With the United Nations Special Summit on the Millennium Development Goals going on this week, it may not be a surprise to say a group of world leaders were gathered in New York City. Yet, they were miles from the UN headquarters. In fact, these heads of state gathered at The Earth Institute at Columbia University for a forum on The Children of Latin America: A Future Without Poverty.

Those in attendance from the Latin American nations were Felipe de Jesús Calderón Hinojosa, President, United Mexican States, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, President, Argentine Republic, Fernando Armindo Lugo Méndez, President, Republic of Paraguay, Elias Antonio Saca González, President, Republic of El Salvador, and Martín Erasto Torrijos Espino, President, Republic of Panama.

At that, Bono isn’t the only rock-star philanthropist taking aim at eliminating poverty. Shakira and Alejandro Sanz graced the floor with their presence along with Jeffrey Sachs, bestselling author and director of the Earth Institute, and activists from the ALAS and Inter-American Development Bank.

So naturally, when student leaders at Sacred Heart University, Emerson College, and Seton Hall University found out about it, we knew we had to be there to represent ONE. After convincing our professors to let us skip class, we traveled from Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Jersey with ONE bracelets and shirts proudly displayed.

While we loved seeing Shakira and Jeff Sachs, the truly meaningful words spoken at the forum were those of the world leaders. From stating how they themselves focus on the MDG’s to more personal stories, such as the state of emergency in Paraguay to the sacrifice of “beautiful buildings to have happier citizens”, much was shared, and likewise much was learned. Truly, other world leaders aren’t turning a deaf ear to these problems.

Mr. Sachs joked between Shakira’s monologue that “Like Wyclef Jean said, she makes a man want to speak Spanish.” Well, even if you don’t speak Spanish, you can watch a bilingual archived webcast of the thrilling forum available online!

Many people are deeply concerned about the world’s deepening food crisis. Food prices are soaring and the poor in impoverished countries are having to cut back and in some cases are starving. The situation in Haiti is so desperate riots have destablized the government and many have resorted to eating “mudcakes” or patties made of dirt.

This is a moral outrage, and estimates suggest 10 million people will die due to the crisis

If you haven’t already, please, take action alongside the 113,305 members of ONE demanding a response to the crisis.

Unfortunately, there is a lot of bad information going around about this issue. A lot of people are blaming U.S. farm subsidies which lower world prices and steal potential income from poor farmers. ONE has worked to eliminate this horrible practice–but the problem is that food prices too high. (Note: Biofuel subsidies are another story. They do contribute both to higher food prices and by some estimates to global warming.)

The real problems are both decreasing supply–because of droughts in Australia and other parts of the world and many rice-producing Asian economies closing off exports in a panic–and increasing demand, because the progress reducing poverty in Asia has added millions of new meat consumers and cows requires 8-13 lbs of grain for each pound of edible beef for example.

I found this interview with Research Fellow Peter Timmer enlightening.

This blog post from Nancy Birdsall and Arvind Subramanian details short-term and long term policy options. (Warning: It is filled with jargon. I was not a big fan of the presentation.)

And if you are done with finals and have plenty of spare time, you might want to check out this 2-page paper by Peter Timmer on who wins and who loses in the U.S. food aid system which needs desperate reform.

– Steve, ONE Tampa

P.S. One last reminder: Take Action. The initial surge in activism and media coverage led President Bush to allocate $200 million for emergency food aid. But he can be pressured to do more.

Building off all the amazing advocacy work you’ve been doing on college campuses for the past several months, we though you ONE Campus Challenge-rs might be interested in On Day One , a new web initiative and contest we’ve launched at the Better World Campaign. On Day One is an interactive tool for presenting and debating ideas for the Presidential Candidates—literally centered on a simple question: what should the next Administration should do “on day one” to address the most pressing global challenges? To make sure the candidates are hearing from youth voters, we’ve launched a fun youth contest to pick out some of the best ideas of what the next administration can do on the first day of its term to help craft a better world. The contest, called “Y In The World: International Cooperation and My Generation,” is geared toward anyone under 24 and gives you the opportunity to submit a video of what YOU think the next president should emphasize on January 20, 2009.

How can the next administration best tackle global poverty? How can it stop the spread of the global AIDS pandemic? What steps can it take to ensure the rights and safety of women and girls around the world? “Y In The World” is a contest all about ideas—and you telling the candidates YOUR ideas of how the U.S. can work with the international community to help solve these—and many other—pressing global challenges. In addition to contributing to an important policy conversation, the winners of the contest will receive an all-expenses paid trip to the July Youth Leadership Summit at UN Headquarters in New York City and you will get to be a guest blogger for On Day One.

Tell your friends, get out your video camera, and start pondering what YOU think the next president should do on Day One of his or her administration.

- Nicole Sawran, Better World Campaign

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.

There’s a good chance that ONE will be asking us OCCers to start making calls to Congress on the FY09 budget and PEPFAR soon. It might be a good idea to begin planning some ways to get your fellow students involved.

Making phone calls is a very quick and effective way to get congress to listen. It takes less than 30 seconds to call a congress person’s office and the process is very simple.

ONE Webster did a “Call Congress Pizza Party” a couple of weeks ago for the Global Child Survival Act. For every phone call a student made to Congress we gave them a slice of pizza. The party was a huge success. Unfortunately, we ran out of pizza, but some people made calls without even taking a slice.

Some people tripped over their words, and almost all were a little nervous if it was their first time making a call to congress. It’s alright to stumble over your words, just make sure the staffer you talk to knows that you are a constituent, and what bill or issue you are calling about.

These phone calls do make a difference. Last year as the FY08 budget was being approved, Congress decided to take away more than one billion dollars that would go to fight poverty. ONE members made more than 200,000 phone calls and emails to Congress and they listened! Congress not only put back the one billion, but added an additional 400 million to fight pvoerty!

The bottom line is: phone calls make a big difference, but are not a big deal to make! If you convince someone that their voice really does matter, they will make the call! It helps to throw in a little incentive, but the important part is telling them that 30 seconds of their time can save millions of lives.

Nick Stevens, ONE Regional Outreach Ambassador and President of ONE Webster

While only 10 schools are guaranteed spots in the last round of competition to win the Campus Challenge, there will be one “wild card” school that has a chance to win it all. To clench that coveted spot number 1 spot, you’re going to have to be creative, and thoroughly document your efforts.

Here some ideas of things you might try doing:

• Schedule a visit with your district or state congressional office and bus students en mass to the meeting to show them just how many people in their district care about ending poverty.
• Work with your campus media groups to turn the campus paper, radio, and TV into all poverty education and advocacy programming and content for one day.
• Work with your local congressional office on including the member of Congress’s poverty fighting efforts in the next constituent mailing.
• Visit several local high schools and train students on making calls to Congress.

When you turn in your work, we’ll be looking for:

• A description of your project.
• Your goals in doing this project (be more specific than “ending poverty”).
• Your results.
• Some obstacles that you encountered and how you overcame them.
• A multi-media presentation of your efforts.

The numbers for the Fiscal Year 2009 budget are out and as you may have heard the news is mixed. John Ruxin, a public health expert and New York Times blogger, told the story on his blog today–and made a shout out to ONE as the major organization taking action.

But the long and short is this: President Bush gets to request funds to operate the government each year and he requested increases for most programs to fight poverty worldwide (the major exception being Child Survival with a hefty $251 million cut).

Unfortunately, the House thought he budgeted “too much” and cut $1.5 billion. The Senate decided to cut even more–an extra $2.6 billion roughly.

Senators Durbin (D-IL) and Smith (R-OR) decided to take action, drafting an amendment to raise funding to House levels, which isn’t asking much since the House cut $1.5 billion from Bush’s request and Bush only requested about 28% of what he promised back in 2002.

You can sign ONE’s petition here in support of the amendment, and if the cuts to Child Survival funding bother you then send a letter in support of the Child Survival Act.

And calling Congress never hurt. A list of each Senators phone number is available here. Calling only takes 2 minutes but can make a big difference–I’m a Floridian so I’m calling Senator’s Nelson and Martinez after I post this for instance.

On Friday, we sent around a petition to the Senate not to slash 4 billion dollars from the international affairs budget. Over the weekend we managed to gather over 54,000 signatures, but if we hope to convince our senators that we can’t roll back the amount we give to the fight against poverty, we’re going to need many more.

If you, or someone you know, hasn’t signed the petition calling on the Senate to restore this vital funding, please sign now and send it to your friends as well.

Right now, the Senate is considering a $4 billion cut from the president’s 2009 request for poverty-fighting funding. Most devastating - if passed, this cut would be a $1 billion drop from 2008 levels.

Thankfully, Senators Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Gordon Smith (R-OR) have introduced an amendment to restore $2.6 billion to the international affairs budget.

This is where ONE comes in.

We only have a week to get the majority of the Senate to decide to support this amendment - so we’re doing what we do best - launching a petition!

Add your name here.

We’re hoping to get 60 U.S. senators to sign up in support of Senator Durbin and Smith’s amendment - which means we need support from senators in every state in America.

I’ll updates you with how many ONE members have signed the petition, and how many senators have signed on, throughout the week. Please add your name and send the petition on to your friends. We only have 7 days to save billions of dollars of critical poverty-fighting programs for the most vulnerable among us.

Crossposted on the ONE Blog.

We’re just a hair away from having 100,000 ONE members sign the “Visit Africa” petition.

Please take a second to sign the petition if you haven’t yet, and tell your friends to do the same.