Yesterday, Tuesday April 14, 2009, the Luther College ONE Chapter invited ONE Regional Field Director Libby Crimmings to lead an advocacy workshop. Libby talked about how to engage a public official and how to get recognized. Luther students have a passion for activism and Libby helped us understand the importance of interacting with our public officials to make changes no matter what the issue is.
We all enjoyed some salsa and chips and of course cactus bread from Pizza Ranch!
This Sunday at midnight PST is the deadline for getting in your app for the 2009 OCC trip to Africa. If you are one of the 20 top individual point-getters we invited to apply, better let us know if you have any questions, and get your stuff in soon!
Once again, those 20 students are:
1 Nick Stevens, Webster University
2 Justin Kralemann, Baylor University
3 Tomas Moreno, Wofford College
4 Mike Fazzino, Sacred Heart University
5 Andrea Netti, Southern Methodist University
6 Hassan Barzani, University of Texas at San Antonio
7 Rachel Berman-Vaporis, Brandeis University
8 Kelly Wynveen, Clark University
9 Mike Weidman, Wilmington College, Wilmington, Ohio
10 Jessica Beckner, Indiana University
11 Steven Thai, Luther College
12 Stephanie Parrish, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
13 Eric Mayle, Missouri State University
14 Bryant Shannon, University of Florida
15 Audrey Ruark, Kennesaw State University
16 Erin Burke, Sacred Heart University
17 Harpreet Kaur, Saint John’s University, Jamaica New York
18 Christie Fleming Franciscan, University of Steubenville
19 Caitlin Harrowby, Maui Community College
20 Genevieve Gearity, Emerson College
Plus our three alternates who will fill in if any of the 20 fail to submit projects by the deadline:
21 Melissa Boles, Washington State University – Vancouver
22 Olivia Durning, Sacred Heart University
23 Victoria Roman, George Washington University
It’s conference season in our nation’s capital! Several of ONE’s partners are hosting national conferences, trainings and advocacy workshops for poverty-fighting activists like you! Check out the list below and sign up to attend!
I recently took the opportunity to get my fellow Howardites involved in ONE. Despite the cold and rainy weather, I and a couple other students took “The Yard” by storm to pass out flyers and sign up new members. The satisfaction of it all was seeing Howard students compelled to sign up for the cause. Some were even interested in becoming leaders for ONE Campus Challenge next year!
I also made a presentation to an entire class, informing them about ONE’s initiatives and how important it is to get Howard University – as well as other Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) – involved in the Campus Challenge, so we’ll be able to compete with other schools across the nation while also participating in an effective poverty-fighting program.
I know that students at Howard have a long history of fighting for justice and equality – two aspects that are key to ending extreme poverty. Getting HU students involved in THE ONE Campus Challenge will showcase our many talents and demonstrate our power to effect change.
While ONE-Baylor may not have won the campus challenge, their university recently honored their hard work over the past year in promoting the issues of poverty and global disease on their campus.
Baylor University’s Office of Student Activities awarded the ONE Campaign-Baylor with its coveted “Outstanding New Organization of the Year Award” at a ceremony held on April 8. The award is given to a single organization that has been chartered at the university within the past three years. The organization must demonstrate the four characteristics of student organizations at Baylor which include: Scholarship, Leadership, Citizenship, and Fellowship.
In announcing the winner, the assistant director of Student Activities applauded Baylor’s chapter in bringing the issues of poverty to light on their campus, city, and state after only one year of being chartered as an organization on campus. A room of students, staff, and administration applauded as the organization received the award. As part of the award, ONE-Baylor will receive $500 towards future projects at their university.
Additionally, ONE-Baylor president and Texas-COE, Justin Kralemann, received Baylor Student Government’s “Excellence in Student Involvement Award,” for his work with ONE on campus among other activities in which he participates while at Baylor.
“There is nothing more rewarding than having the support of our peers and campus community in fighting poverty and global disease,” said Justin Kralemann. “Tonight makes me incredibly proud as we celebrate our success on our campus as a ONE chapter.”
ONE is proud to announce Wofford College in South Carolina as the 2008-09 ONE Campus Challenge champs! Big congrats go out to ONE-Wofford, and also to the runner-up schools: the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and the University of Florida.
Wofford’s Campus Leader Tomas Moreno, Vice President Sarah Moore, Secretary Jessica Grantham, and Treasurer Christine Shelton put together an awesome project. Themed “ONE Week to Change the World,” it included teaching about ONE’s issues in 29 classes across 10+ majors, a rally and trivia night, an art contest, a film screening, outreach to sports teams, an interfaith ONE Sabbath, a panel discussion on trade and microcredit, partnerships with several other campus groups, fundraising for three charities and advocacy work on two different pieces of legislation.
The judging panel was impressed with ONE-Wofford’s balance of activities, their focus on laying a strong foundation for OCC’s future on their campus, and their inclusion of ONE’s core issues in a highly relevant way. The Wofford team’s ability to think “outside the box” in terms of overcoming their obstacles and reaching out to a variety of groups also made their project stand out.
Recognizing they might not be able to net as many petition signatures as a larger school, ONE-Wofford ran TWO advocacy initiatives, around both the Global Food Security Act and the Foreign Assistance Act. By running two petitions, the Wofford OCC chapter effectively doubled its impact, and brought in nearly 400 signatures on each petition.
ONE-Wofford further magnified their potential to change the world by joining forces with other campus organizations, departments, and official ONE partners. They worked with their Biology Department to help run an ice cream promotion for their “Sons of Lwala” film screening. They tapped their Sports Marketing Team to help promote ONE at several sporting events. They collaborated with Amnesty International to put on a showing of “The Vagina Monologues” with a focus on women in the developing world, and with Oxfam America to include ONE issues in their Capitol Hill Lobby Day. And they reached out to students of the Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu and Buddhist faiths with a ONE Sabbath event demonstrating the importance of giving regardless of faith background.
In short, ONE-Wofford employed every available resource, turned their small student body size into an advantage, had both breadth and depth to their events, and created partnerships and momentum that will keep ONE’s message alive at Wofford long after the current students have graduated.
More than 14,000 votes were cast in the OCC Top 10 projects competition, and we officially closed voting last night at midnight PST.
Baylor made an impressive last-minute push to take the lead in the rankings, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they win the top honors. It’s still anybody’s game, because now we’ve got the difficult process of combing through and verifying the votes cast to make sure nobody cheated, and then we have to add in the judging panel’s final score (worth 60%) with the vote percentages (worth 40%).
We’ll announce the winner around 6 PM on Tuesday. Try to sit tight until then!
Students at Old Dominion University are gearing up for awesome event to raise awareness about global poverty taking place on campus next week! Congressman Glenn Nye will participate in a panel discussion on global poverty and American foreign policy with ODU students, faculty and community members on Tuesday, April 7 at 2 p.m.
The brothers of Alpha Phi Alpha passed out ONE bands and fliers to hundreds of greek men and women at Old Dominion University last night to help spread the word! The fraternity is cosponsoring the event along with the Graduate Society of International Studies, the Graduate Student Organization and ODU Model United Nations. The campus is buzzing and the community is welcome to join – the event is free and open to the public! RSVP here to join us in Norfolk this Tuesday!
We’ve asked the campus leaders from the Top 10 schools to write up some behind-the-scenes info about their projects. You can vote for your favorite project here. -Emily Stivers
The good news is that the weather in Ann Arbor has been warm and sunny for the last three weeks, which is unheard of. The bad news is that on Wednesday, March 25th, the day of our big outdoor Diag Day, it was 40 degrees and pouring rain. We had big plans for the day: chalking up all of the sidewalks, a water balloon toss, a 4-square competition and an unfathomable amount of decorations. Sadly, when we woke up at 5:00am to start setting up, just about all of those plans fell through.
If I were to pick ONE part of our project to be most proud of, it would be our ability to improvise and think on our feet (no pun intended, ONE STEP at a time, get it?). Everyone always says having a backup plan will keep you safe, but in our case, even those fell through. We were miraculously still able to get a few banners to stay up, brought in a tent at the last minute, and pumped ourselves up for a lot of screaming, dancing and campaigning!
To our surprise, the student response on the Diag – U-M’s high-traffic center of campus – was amazing! Hundreds signed the ONE Declaration and we collected 446 letters to our Senators asking them to support the Global Food Security Act. It would have been so easy for students to walk through buildings to get to class instead of passing through the Diag. But, through word of mouth, they heard that something big was happening. I attribute this buzz to our energy, our spirit, and our ability to think outside the box. Creativity was key for us – rolling out bubble wrap to stomp on, dressing up a ONE member in a huge heart costume, painting our faces in ONE logos and a whole lot of yelling made this event a success.
Who knows how much bigger our impact could have been had everything gone our way… but what fun would that have been?
GO BLUE!
-Stephanie Parrish, University of Michigan – Ann Arbor
We’ve asked the campus leaders from the Top 10 schools to write up some behind-the-scenes info about their projects. You can vote for your favorite project here. -Emily Stivers
When considering what ONE Curry would do for our final OCC project, there were a few key themes we wanted to incorporate, which we feel are central to ONE. First off, we wanted our project to be fun. We’ve worked hard during the last three years at Curry to reshape the way people think about fighting poverty in order to see the great opportunity we have before us. Second, at the core of our community is the philosophy of Ubuntu — an African Zulu word that means, “I am because we are.” If a child in Africa is suffering, or a mother in South America is suffering, or our next door neighbor is suffering, than we too suffer. We are all connected and, if we work together, we can make great change in this world. Third, we wanted to reach every generation; to show every generation that they can help make poverty history.
The assimilation of these themes came in the form of our very own rock tour: The Rock the Change Tour! We decked out a van (our Tour Bus), visited an Elementary School, an Elderly Housing Facility, and of course our own campus. The response was tremendous. The senior citizens had so much insight to share with us, the Curry students had a blast at our ONE Trivia night, and the elementary school kids were just amazing. We held a shoe drive at the school, expecting maybe a couple hundred pairs of shoes. We returned STUNNED to find over 1,200 pairs of shoes!! These children showed us the power of community. They give us hope and they also give hope to children around the world who are literally dying for it.
We hope you’ll watch our video and, if you like it, vote for us! But regardless of the outcome, we’ve already won a life-changing experience that we’ll cherish forever.
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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