A quick recap of ONE staffers’ favorite things from the Power 100 Summit.

Something is happening. 7 new friends requests, tagged in 13 pictures, and 2 new group invitations, all with association to ONE. Facebook is exploding with new photos, videos and wall posts from the Power 100 Summit. Almost everyone’s status has become something like how amazing this past week has been. Not to mention our ONE Human Logo seems to be everyone’s profile picture.

We are united now. Armed with information and direction, we have an opportunity for every campus in this country to be ONE and every voter to be informed on the issues of global poverty and disease. We can get legislation passed that provides universal education and improve child mortality, and we can put a president in the White House committed to attacking the disparities in our world. The next step for us is to transform all this online electricity into actions and to get others to join us as ONE.

You might notice tons of beautiful photos going up in each of the Power 100 posts. This is thanks to Paul and Mario from Vero Image, who documented the entirety of the Power 100 Summit. Our thanks goes out to them for running around tirelessly and capturing each and every amazing moment.

The Power 100 Summit is officially over, and you’ll notice that thus far the blog only has a little bit about what transpired.  We’re going to remedy that rather quickly here, and I apologize for the delay and any confusion as we put together a complete log of the speakers, panels, discussions, and events.

So here’s how it’s going to work. Folks signed up to blog about each of the different panels. As they put up their posts, I’ll add some picture from the official photographers, and then adjust the time on the posts so that they line up in the order they happened during the conference.  In the end we’ll have a complete log of the whole 2.5 days.

So keep your eyes on the blog, we’ll have it all up soon.

At the Power 100 Summit a passionate, innovative, and now much closer group of students gained invaluable information that was both inspiring and, at least to me, made the ultimate challenge of making poverty history much more tangible within our lifetimes. I think we took a lot of things with us: inspiration, understanding, responsibility, challenge, even pressure, but what we did not take with us was a feeling of hopelessness. Our capacity for success will drive us to do great things in the next year, and I’m sure we’ll all have great things to report.

What we need to remember is that as powerful as we felt during the summit, at the end of the day we are only, albeit talented ones, 114 people. It would be a shame to keep all this excitement and desire to make change to ourselves, so I encourage all of you to spread this infectious passion for change and the expertise we were lucky enough to absorb to as many places as you can reach. Teach those students who have already shown their dedication to ONE at your schools. Use the communication lessons we learned from Kimberly and Tom to make an engaging presentation tailored for classrooms of students, the local press, and legislators. Like Patrick said, what’s so great about ONE is that we aren’t an organization, we’re a movement, and our success only comes when we not only excite ourselves but those around us as well.

So get out there and start inspiring people! HUZZAH!

Concluding the Power 100 Summit on January 5 was former Majority Leader of the US Senate and current co-chair of the ONE Vote ‘08 (http://www.onevote08.org/), Bill Frist, M.D.

Despite the fact that Frist is no longer in office, he continues to work all over the world instituting his policy of “medicine as a currency for peace” in countries throughout Sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Europe, and the Asian subcontinent. Frist spoke to the Power 100 on the issues plaguing these regions, such as lack of access to clean drinking water which contributes to the accumulation of diseases such as malaria and cholera; the HIV/AIDS pandemic, which he says can be drastically reduced by both education and prevention; and finally, the overall lack of healthcare in these regions. (Because of this lack of health care, deaths frequently result from health issues like hernias and diarrhea, both of which are problems easily fixed in places with adequate healthcare.) The true tragedy in all this, is just how preventable such deaths are. Just one example are oral rehydration therapy (ORT) tablets which literally cost just pennies, and yet can replace a day’s worth of water lost from diarrhea when taken with clean water.

Frist enthusiastically encourages members of the ONE Campaign to continue to put pressure on their representatives in Congress to ensure that these avoidable deaths in the poorest areas of the world are substantially reduced.

As a fellow blogger has already posted, we were visited by former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist on Saturday morning, the last day of the Power 100 Summit. He had some important information to pass on to all ONE advocates…

The Millenium Challenge Corporation is an experiment in developmental aid. Americans would pay 2 cents out of each tax dollar to the Corporation, which the Corporation would then put to good use as aid for African countries. The importance behind the Corporation is that it would decide how to best use the aid money so that it is NOT wasted in Africa. It implies the use of transparent transactions. However, the Millenium Challenge Corporation is having a hard time gaining acceptance from Congress; Congress dislikes the Corporation because it takes power away from Congress to decide where aid money would go and puts it into smarter hands. The Corporation needs our support as ONE members… let our politicians know that we’re behind the Millenium Challenge Corporation. Demand accountability. Demand progress. Demand this plan.

Hey, this is Matthew McAllister from the University of Colorado at Boulder. I’m here in D.C. representing CU at the Power 100 Summit for the ONE Campaign’s Campus Challenge. I just got out of a lecture given by Newt Gingrich the former Speaker of the House about advocacy work. It was amazing, I didn’t think that anyone would be able to follow the passionate speech given by President Bill Clinton’s lead economic advisory Gene Sperling. He brought up many important issues and obstacles we as advocates of the poor deal with and have to think about. The best piece of advice he brought forward and emphasized was how to talk with an elected leader when you visit to lobby.

1) Why the issues we’re talking about matter to the official, namely making it them relate to them on a personal level rather than just speaking with statistics.

2) Attach action to the visit, “We want you to vote x on this bill.”

3) Close the sale: If the official say they care about the issue you’re bringing forward get an answer from them no matter what.

He allowed for a ton of questions and answered them very intelligently and showed a great deal concern for the issues we care about. At one point he started talking about how the world now, with the most wealth in history, it’s pathetic that we cannot prevent a child dying needlessly in the world’s poorest countries. He was especially moving when talking about our lack of help with the situation in Darfur, mentioning the motto of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, “Never again”. These past days have been some of the most invigorating of my life. Awesome speaker followed by awesome speaker. I can’t wait to get back home and help continue to build the momentum of ONE.

Matthew-

CU-Boulder

“There is NO reason we can’t drown poverty in opportunity.” Well said, Newt Gingrich, well said.

On Friday afternoon, Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House, spoke to the Power 100 Summit about the difference between being a good citizen and being an advocate. While good citizens tend towards charity for their causes, advocates make it personal, using grassroot activism to affect real change from the bottom up.

Mr. Gingrich gave us three ground rules that form ‘the essence of advocacy.’ When dealing with political figures, it’s imperative to:

1. Make it personal. Explain why it’s important to them that the changes be made…

2. Attach specific action. Make it impossible for them to forget you or your cause; have them sign a letter, speak at an event, etc. Let them know what you want them to do…

3. Close the sale. Make it real. Walk away from the talk with the end goal accomplished that you appraoched them for at the beginning…

Mr. Gingrich also spoke to us on the importance of the ‘good neighbor policy’, and about our responsibility to bring technology, medicine, education, and real change to those in the world that live in desperate poverty. He was a wonderful speaker, encouraging all of us to go forth and be more than just good citizens, but to be true advocates for the ONE Campaign.

On Friday, the second full day of ONE’s Power 100 Summit Conference, the OCC student leaders had a chance to lead four break-out sessions. I had the incredible privilege of being able to co-lead one of the break-out sessions with Steven, an OCC student leader from Iowa. Weldon asked us to lead our session on “harassing” candidates, or in politically correct terminology, on how to get the attention of political candidates focused on the ONE Campaign. We also talked about how to encourage the growth of ONE on college campuses.

With Steven being from Iowa where the Iowa caucus is of immense importance, and with me being an ROA from New Hampshire where the Primary is the first in the nation, we both had plenty of experiences to draw from for our session. The Presidential election of 2008 is going to bring about serious change in our nation, and we want to make sure that all political candidates, not just the Presidential hopefuls, are fully aware of ONE and its goals. For states that receive high political traffic, like New Hampshire and Iowa, direct contact with political candidates is a must; if they don’t acknowledge you, it doesn’t mean they don’t notice you and aren’t aware of ONE. Even if your state doesn’t see a lot of high-ranking politicians, remember: the more they see of ONE members, the better. Never give up. Write letters, call political offices, and most of all, never let those in our government forget how important we are as ONE. Make sure our political representatives understand just how important the fight to end extreme poverty really is…

After discussing politics for twenty minutes, we stumbled upon the topic of turning our college campuses into ONE campuses, going over all of our successes and failures. Our group decided that the best way to deal with gaining support for ONE on campus is to work through the college’s community service center. This helps with broadening contacts, tabling, events, etc. Venturing out to the dorms to sign people up for ONE works pretty well, too. Just make sure to get the “ok” beforehand!

ONE’s Power 100 Summit Conference was perhaps the most empowering event that I have ever attended. Our break-out session encouraged us further, as I’m sure the other sessions did for the rest of the student leaders. To be in a beautiful room bursting with students full of passion to make the world a better place by bringing an end to poverty was a truly unique experience. I know I was inspired by getting to hear their stories… keep up the fight, OCC student leaders! HUZZAH!!!!

- Rachel Leuck, ROA