Archive for the ‘SHU’ Category
January 25th, 2008 at 10:44 am
The name Bill Gates isn’t an uncommon addition to a conversation when talking about ending world poverty, but I know that I’m always pleasantly surprised when a new program is developed or new grants are made available with the Gates name attatched to it. The newest addition? Mr. Gates pledged $306 Billion in grants at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland to develop poor farms in third world countries, most of which are run by women. Talk about THAT for an allowance.
“If we are serious about ending extreme hunger and poverty around the world, we must be serious about transforming agriculture for small farmers, most of whom are women,” Gates said. He wasn’t the only one that had something to say either; UN Leader Ban-Ki Moon focused on issues ranging from malaria to climate change, and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown asked the World Bank to also focus efforts on climate change. Both old and new additions to Product (RED) were in attendance; Bono and Michael Dell of Dell Computers had more than enough to talk about.
It’s pretty cool to see some of our favorite leaders doing good around the world; I don’t know about you guys, but it definitly fills me up with a lot of pride and hope to be involved with something as effective and meaningful as the ONE Campaign. Huzzah!
Read the rest of the article here:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/01/25/davos.main/index.html
January 17th, 2008 at 10:08 am
We want to end poverty. Problem is, how do we do it? How do we – a bunch of passionate students – change the world?
The answer: Phone Calls. Don’t let that little dial tone discourage you either; it can be intimidating, I know, but you have to look beyond it. Your temporary discomfort WILL alleviate the discomfort of those living in extreme poverty worldwide. I think that’s a fair trade, don’t you?
Here’s how:
1. Find the bill that you want to support. You can check out the ONE.org Take Action page, ONE.org Issues page, check out your ONE emails, or any one of our poverty fighting partner’s webpage.
2. Find out if your members of Congress are already sponsoring the bill. You can find this on either the ONE Action pages for each bill (ex: the page of the Global Child Survival Act) or by looking the bill up in Thomas (rightfully named after Thomas Jefferson).
3. Call your member of Congress – U.S. Capitol Switchboard 202-224-3121.
4. Ask for the staff member who would work on your bill. Talk to them about who you are (especially that you are a constituent) and why you care about the bill. You don’t have to be an expert, passion matters more than anything here.
5. Follow up. Send an email thanking the person for their time and call back a week later and find out if they have worked on it. You’ll find that a little persistence goes a LONG way.
I find that to be a pretty simple formula, and it’s worth 1,000 points per call (but you have to report them using the “create your own action” page). There are a hundred more ways to fight poverty and score points with the Campus Challenge as well, and hundreds more that aren’t even listed on the Campus Challenge page.
So how do you fight poverty? What have you done that works? What do you want to try?
Let me (and the rest of the world) know. We’re counting on you.
Huzzah!
Mike Fazzino, Sacred Heart University
December 10th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
We’re not sending out weekly OCC updates and actions these days (figure that you have enough going on with finals and the holidays), but that doesn’t mean that we aren’t still doing things like photo of the week. There were some fun ones this last week, but the clear winner has to be University of Missouri’s picture with Santa in a ONE Mizzou shirt.
Runners up include the Sarcred Heart University women’s hockey team:
And Boston University’s collection of ONE Faces:
December 5th, 2007 at 3:50 pm
You might have noticed that the points and the rankings blew up a couple of days ago. This is no mistake. Several schools (like Brandeis and Sacred Heart) kicked it into high gear and organized to make TONS of calls to the presidential campaigns.
These points are showing up as calls to Congress. This means that each “call” can range from 1,000 to 15,000 points in value since some people called all 15 candidates.
Organizing your group to write letters, make phone calls, or visit your local Congressional offices is one of the most effective ways to fight global poverty, and hence, it is one of the best ways to earn points.
November 28th, 2007 at 7:41 pm
College of Charleston is a beast. They just smashed down the 1,000 barrier, and don’t look like they are ready to stop.
But, despite all those recruits, they are still slipping in the rankings as Sacred Heart pulled into the lead today. Guess it is still anyone’s game.
November 26th, 2007 at 3:14 pm
The photo of the week contest this week was no contest at all. St. John’s University – Staten Island walked away with the prize with their giant 90 person human ONE logo.
Some other notable photos this week:
The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey’s photo of their international club holding signs saying “ONE” in a host of different languages.
SHU gathered together their student government and got them to pose of a massive group shot.
November 26th, 2007 at 2:40 pm
Sacred Heart University blew away the competition for the turkey day family involvement challenge. They recruited 102 friends, family, and relatives over the holiday weekend. That’s their second weekly challenge win, and good for 10,000 points.
In a surprising second place finish was the recently dubbed “Come Back Kid,” St. John’s University – Staten Island with 62 sign ups.
November 21st, 2007 at 11:57 am
For last week’s challenge, Sacred Heart University created an emotional awareness project that truly helps illustrate the massive scale of extreme poverty. They set up the 3 signs along a long well trafficked hall on campus.
While the display clearly illustrated the issue at hand, we felt that the Winthrop’s flag display did a better job of showing both the scope of extreme poverty and our ability to make a real difference.Still, SHU did a heck of a job, so we’re giving them 2,500 points.
November 14th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
We’ve got a winner for the new ONE t-shirt contest, Scott Matherson’s Design from Sacred Heart University, the one we dubbed “ONE Among Many”. It cleaned up with 1,767 votes, 54% of all votes cast. Congrats to SHU, you guys have really shown us how it’s done these last couple of weeks.
We’re going to look into getting some shirts printed up fairly cheaply with this new design, we’ll keep you posted.
Scott’s winning design:
November 10th, 2007 at 5:30 am
The PiONEers at Sacred Heart University (SHU) have been up to great work recently, earning 32,640 points in this week alone. I asked chapter president Mike Fazzino to explain the secrets to their success and to give some advice to those considering starting a new chapter. This is the result:
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While the Pioneers here at Sacred Heart are amazing and responded quickly to word-of-mouth advertisement of the ONE Campaign, it did take a little extra bit of work to get the majority of campus to listen with open ears as we’re not exactly a small school with in excess of 4,000 students.
After developing a constitution and electing a President and Vice President, and engaging a wonderful advisor from another department on campus, we became an official ONE Chapter! Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t an easy task, but it was well worth the work. Don’t be intimidated by your administration and don’t take no for an answer; set up meetings, pull strings, and get where you want to be!
Once we were a chapter, we had to gain some members. We’ve got some incredibly motivated student leaders here as well, and it was certainly to our benefit to contact some of them first. Whether it was the President of Student Government, Senate, Greek Life, or even Habitat for Humanity, we were able to gain overwhelming support. So, with the help of “crashing” a few on-campus meetings of other organizations (with their approval), in addition to sending out global emails to our entire student list-serve, we were able to draw over 50 members to our first meeting!
Again, having your first meeting can be a little intimidating, but its nothing to get discouraged about! We were able to introduce our students to the ONE message formally, showing the Campaign video and passing out some information. Once they had a good understanding of the challenge, we split our general members into five groups; Advertising, Athletics, Campus Relations, Community Service, and Public Relations. Each team was to be responsible for tackling the challenges that applied to them, which I (as president) and my vice president divided up.
Doing all this work and planning all on our lonesome, we did begin to feel a little overwhelmed. This brings up another thing to always be conscientious of: don’t think you have to do everything on your own! Because we had so many different groups working on different things, we decided to elect a full board, including not only a secretary and treasurer, but team leaders for each of the teams I listed above. This is another concept that Sacred Heart is proud to have conceived, we chose to call what normally is identified as a “committee” as “teams”. The word team is so much more fun and exciting than “committee” ever was!
After getting a hold of our full Executive Board, we were able to more accurately tackle tasks. Most of them are pretty self explanatory. I think it’s also important for us to not forget about Community Service; it’s what ONE is all about, after all. We’ve already started partnering up on a Thanksgiving Food Drive that is drawing in huge amounts of food for the needy in the Bridgeport Area of Connecticut. Athletics has already started banding coaches and teams, Campus Relations is in talks with Greek Life and Student Government, Public Relations is setting up meetings with all the politicians in the area (from selectmen to senators). Advertising is integral in all of these, and has been doing a phenomenal job of getting ONE’s name out around campus.
Now that we’re going strong, we’ve started gaining even more members, setting up events, and ordering huge quantities of t-shirts and wristbands for everyone! Student Government as a whole has ordered over 80 bands just for their department!
What I’ve realized most is that everyone realizes that ONE is a great organization, and that our message coincides with virtually every other organizations’ mission statement. Look around your campus, figure out who your student leaders are, and go from there. There is a lot of potential everywhere you look, you just need to work together as ONE!
Sincerely,
Mike Fazzino
ONE Sacred Heart University Chapter President
Fazzinom1381@sacredheart.edu
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