Mar 15th, 2011 4:24 PM UTC
By Alicia Blázquez
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Check out what our ONE colleagues and members in Germany are doing in the global fight against HIV/AIDS.
Over a quarter of a million ONE members have spoken out for a world in which no child is born with HIV by 2015. Last month, our British colleagues delivered the signature to the British development minister Andrew Mitchell, and last week, it was Germany’s turn!
We delivered the signatures to Gudrun Kopp, State Secretary at the Development Ministry. She thanked our ONE members for taking action and promised that the development ministry will pay special attention to mother and child health. She announced that the target group of women and mothers will be considered more strongly in programs supported by the German development ministry. In addition the ministry wants to deploy more ambulant health workers and train them as midwifes, to make sure that women in rural areas have access to their health services.
Making a nod to the upcoming decision about the German development budget for 2012, the State Secretary stated that the development ministry wants to use more aid more effectively in order to improve the health situation of mothers and children in development countries. As ONE, we can second this. It’s an easy equation: more aid + more efficiently = more saved lives. The German ONE team will now monitor closely if and how the development ministry makes good on these promises. We’ll keep you posted!
P.S. Check out more pictures from the handover on Facebook!
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Apr 29th, 2010 4:58 PM UTC
By Alicia Blázquez
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Written with Barbara Hundt
The first ONE volunteer workshop for volunteers from Berlin and the surrounding area took place last Saturday. Let it be said that we not only applaud the volunteers’ courage for attending this first-ever event, but also greatly appreciate their willingness to spend a sunny Saturday with us!
The day began with a joint breakfast and a comprehensive introduction about how ONE came to be, how it operates and its goals. In light of the upcoming Millennium Development Review Summit in New York, we also introduced the volunteers to the development goals before they got the chance to develop and present a quick overview about one of the goals to the rest of the group. Of course, we also took the time to brainstorm about how the volunteers can join the fight against extreme poverty – with concrete results!
They decided to form a Berlin ONE group and get together every last Friday of the month in order to plan activities. In addition, the volunteers learned how to write advocacy letters – some delegates can expect to receive ONE mail within the next days! Last but not least, we practiced approaching and recruiting new ONE members via role playing. We all know role playing can be quite difficult. Still, the exercise was actually very well-received. As one participant put it: “Although role playing is always somewhat horrible – it’s always good practice! Therefore, do it again!”
We came to a similar conclusion, not just regarding the role playing but the workshop as a whole. We are planning to conduct further workshops with ONE volunteers in areas beyond Berlin. Working with these motivated individuals was a lot of fun and we look forward to the next time!
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Dec 22nd, 2009 11:12 AM UTC
By Alicia Blázquez
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Earlier this month, during the German government’s 2010 budget negotiations, ONE ran a campaign asking the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, to keep her promise towards people living in extreme poverty. Germany has committed itself to invest 0.51% of its gross national income to development by 2010 and to increase this share to 0.7% by 2015. So the question was whether these commitments would be reflected in the new budget.
Angela Merkel has repeated this promise several times, and we expected her words to be matched by action even in difficult budgetary times and with a new German government in office. Thousands of German ONE supporters joined us to voice this expectation by signing our petition to the Chancellor. And many even phoned the government‘s hotline to personally stress the importance of living up to our commitments.
Unfortunately, it looks like this time our voices have not been heard. Last week, the government presented the draft budget and there is only one way to describe it: the budget proposal equals a breach of promise, as the following figures illustrate.
- 300 million Euros – the increase the new Development Minister, Dirk Niebel, had asked for before the start of the budget negotiations.
- 67 million Euros – the increase he was able to get. This equals an increase of the development budget of no more than 1.2%
- 13% – the growth of last year’s development budget when the ministry was still lead by Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul.
- 3 billion Euros – what would have been necessary in addition to last year’s budget for Germany to reach its target for 2010. The fact that Germany is now missing this target means that from 2010 on, Germany will have to increase its development budget by 1.5 billion Euros every year to reach the target for 2015.
So as 2009 ends the news isn’t as great as we hoped here in Berlin. But we have to look forward. 2010 is going to be a very important year for Africa. It’s the year our promises are due, and it’s also the year of the football World Cup in South Africa. The whole world will be looking at the continent – at the challenges it is facing, but also at the amazing African success stories. We have to take advantage of the public attention and get the German government back on track towards the 0.7% goal.
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Dec 3rd, 2009 2:31 PM UTC
By Alicia Blázquez
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Alicia Blázquez from ONE’s Germany office checks in with this great report:
The ONE team in Berlin remind Chancellor Merkel of her aid promises
This week, the members of the German government are coming together to negotiate the budget for 2010. Which ministry is going to get how much? Will Germany keep its Overseas Development Aid (ODA) promises? Whatever happens this week’s negotiations will set the course for 2010.
Germany has repeatedly promised to contribute its share to the fight against extreme poverty and preventable diseases. In 2005 Chancellor Merkel spoke to the German parliament and committed to the international ODA goals – according to which Germany needs to invest 0.51% by 2010 and 0.7 %of the gross national income to development assistance. And in early 2009, in the midst of the financial and economic crisis, Chancellor Merkel reiterated again the importance of increasing Germany’s ODA even in tough financial times.
Now Chancellor Merkel needs to live up to her own words. We remember them, and hope that she does too. But just in case we’ve launched a new campaign to remind the Chancellor of her own commitments. We are asking German ONE supporters to sign a petition to the Chancellor, and supporters have even called the hotline of the German government to make sure the message is being heard.
Today the ONE team in Berlin, wearing masks of the Chancellor and equipped with huge speech bubbles with her own words, went to the Brandenburg Gate, in the very heart Berlin’s government district.
Let’s hope the Chancellor gets the message.
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May 27th, 2009 12:19 PM UTC
By Alicia Blázquez
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Last week, the German city of Bremen hosted this year’s Protestant Church Festival– ‘Kirchentag’. This is an important biannual event not just for Protestants, but for everyone. A glance at the list of prominent visitors underscores its significance: Chancellor Angela Merkel, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, President Horst Köhler and Nobel Peace Prize winner Martti Ahtisaari were among the more than 100,000 visitors – as was ONE!
Issues of global justice have always featured prominently in the Kirchentag’s 60 year history but at a time of economic crisis these were more pressing than ever. German Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul took the opportunity in Bremen to call for renewed efforts to combat the effects of the crisis on suffering developing countries. Similarly, World Bank president Robert Zoellick demanded more and better aid for poor countries – considering that they are the least to blame for the present crisis: “It would be a tragedy if the poorest countries were the ones to pay the highest price.”
A ONE team informed Kirchentag visitors about the current challenges in developing countries. We handed out postcards and whitebands and asked participants to support the Article ONE with their signature. The Article ONE calls on the future German government (elections will be held in September) to keep their internationally given commitments to help end extreme poverty. We were supported by ONE member Ro’Shan and his band who improvised a gig in the street and in between their songs asked listeners to sign the Article ONE. Thanks to the attention raised by the band’s fantastic music, we were able to collect many sign ups and have many interesting discussions on development with the audience.
-Alicia Blázquez Fernández
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