Letter Dropping in St. Louis

Apr 30th, 2010 8:00 PM UTC
By Field

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!

-Cheryl Steele, ONE Member St. Louis

TAGS: From ONE Members, Missouri, St. Louis