their families. It’s such a blessing that BeadforLife was started and has provided them with an income to give them all a better quality of life!
To find out more on BeadforLife and to learn how to host your own sale, visit www.beadforlife.org and let them know your interest!
There really was no shortage of clever captions for this photo of two of Clark University’s ONE members – Clark University is ONE; two heads are better than ONE; two people, ONE shirt, 1,000 points…
Really though, sometimes it’s really just best to let things speak for themselves.
The OCC Blog is a daily log of the ONE Campus Challenge, a friendly competition to determine which university's student body has the most effective global poverty-fighting campaign. The site is operated by ONE staff, Campus Outreach Ambassadors (COAs), and Campus Leaders.
The content of each post represents the views of that post's author and does not necessarily reflect the views of ONE. ONE does not support or oppose any candidate for elected office, and any post expressing support or opposition for a candidate is not endorsed by ONE.
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