Danny Drysdale wrote the below post on the spot at Saturday’s ONE training. (Danny may be the one who finally puts us all out of work.)

“Hi, I’m Danny Drysdale, 11, and I am writing this blog about two things in two parts, firstly I would like to talk about today, today is the day my mom and I went to the ONE San Francisco Advocacy Training.

Today, as I stated above, I went to the advocacy training in San Francisco for ONE. The day was broken down into 8 parts: “Registration”, “ONE campaign 101″, Debt cancellation, fair trade, and developmental assistance”, “Break-out sessions: Learning more about discussing the issues”, “Lunch”, “How to advocate on behalf of ONE issues”, “Advocacy break-outs: Learning more about outreach and advocacy”, and “The future of ONE in San Francisco”.

Today I estimated that there was about 50-100 people at any given time during the training. I also noted, though sadly, that I was the only kid there. Though still I managed to learn much from it, as I’m sure everyone else did. The speeches themselves were mostly made by Stephanie Handler, Field Organizer for ONE, Anne Batchelder, Field Coordinator of ONE, and Andy Rigsby of CARE. They talked about debt cancellation, fair trade, developmental assistance, how to advocate on behalf of ONE issues, and outreach in our community. The training was extensive and very informative. We also went into break-out groups and had 1:00-1:15 long discussions about various different subjects.

All in all, I think that this training was very helpful and important. So please, if you live in the area in which any of these trainings are located, you should go. If there is no training near enough to where you live or where you are, or you can’t go for any other reason, then by all means please get the information that was in the training, which is available on the Saturday posts on the ONE Blog.

Now I wish to tell you a little bit about myself and my connection to ONE. For all my life I have been interested in advocacy and activism. Though i really became involved in these things in 2nd grade, when i started going to a wonderful after school program called Magic Apple, located in Aptos, CA. It is a 2nd to 6th grade after school program that all of its students go to after school. The teachers there, Jan and Fran Jiminez, taught me and Magic’s (that’s what we call Magic Apple) other students about poverty, global warming, and other problems in the world. They teach us things made for college level students and even above, so obviously it has produced many different people, included local politicians, pro surfers, scientists, and much more. So in that mix it has made many activists and advocates. I just happen to be ONE of them.

So now i am very involved in many things, ONE of which happens to be ONE. So now i hope to do many things, some of them include lobbying politicians, fighting AIDS and extreme poverty, and getting kids more involved in something that affects children just like them, education in third-world countries. I am hoping to achieve this by raising awareness with presentations at schools, public events, and anywhere a large amount of kids can be found. I am hoping to make kids realize that children in other countries, children just like them, can’t even go to school: right now 104 million children in third-world countries can’t go to school because of disease, debt, and many other problems they may face. I wish to start a new branch of ONE, ONEkids. Though i have much more to say i must end here, so please if you wish to learn more about ONE please explore the website. Or if you wish to speak to me, then please post a comment on this blog.

-Danny Drysdale, ONE member, Santa Cruz, CA”