Yesterday I stopped by Senator Bond and Senator McCaskill’s offices in St. Louis to drop of a bunch of hand written letters from local ONE members thanking the Senators for their leadership on past legislation and asking for support of $125 Million for the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations GAVI for fiscal year 2011.
The gentlemen I spoke to at the offices were nice and very interested in what I had to say. I told them that I represented over 24,000 ONE members in Missouri and explained what we do as advocates for the worlds poorest people. I also explained that GAVI has provided 267 immunization for children in developing countries and averted millions of deaths and expressed our hope that our Senators will support this important life-saving alliance by making sure it is robustly funded at $125 Million. We wrote these letters at our ONE workshop in St. Louis and the two senators’ staff were most impressed that we took time out of our day to hand deliver them!
They were very helpful, promised to open all the letters and then forward them to their Washington, DC offices!
I was extremely nervous because it was the first time I had been to the offices of my Senators. It was very exciting and I learned an important lesson; that I do have a voice in these important issues and that my Members of Congress are listening! I have written letters to the Senators before and received a response, but I wasn’t sure that it was doing any good. I didn’t realize that my letters were actually making it to DC, I thought they just made it to a recycle bin somewhere. I realize now that I can make a difference if I am willing to make my voice heard. When I hear people complain about different issues I simply ask them, “Why don’t you do something about it?” Some don’t understand they can do something to help the situation; I was one of those people until yesterday.
In a world of everything online, I think that taking the time to hand deliver these letters had a larger impact than just sending them in the mail. Everyone these days is busy, I am a college student getting ready for finals but it only took me a few minutes to volunteer and be an active advocate for ONE and the world’s poorest people.
From now on if I don’t agree with something, I will make sure my congressional representatives know about it. If I do agree I will make sure to thank them. And next time, I am bringing my friends with me!
ONE’s co-founder Bono met with President Obama and members of his national security staff earlier today to discuss the Administration’s development strategy heading into the upcoming G8 and G20 meetings in Canada and September’s UN Summit on the Millennium Development Goals. They talked about Bono’s recent trip to Senegal, Ghana, Mozambique, Kenya and South Africa and about how good governance and increased trade and investment are critical to driving economic growth on the African continent.
Bono made the following remarks after the meeting in the Oval Office:
With the first blackberry president, we discussed the power of new technology to empower activists and entrepreneurs across Africa, part of a new rising generation that’s boosting growth and governance and defying stereotypes.
A recurring theme was innovation. We agreed that there are simple technologies that need to be made more available to transform not only public health, but also agriculture, helping farmers check prices and weather patterns. While acknowledging these are difficult times for donor economies, we discussed the President’s food security initiative and agreed to encourage other countries who signed up to keep their commitment to invest $22 billion over 3 years.
The President and his team are preparing for the UN development summit in September where it will have to be admitted that not enough has been done – north or south of the equator – for and by the world’s poorest economies to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, which have as their target a halving of extreme poverty by 2015.
We also discussed the real results American aid is achieving — malaria deaths cut in half across the continent of Africa, 3 million Africans on life-saving AIDS medication and 42 million more children going to school. This is momentum that can be built upon now.
This week we launched a cool new project alongside SMITH Magazine, inviting people from all walks of life to write their Six Words on Why Moms Matter. Already we’ve gotten over 5,000 submissions, including a handful from some recognizable names:
“Love is what mothers do best” -Christy Turlington Burns
“Mothers tend the seeds of life” -Ellen Gustafson, Co-Founder and Executive VP, FEED Projects LLC
“It all starts with your mother” -Jessica Alba
“Mothers love, nurture, guide, and teach” – Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-CT)
“Carrying heaviest loads with lightest hearts” -Dana Perino, former White House press secretary
“Respecting all mothers, including planet Earth” -Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-OR)
And this is just a very small sample. You can check out all the 6-word submissions here, submit your own, and share it with your mother or an influential woman in your life.
As we flagged on Wednesday, Mo Ibrahim appeared on the Charlie Rose show this week. Their website has now posted the entire interview, which you can view here.
This entry in our series on “Vaccines: The Next 10 Years” comes from Muhammad Pate of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency in Nigeria:
I think making the next ten years of vaccines successful will require two main efforts: first, the billions of poorer populations in our world today should have access to the most basic services, with immunization through vaccines being top priority. The reality of our world today is that, for millions of people, if all it takes to prevent diseases is a clean cup of water, they will not be able to get it today. Countries that are not able to demonstrate progress in the next ten years in providing basic services to their populations, immunization being proxy indicator, should receive similar treatment as those denying fundamental human rights to their populace; second, there should be intensified efforts to increase population awareness around vaccine safety and efficacy. I believe that no parent would knowingly allow her child to miss a vaccine that is accessible if she knows it will benefit the child.
Nigeria has more than 20,000 rural health facilities that ought to be the retail outlets for basic services including immunization to the majority of Nigeria’s 150 million people. We at the National Primary Health Care Development Agency are working to ensure development of a system to deliver quality basic health services in a sustainable way in Nigeria through the rural facilities.
Immunization is the first priority for my agency, because it is cost-effective. I am working with the team here to ensure rural health facilities are supported by their State and Local Governments with basic equipment, essential drugs and human resources while we are transforming the vaccine cold chain and ensuring reliable supply of vaccines to all the facilities. We are also working closely with indigenous institutions that have far more reach and legitimacy than local governments to mobilize populations to ensure all children are immunized as a routine. These efforts have begun yielding results in that we have reduced unimmunized children by 34 percent in 2009 compared to 2008 according to UNICEF/WHO reports and drastically reduced circulation of wild polio virus.
Yesterday, ONE sister organization (RED), announced the launch of a new multi-media campaign that will include a new film directed by Lance Bangs and executive produced by Spike Jonze. The documentary is called “The Lazarus Effect” and borrows its name from the remarkable transformation of people infected with HIV/AIDS when given access to antiretroviral medicine. It will premiere on May 24th on HBO at 9pmET/8c, YouTube and Channel 4 in the UK.
Check out this great new video kicking off The Lazarus Effect Campaign, which features a wide range of familiar faces:
Niger food crisis takes children out of school – Officials and aid agencies are warning the food crisis in Niger could set back development in the West African country because children’s education is being disrupted by migration. At least 7.8 million people – nearly 60 percent of Niger’s population – will be threatened with severe food shortages this year, in a country already at the bottom of the UN Human Development Index. Providing food will allow families to stay in villages, and effectively keep children in school, according to the UN. (George Fominyen)
Washington Think-Tank offers a new approach to aid – The basic truth of development assistance is that helping people is far harder than it looks, according to columnist Nicholas Kristof, who highlights a new approach to aid where money is “paid out only if a country performed by raising certain benchmarks.” The idea is laid out in a new book by the Center for Global Development, which proposes to pay poor countries not for inputs but for outcomes. “No solution is going to work brilliantly,” says Kristof, “But I’d love to see experiments with cash-on-delivery aid to see if it gets more bang for the buck than existing systems.” (Nicholas Kristof)
Development leaders call out senator over aid cuts – Activist musician Bono has joined the list of development leaders protesting the proposed cuts in foreign aid funding put forth by Senate Budget Committee chairman Kent Conrad, calling on Washington to resist the cuts during a speech at the Atlantic Council Awards Dinner this week. A host of senior officials and lawmakers, including Secretary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates have come out against Conrad’s budget resolution, which would cut $4 billion from the president’s request for the State Department and the foreign assistance budget next year. (Josh Rogin)
Corruption ‘could derail Uganda’s development plan’ – A new report warns that without proper monitoring and evaluation, an ambitious development plan unveiled by Uganda this month could fail due to corruption and the country’s rapid population growth. Donors and Ugandan economists have commended the overall plan, which strives to set Uganda on the road to become a middle income country within 30 years, yet caution that accountability and transparency – particularly internal government reporting – would be key to successful implementation. (Eliza Anyangwe)
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.
Yesterday I stopped by Senator Bond and Senator McCaskill’s offices in St. Louis to drop of a bunch of hand written letters from local ONE members thanking the Senators for their leadership on past legislation and asking for support of $125 Million for the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations GAVI for fiscal year 2011.
