Call Congress!

November 19th, 2008 at 10:00 am

Weekly Challenge #9: Call Congress!

Details: 10,000 points to the school with the most advocacy calls to members of Congress about the FY10 International Affairs Budget.

Deadline: Midnight PST on Sunday, November 23rd, 2008

Obama has made a lot of great promises about all he’s going to do to fight global poverty and preventable diseases, such as malaria and HIV/AIDS. But in order to meet those commitments he has to get on the right track right now, with his first budget. If his FY10 budget priorities fall short, it’ll even harder to meet our poverty-fighting goals in 2011 and beyond.

We can’t let that happen, and that’s why we’re asking you to call Members of Congress so they can make sure Obama knows that America wants his first budget to fulfill his promises to the world’s poorest people. Click here for all the information you’ll need to call your Senators and Representative.

You probably won’t get to talk directly to your Members of Congress, but their staff are sure to take down your message and deliver it. Please be courteous to anyone you talk to. Remember you’re representing ONE!

Now, you may have noticed some pretty wild jumps on our leaderboard lately. A couple of schools have tried to exploit our automatic system to accumulate massive points. But all it gets them is a temporary jump in the standings and a spot on our naughty list, because we have lots of ways of catching cheaters. We will be confirming your calls to Congress so please keep your school on our nice list by playing by the rules.

You can make three calls, one to your Representative and one to each of your Senators. After that, you can encourage your family, friends and classmates to make calls too, or even host a phone-bank. But everybody has to do their own reporting.

Click here for instructions, talking points and the form to register your calls.

-Emily Stivers