By Julie Bordo, ONE Member and Congressional District Leader in Illinois’ 9th District
Forty-four years after its inception, Northwestern University’s Dillo Day—an annual all-day music festival that takes place on the last Saturday of May—served as fertile ground for pushing personal boundaries (my own and others!) and learning more about the world.
As a Congressional District Leader for IL-9, I was fortunate to get the okay of the organizers, entirely comprised of students, to allow The ONE Campaign to be the sole not-for-profit organization tabling at Dillo Day. So we took our global nutrition advocacy to the next generation.
It couldn’t have been a more welcoming cool, blue-sky day on the shores of Lake Michigan, serving up a feast of music for the more-than-12,000 attendees. Luck was on our side in every respect: Our table was placed along the most trodden path and, even more fortuitous, next to the free pizza tent.
We started a pretty good banter right away with the pizza guys and began helping each other out, sharing a chair, loaning a Sharpie. My favorite moment was when the Free Pizza Guy, who was echoing our refrain of “Help Fight World Hunger!” with “Free Pizza!” combined the two in a chorus of “Have Some Free Pizza, then Help Fight World Hunger!”
With that jump start, we were able to get one nutrition card signed per minute that day. Three hundred cards later, it seems that when it comes to global poverty, we’re all partners in the fight.
