Emily Korenak from ONE’s US advocacy team reports on a recent ONE event in Washington, D.C.
What’s nice about living in Washington, D.C., is that we’re not far away from the White House -– so if there’s anything that we want to say, we can always go right up to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and share our message.
In our shoot, we prominently displayed the photo petitions that ONE Campus members sent in from around the country to show just how important life-saving programs are to voters in the United States. We’ll send these photographs, along with some of ONE Campus’ photos, to President Obama as a multimedia petition.
We had some great interactions with passersby and shared ONE’s mission with tourists unfamiliar with our mission. Groups were interested in what we had to say including families, school groups, and even the security guards.
Samantha Marshall, a third-year student at George Washington University, was one of the local ONE members who joined us at the White House. When I asked her why she joined ONE, she said “I think a lot of people in America don’t think about or know much about [Africa], so I wanted to learn more about what’s going on in the rest of the world.”
It was great to hear Samantha talk about the appeal that ONE has on campus and talk to people about ONE. There’s nothing quite like sending a message to our policymakers on the issues we care most about — because as we said before, what happens there matters here!