Aaron Banks

Yesterday, a few of us from ONE’s DC office took a day off from our usual work fighting global poverty to volunteer with an amazing organization called Food and Friends, located just a few metro stops away here in Washington, DC.

For more than 20 years, Food and Friends has been preparing, packaging and delivering meals and groceries to more than 1,400 people living with HIV/AIDS, cancer and other life-challenging illnesses in Washington, DC, Maryland and Virginia.

Some of the volunteers we met have been helping out for more than 10 years, and with a little help from Chef Peter, Adam, Rena and I were soon chopping vegetables right alongside them. If our eyes seem a little puffy, that’s because we’d just (barely) made it through the onions, when Leah took the photo below.

While we were in the kitchen, others members of the ONE team were out delivering meals and smiles, unpacking boxes and taking care of the “friends” side of things, by calling to say ‘hi’ and check in on some of Food and Friends’ clients.

Robyn and Matthew boxing up meals for delivery

Pooja and Jen delivering meals

I’d be remiss not to mention how great the food was. It took a lot of self-control not to sample the Israeli couscous salad and orange custard we were packing up. Fortunately, we got to try a piece of tollhouse pie at the end of the day. It was delicious.

But Food and Friends is about much more than the wide variety of tasty and healthy food they deliver to people who need it. They have an incredible kitchen team who works closely with nutritionists to provide meals that meet a wide range of dietary needs. And along with the food, they provide companionship and support to clients and their loved ones and caregivers.

Thanks to Jane, Don and the whole team at Food and Friends for welcoming us and letting us help out with the important work you do. To learn more, check out the Food and Friends website and follow them @foodandfriends on Twitter.

We’ve just wrapped up ONE’s Next Top T-shirt Challenge and are very excited about the winning design submitted by ONE member Valerie Strecker. We hope these T-shirts can play a part in spreading the word about ONE and the great work ONE members are doing to fight poverty and disease.

A few of you have asked to know more about the T-shirts themselves and their story is definitely worth telling.

The cotton used in the making of the T-shirts is grown in Northern Uganda, by subsistence farmers, who each have approximately five acres of land on which they grow both food and cash crops. The cotton used in the ONE tee’s was harvested from a group of approximately 16,000 certified organic farmers, many of whom lived for years in IDP Camps (internally displaced peoples camps) as a result of the war, and who have only returned to their homes and fields in the past few years. Cotton is planted between May and June and harvesting takes place between December and February.

The cotton is hand-picked by the farmers and then delivered to local store-rooms for later delivery to the ginnery where the seeds and any trash is removed and the remaining fibre is baled. Baled cotton is transported to Kampala, Uganda where it is processed in a factory owned by Phenix Logistics into yarn and then fabric. There are approximately 63 people employed full-time in the spinning, knitting and dyeing sections of the factory. 10 tonnes of fabric (about enough to make 40,000 tees) takes about 2 weeks to produce.

Fabric is delivered to a nearby garment factory where approximately 260 workers produce up to 1000 tee-shirts per day. This factory would be able to employ approximately 1800 people and produce 120,000 tee’s per month if it could secure orders for these volumes, reminding us of the importance of working to expand trade and investment opportunities in the developing world.

Both the textile mill and the garment factory have worked hard to improve worker conditions, both have undergone social compliance pre-audits and are due to be audited for WRAP certification by the end of this year. Apart from fair wages, both factories offer other benefits such as :

• Lunch subsidies
• Employee discounts
• Free Christmas hampers
• First Aid and/or clinics on site with ready access to doctors and hospitals if needed

We’re proud of our T-shirts and we hope you’ll be that much more excited about getting yours from the ONE Store knowing that they not only look great and help fund ONE’s advocacy activities, but also represent an investment in sustainable agriculture and industry in Africa.