Jenna recently graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park where she studied political and economic history. Originally from the UK, she has also lived and studied in Oslo, Norway, St. Andrews, Scotland, Cape Town and Johannesburg, South Africa and Annapolis, Md., but has recently moved to Washington D.C. Previously, Jenna has interned with a start-up non-profit project, the anti-corruption law firm TRACE International and the National Outdoor Leadership School. She is thrilled to be working with the new media team at ONE.
When the ONE intern team went to Capitol Hill a couple of weeks ago to deliver your signatures from our petitions to the Senate, I know that we were all struck by the power that your names can have on decisions made by Congress.
With this in mind -– and with foreign aid currently at risk of devastating cuts –- we began to think of ways to remind our senators that with just 1 percent of the federal budget, the US can save millions of lives every year. Soon enough, we had our event: ONE Photo for Foreign Aid. Partnered with the ONE Campus Challenge (OCC) chapter at George Washington University here in DC, we had the chance to talk about the importance of preserving foreign aid and offered complimentary hot cocoa (complete with whipped cream and marshmallows, of course!) to everyone willing to stop and take a picture in our photo booth in support of our petition.
Thrilled by the great response we received from everyone involved, we took more than 120 photos of students and staff against the cuts in just three hours, and discussed ONE’s work in fighting extreme poverty with many more.
To generate an even greater buzz, we also gave other OCC chapters across the country the opportunity to run their own photo booth petitions as part of their third challenge of the semester. As with all their projects, the enthusiastic responses of campus leaders from Michigan to Florida to Wisconsin have been fantastic, reminding us all that with our members’ support, there is so much we can achieve.
Take a second to check out all our photos from the event on our ONE Photo Booth Flickr account. And be sure to stay tuned for more updates -– we’ll be delivering all our photos to Congress before they vote on the budget next week.
Global Entrepreneurship Week, the largest celebration of innovative start-ups and new economic growth, kicked off yesterday. Founded in 2008 by former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown and a group of other world leaders and private enterprises, the week-long event has quickly grown to include an impressive 118 participating countries, 24,000 partner organizations and more than 37,000 activities across the globe.
Travel to South Africa, and I’m sure that, like I was when I visited last year, you will be blown away by the creativity and color of the street art that decorates much of the country. From the hand-drawn murals that adorn school walls to positive messages painted onto bridges, office blocks and even government buildings, you can’t help but notice how much time and care has been put into this public artwork designed for all to enjoy.
For last week’s ONE Act a Week, we asked you to write a personal note to USAID Administrator Raj Shah and call for a US pledge of $375 million for the Global Partnership for Education at Tuesday’s replenishment in Copenhagen.
In just three days, we received 130 awesome messages from our ONE members. We sent those messages to Administrator Shah on Monday afternoon in this tweet:
With World Pneumonia Day coming up on November 12, there are so many things you can do to help spread awareness using social media. Here are some of our favorite tools, videos and resources on the deadly disease that we found around the web.
A visit to the doctor for a shot here in the US may not be the most pleasant moment of your week, but if you think about it, we’re all pretty lucky to have the opportunity to have those injections in the first place -– and with no need to fear that they may not be safely delivered.
For much of the developing world, however, such fears are necessary. Each year, unsafe injections account for 230,000 new HIV transmissions, 21,000,000 new cases of hepatitis and a total of 1.3 million deaths, all staggering and – even more disturbingly — completely unnecessary.
Yesterday was an exciting afternoon for the ONE intern team, thanks to a trip to Capitol Hill. Making visits to senators from all 50 states, we delivered the names of the thousands of ONE members who have signed our agriculture and budget petitions nationwide along with hundreds of hand-written letters from passionate foreign aid advocates.
Right now, some of the world's biggest oil companies are fighting to keep some of their deals with foreign governments secret. Let's tell big oil we won't be bullied.
Cuts to poverty-fighting programs won't balance the budget, but they will set back progress on Canada's development priorities and risk jeopardizing existing investments.
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.
