For the first ONE Campus Challenge of the new year – To Washington with Love – college students across the country flooded congressional mailrooms with their love for the life-saving development programs that make up less than 1 percent of the total US. budget. In just a few weeks, ONE Campus chapters collected more than 1,400 handwritten Valentines to their members of Congress, urging them to prioritize the effective poverty-fighting programs we know and love.
UTEP student letters
UTEP students write letters to Congress
As for our Challenge winner, University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) takes the cake this round, coming in with more than 120 handwritten Valentines personally delivered to their senators and represenatives. With sugary sweet incentives and a Free Waffle party, the UTEP Chapter also collected more than 500 petition sigantures and new member sign-ups. The icing on the cake is that the UTEP ONE crew participated in a town hall event with Congressman Beta O’Rourke and personally delivered their handwritten Valentine messages showing their love for life-saving foreign aid. Way to go, Miners!
UTEP students delivering petitions
A huge shout out goes to our runner-up schools: University of Arizona, University of Michigan – Ann Arbor, Bemidji University, and Brigham Young University – Hawaii. Together, they collected more 500 handwritten Valentines to Congress! For this Challenge, University of Michigan and Michigan State University’s ONE chapters teamed up for a friendly rivalry event during the MSU vs. UMich Basketball game. The Wolverines and Spartans exhanged pies in the face for handwritten letters to Congress. Bemidji State also capitolized on the V-Day spirit with their cookie-decorating letter and call party to encourage students to take action and get educated on foreign assistance.
Massive UTEP ONE event on the quad!
And on that sugar-high note, so concludes Challenge 1. But no time to get settled, the games have just begun! Challenge 2: ONE Blackout, fighting for the 1 percent, is already underway. Get in the game on behalf of the world’s poorest here: http://campus.one.org/challenges.
-Roren Choi, ONE Campus team
