Follow Friday is a chance for people on Twitter to recommend other people, organizations, and movements on Twitter. We at @ONECampaign like to take the opportunity to give shout-outs to other partner organizations and people who are making a difference in the fight against extreme poverty.
Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to give kids worldwide a fighting chance against pneumonia. Go to www.missionpneumonia.org, and play Save the Children’s new game. Find out about childhood pneumonia and how Save the Children works to help parents and community health workers overcome obstacles to treating a child whose life hangs in the balance.
On November 2, 2009, Save the Children is joining with other groups worldwide to bring attention to the terrible toll that pneumonia takes in developing countries. A child dies of pneumonia every 15 seconds. That comes to about 2 million lives lost each year. But, with your help, more than 1 million lives could be saved by making affordable health measures available – including vaccines, and antibiotics – and by bringing health care closer to children’s homes. That’s just what Save the Children is doing every day to save children’s lives in 40 countries.
Now we’re enlisting you to help us prevent pneumonia from striking susceptible children and protecting their lives when it does. Here’s how:
Play the game at www.missionpneumonia.org Learn what it takes to fight pneumonia around the world by taking our quiz.
Sign the petition. Show your elected officials that you support expanding the reach of life-saving tools – vaccines, antibiotics and trained health workers – to more mothers and babies in poor countries.
Pneumonia is the #1 killer of children under age 5, taking more lives than malaria, AIDS and measles combined. By accepting this mission, you can help keep kids healthy.
Yesterday Senator Casey (D-Penn.), who has been supportive of ONE’s priorities, made a speech on the Senate floor to encourage his fellow Senators to take action to address global food insecurity and pass the Global Food Security Act. Sen. Casey introduced the Global Food Security Act with Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.). They both serve on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The bill provides $10 billion over five years (2010 to 2014) for a coordinated effort to address global food insecurity, including long-term agricultural initiatives in the developing world.
With more than 1 billion hungry people around the world, and increasing pressures on smallholder farmers like droughts, flooding, and volatile food prices, we have a humanitarian motivation to take action, as Sen. Casey mentioned in his speech. Sen. Casey also described how food insecurity is a national security issue:
… global hunger is indeed a national security issue. Instability arising from conflict over access to food is a documented and real problem. Last year’s food crisis unfortunately brought this into acute focus. We saw it in Somalia, where struggles to gain access to food have enveloped population centers in violence. We have seen it in Egypt during last year’s bread riots. And we have seen it in Haiti where hospital beds filled last year with those injured during food riots. Increased instability in any of these countries has a direct impact on U.S. national interests. There are a host of examples from across the world that illustrate the scope of this problem.
Sen. Casey also praised the administration’s effort to address global food insecurity:
I would like to applaud this Administration’s current efforts to help the hungry. In September, the White House announced the Global Hunger and Food Security Initiative, a comprehensive approach to food security based on country and community led planning and collaboration. Secretary Clinton is leading a visionary ‘whole of government’ effort to help the world’s hungry. As the Administration works out the details of implementation, I hope and trust that we will maintain a sharp focus on the ability of small scale farmers to grow food at an increased and sustainable rate.
Be sure to check out the press release and speech, which includes a more detailed description of the objectives of the Global Food Security Act.
This morning I posted an article by Dr. Orin Levine about World Pneumonia Day that appeared in Global Health Magazine and wouldn’t you know it, now we have this great contribution to the ONE Blog from him! -Chris
What do Hugh Laurie, Gwyneth Paltrow, Senator Bill Frist, and Grammy winner Angélique Kidjo have in common? They are all lending their voices to the growing call to stop child pneumonia. Health leaders from across the globe— Rwandan Health Minister Richard Sezibera, Samir Saha from Bangladesh and Lulu Bravo from the Philippines, to name a few—are commemorating the first ever World Pneumonia Day today. Year after year, this leading killer of children has gone unrecognized, but like me, these advocates believe we can put an end to this disease. Stand with us and say: Pneumonia no more.
The goal of World Pneumonia Day is simple: to stand up for the children who lose their lives to this preventable, treatable disease. Every 15 seconds a child is killed by pneumonia. But we can stop the clock and save millions if vaccines, antibiotics and protective measures like breastfeeding are universally implemented.
Sounding the call to action in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is Michel Nyembwe, who organized a televised football match to bring attention to the disease; in Nigeria, Adegoke Falade is speaking on the radio about pneumonia. In India, a Great Pneumonia March is turning thousands of heads in rural Uttar Pradesh, and a mass media campaign is hitting Pakistan TV. In the United States, advocates from health, development, government and business communities will meet in New York City for a summit dedicated to global pneumonia control.
Want to join in the action and stand up against pneumonia? Check out this handy map to see what events are taking place in your country. But no matter where you are, showing your support for World Pneumonia is simple. Just put on a pair of your favorite blue jeans and tell your friends about pneumonia, the most solvable problem in global health.
This weekend, ONE members in the Twin Cities (Minneapolis / St Paul, MN) region are trying something a little different in spreading the word about getting involved to help the worlds poorest people.
On Sunday November 1 from 6-7pm (Central), they will be broadcasting across community radio airwaves on KFAI’s “The Wave Project”. Active ONE members will be talking about advocacy with ONE, the issues, and sharing success stories of the governments and citizens who are successfully moving out of poverty. During the show, a ONE staff member will also join in via a call in interview to discuss a few issues in greater depth.
The show can be heard in The Twin Cities on 90.3FM. Around the world, listeners can tune into www.kfai.org and listen to a live audio stream at 6pm Central Time.
Last weekend several of us went in to the studio and recorded the commercial for the show which was a lot of fun. But more than just having a good time, we are really looking forward to engaging and informing listeners in our community who have not heard of ONE.
You might be familiar with CNN Heroes. It’s an annual project that allows viewers to nominate and then vote for people in their community and in their country who are making a positive impact on others.
There are currently 10 such heroes profiled on CNN.com, all of them fascinating and inspiring. But I was particularly struck by two stories of individuals with very different backgrounds making a difference in Africa.
Doc Hendley is a former bartender from Blowing Rock, North Carolina who has traveled to Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda and Cambodia to help build clean water wells and sanitation systems. He even has his own nonprofit, Wine to Water.
You can watch his story here:
Betty Makoni is a 37-year-old woman from Zimbabwe who, through her Girl Child Network, is fighting to protect her country’s young girls from sexual abuse.
In the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof–columnist, writer, and author of the new book “Half the Sky”– weighs in on a very political issue in a unique way. He makes the case that building schools and investing in education is a good idea in any country, and especially in countries like Afghanistan that are working to fend off extremism and rebuild their economies and governments.
Citing the work of Greg Mortenson and CARE in Afghanistan, Kristof argues “that there is still vast scope for greater investment in education, health and agriculture in Afghanistan.”
You can read excerpts from the piece below, and the full article here:
Schools are not a quick fix or silver bullet any more than troops are. But we have abundant evidence that they can, over time, transform countries, and in the area near Afghanistan there’s a nice natural experiment in the comparative power of educational versus military tools.
For roughly the same cost as stationing 40,000 troops in Afghanistan for one year, we could educate the great majority of the 75 million children worldwide who, according to Unicef, are not getting even a primary education. We won’t turn them into graduate students, but we can help them achieve literacy. Such a vast global education campaign would reduce poverty, cut birth rates, improve America’s image in the world, promote stability and chip away at extremism.
ONE is campaigning to ensure that the Congressional budget does not cut foreign assistance programs like Feed the Future that help people break the cycle of poverty and hunger.
The Horn of Africa is experiencing its worst drought in 60 years. More than 11 million people, mostly nomadic pastoralists and farmers in south-central Somalia, north-eastern Kenya, and south-eastern Ethiopia, are severely lacking access to food.
2011 marks 30 years since the first cases of AIDS were documented. Take a closer look at the specific, achievable goals we must hit by 2015 to make this year the beginning of the end of AIDS.
As aid agencies warn more than 9 million people could be affected by a food crisis in East Africa, world leaders are failing to keep their 2009 promises to tackle the causes of chronic hunger and support farmers in the world's poorest countries.
