My passion for ending world hunger and poverty all started when I was in high school through a program called Empty Bowls. It was here, in high school, when I first heard of ONE and learned that it was a way for me to continue doing the amazing work in the fight against poverty, disease, and world hunger. It seems that so much of what I’m doing now, my major at Clark University, my dreams of one day working for a non-profit, and my overall world view, all stem back to high school. Because of this, I was honored when I was asked to go back to my high school and speak about ONE at Empty Bowls.
Empty Bowls is a program done in schools across the nation and is a way for students to raise awareness, education, and money to end world hunger. The students make bowls out of clay to sell to the community all while educating everyone on hunger both locally and globally. The program has been continually growing to the entire school district being involved along with many other members of the community. Hundreds of bowls were sold, local artists donated pieces that were sold through a silent auction, and many other efforts were put forth to raise money. After participants bought bowls and were given a meal of rice and bread, all came to the program where I had the chance to speak as the keynote speaker.
With over 700 people in the audience, I told how Empty Bowls was what ignited my passion to fight world hunger and how the ONE Campaign is a way to continually fuel that passion. I commended those in the audience for the efforts put forth that night. Together, the members of my hometown community in Osceola, Wisconsin raised over $18,000 to fight hunger. This money will make an amazing difference for the lives of so many, but what I also felt was that each person also had the opportunity to change their own lives by signing up for ONE.
It was so great to go back to my high school and have the chance to continue working for ONE beyond the school year. It seems everywhere I go I can find a chance to talk about ONE and try and spark the same passion I have for ONE’s goals. At the end of the program many people came up to me to ask more questions and I was more than happy to talk. Hopefully I can keep on finding more ways to reach out to my community back home and find some more ideas for OCC next year!
You’ve honed your video-making skills over the last year through the OCC. Now how would you like to win an all-expenses-paid trip to Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival this June?
ONE partner Oxfam has teamed up with YouTube and Cannes Young Lions for an exciting competition. They’re looking for young YouTube filmmakers to create a video explaining why December’s United Nations climate change summit in Copenhagen is one of the most important meetings in human history.
This is a vital time in the fight against climate change. With December’s climate talks fast approaching, this competition is a great way to spread the message that climate change costs lives. All films must urge international decision makers to do a deal that slashes carbon emissions and helps developing nations to adapt to the effects of climate change.
You must be aged between 18-28 to enter the competition, but if you’re not you can still take part by watching the entries, leaving comments, or forwarding your favorite videos to your friends.
Video entries have to be between 30-60 seconds long, and you can read the competition rules and instructions on how to get involved on YouTube’s website.
Michigan and Wisconsin Campus Outreach Ambassador (COA) Stephanie Parrish is a rising junior at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where she has led the Wolverines to be the only 3-peat challenge winner and a close runner-up for our grand prize. Her consistently above-and-beyond leadership along with her strong application have earned her a spot on OCC’s first-ever Africa trip, this July.
At U-M, Stephanie studies Public Policy and African Studies, and plans to study abroad in 2010 in South Africa while simultaneously volunteering with the Treatment Action Campaign on HIV/AIDS issues. After college, Steph wants to pursue either a master of Public Health, Public Administration, or Public Policy degree through a program called Master’s International, which would allow her to complete coursework at a school in the US and be placed with the Peace Corps upon graduation. Eventually, she sees herself doing nonprofit field work in advocacy or research.
Stephanie has been a member of ONE since 2007, when she researched the organization for a class project. As the COA for Michigan and Wisconsin, she now recruits potential campus leaders on all college campuses in these states in an effort to grow the OCC in her region.
Under Stephanie’s strong leadership, the University of Michigan started the season off right by winning the very first challenge of the year: Campus Launches. They went on to repeat their success with our “ONE in Your Face” challenge, creating an impressive set of visual displays in Ann Arbor. Then U-M became the first school ever to win THREE challenges in one year when they took top honors for our Video Super Challenge in the post-season.
U-M went on to submit an amazing final project and ultimately rank within the top 3 OCC schools in the nation. You can check out Stephanie and her team’s final project here.
And as if that wasn’t amazing enough for one student in one year, Stephanie’s thoughtful and thorough design for an outreach program to maximize the impact of her trip to Africa really knocked it out of the ballpark. Check it out, here.
Congrats to Stephanie, and the other four Africa trip winners!
Tomas Moreno, a rising junior at Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina, is a Campus Challenge superstar. Besides serving as Campus Outreach Ambassador (COA) for the Carolinas, Tomas successfully led his team to the Power 100, the Top 10, and finally to become the 2008-9 OCC champions.
At Wofford, Tomas is studying Sociology and Economics with a concentration in African and African American Affairs, and an additional minor in Government. He has traveled to Mexico with Rotary International several times, and worked with an orphanage in Romania in 2008. He’s active with ONE partner organization OXFAM, as well as a bunch of other campus organizations. Tomas has plans to join the Peace Corps upon his graduation, but more immediately, he will be an organizer for Bread for the World in San Francisco this summer.
Tomas joined ONE in 2006 when a friend, who had first heard about ONE in her house of faith, “banded” him with a white ONE wristband. As COA for the Carolinas, he has recruited new campus leaders in those states and successfully mentored them to become as engaged as he is.
This past school year, his tireless work mobilizing his campus was rewarded when Wofford finished in first place in OCC, becoming the 2008-9 Campus Challenge champs despite being a campus of less than 2,000 undergraduates.
Congressman Howard Berman (D-CA) and Mark Kirk (R-IL) have introduced a bill that will begin the long process of updating America’s anti-global poverty efforts. The bill is called the Initiating Foreign Aid Reform Act, and it’s the first step of many in reforming how we do development work. By directing the president to write a new strategy, successful passage of the Berman-Kirk bill will move us closer to our goal of bringing development into the 21st century.
American anti-poverty efforts save lives in the developing world every day, funding AIDS drugs and anti-malarial bed nets. Our commitment to development makes it possible for farmers to improve their yields, and for more children to go to school, breaking cycles of hunger and poverty.
Please call your representative, using the House switchboard at (202) 224-3121, and ask him or her to co-sponsor HR. 2139: the Initiating Foreign Aid Reform Act.
Melissa Boles, a rising junior at Washington State University in Vancouver, has faced more than her share of obstacles in advocating for ONE and Campus Challenge. Yet her determination and spirit have shined through, and helped earn her place on the first-ever OCC trip to Africa this summer.
Melissa is pursuing a degree in Social Science with an emphasis on Political Science and Anthropology at WSU-Vancouver. She has spent some time in Mexico with her church, and is considering joining the Peace Corps after she graduates. Eventually, she seeks a career in nonprofit work.
A member since hearing about ONE at a Coldplay concert in 2005, Melissa took the initiative to learn about and sign up for Campus Challenge through the OCC website right when the program launched in 2007. Since then, she has worked diligently to mobilize her campus around ONE’s issues, and does so without much support from a spread-out and often politically-disengaged campus.
But throughout the discouragements she has endured, Melissa’s campus still placed in the Top 100 schools in the country (out of about 2,400) by the end of the regular OCC season.
“I’m passionate enough about ONE to take on all that comes with running a club on campus by yourself,” Melissa wrote in her trip application. “Emails, scheduling meetings, tabling, and the frustrating outcome of others not really being interested…First-hand experiences and stories are what touch the hearts of others. I feel this trip would help me to really be able to do that; to touch the hearts of others.”
Melissa worked tirelessly in our individual actions competition in order to be considered for a spot on the Africa trip, accumulating tens of thousands of “individual action” points just in the two short weeks open for individual point submissions. Her subsequent application for the trip was both thorough and outstanding.
We’re inviting you to lift up your voice and inspire others to join and act with ONE in the fight against extreme poverty.
The ONE Sermon Challenge, part of ONE Sabbath, invites leaders and members of congregations across the country to create and submit sermons connecting their own faith to these vital issues and lift up the important role of advocacy as an act of faith.
Today we are faced with a global financial crisis in which the world’s poor are the first and most adversely affected. Yet we have proven solutions: Two million people living with HIV/AIDS in Africa receiving lifesaving medicines. Millions of families protected from malaria thanks to simple bed nets. Tens of millions of African children going to school for the first time. and YOU.
Continuing through May, the ONE Sermon Challenge will accept original and inspirational sermons, d’ivrei torah, and khutbas related to global poverty and collect them online at ONE.org. Through the ONE Sermon Challenge, pastors, rabbis, imams and other faith leaders have the chance to share their message to ONE’s millions of members and congregations nationwide, inspiring advocacy and action. At the ONE Sermon Challenge you’ll find inspirational preaching from many traditions, including original Christian, Jewish, and Muslim messages all lifting up a call for action against extreme poverty and treatable, preventable disease.
At the ONE Sermon Challenge you can read Rev. Abby King Kaiser’s inspiring word on the “Work to Do,” download and listen to Rabbi Eric Solomon’s reflections on the role of prophetic leaders like Martin Luther King and Abraham Joshua Heschel, or watch Imam Johari Abdul-Malik’s inspiring Friday khutba on the vital role advocacy plays in fighting global poverty and treatable, preventable disease.
Participants that send us their inspired message will receive a ONE Sabbath Action Pack, resourcing them and their local congregations with next steps to act with ONE.
Last week I caught up with Pastor Eugene Cho, of Quest Church in Seattle, at the Sojourners Mobilization to End Poverty here in Washington DC – he shares his challenge to you to do your part and join the ONE Sermon Challenge:
Meet Bryant Shannon, a rising junior at the University of Florida in Gainesville, co-leader of one of the top schools in the ONE Campus Challenge, and one of five students going on the first-ever OCC trip to Africa in July.
Originally from Maine, Bryant now studies Biological Engineering and Public Health at the University of Florida. Eventually, he hopes to become a physician. “My interests reside in combating modern plagues that hold back developing nations,” he explained in his application for the trip. “The reason why Malaria kills so many people is because there are not qualified medical professionals with the appropriate resources to diagnosis and treat sick individuals before it is too late.”
Although he has never been to Africa, Bryant has volunteered time in small communities in Costa Rica, Guatemala, El Salvador, Belize and Nicaragua, where he helped raise awareness about the issues of extreme poverty, HIV/AIDS, clean water, and respiratory illnesses attributable to open-air cooking.
A ONE member since 2008, Bryant was recruited by Campus Leader Andrea Morley to help start up U-F’s OCC chapter, and has worked extensively with the University of Florida’s ONE group as well as in the local community of Gainesville. As Vice President of OCC-UF, Bryant helped his team win our Halloween Challenge as well as Photo of the Week honors. U-F squeaked in to the Top 10 Schools competition by a narrow margin, but proved with their amazing final project that they belonged there — ultimately finishing as a distinguished runner-up. That makes U-F one of the top 3 schools in the nation in the OCC for 2008-9, and is a powerful testament to Bryant’s strength as a co-leader of the chapter.
You may already know Steven Thai, a rising junior at Luther College in Iowa, an outstanding Campus Outreach Ambassador (COA), and one of five winners of our first-ever ONE Campus Challenge trip to Africa this summer.
If you go to school in Iowa or Minnesota, then you probably know Steven as your COA. He has successfully recruited dozens of campuses to the ONE Campus Challenge in the last year. On his own campus, he has established an OCC membership of 255 — nearly 10% of the Luther’s population. And you might have run into Steven at campaign rallies and town hall meetings during the 2008 election, where he and ONE-Luther reached out to candidates including then-Senator Obama, Senators McCain and Harkin, and Congressman Latham.
Originally from Coon Rapids, Minnesota — a northern suburb of the Twin Cities — Steven is now about halfway through his B.A. in Political Science with a minor in Communication Studies at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. He has been a ONE Member since 2005, when his mother’s godparents “banded” him with a white ONE wristband. Steven checked out the ONE website and got hooked on the organization and its causes. Eventually, he hopes to pursue a career first on Capitol Hill, and later in advocacy for ONE or a ONE partner organization.
Steven also established his congregation as a ONE Congregation, and works closely with ONE’s partner organization, Bread for the World.
To win one of five spots on the OCC Africa trip, Steven submitted a project in the form of a video. Learn more about Steven and his ideals and aspirations, in his own words:
In no particular order, the 5 students selected for the trip to Africa this summer are:
-Bryant Shannon, University of Florida
-Steven Thai, Luther College, Iowa
-Stephanie Parrish, University of Michigan – Ann Arbor
-Melissa Boles, Washington State University – Vancouver
-Tomas Moreno, Wofford College, South Carolina
We at ONE could not be more excited for these five students, who embody everything that OCC is all about. These fantastic students have worked hard all year to raise awareness about ONE and the issues of extreme poverty and global disease. These students mobilized their campus and local communities to advocate for the world’s poorest people, and they made it fun. Lastly, these students have made a commitment to use this trip to further educate their campus and local communities, their places of faith, and students across the region and throughout OCC about ONE and the issues for which we advocate.
These students submitted projects letting us at ONE know how they were going to use their trip to Kenya to further educate and mobilize their communities around the issues of extreme poverty. These projects were evaluated by 2 panels: the first one, consisting of ONE staff, shrank the list from 20 to 10, and then the second panel consisting of board members, partners, and even a representative from ONE’s African office determined our 5. All the projects submitted were stellar, and the judges had a really tough time deciding.
These students have done an incredible job repping ONE and OCC – we know we’ve got a solid bunch!! So on behalf of ONE, pongezi to Bryant, Steven, Stephanie, Melissa and Tomas!
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.
My passion for ending world hunger and poverty all started when I was in high school through a program called Empty Bowls. It was here, in high school, when I first heard of ONE and learned that it was a way for me to continue doing the amazing work in the fight against poverty, disease, and world hunger. It seems that so much of what I’m doing now, my major at Clark University, my dreams of one day working for a non-profit, and my overall world view, all stem back to high school. Because of this, I was honored when I was asked to go back to my high school and speak about ONE at Empty Bowls.
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