Just got back to DC (and 60 degree weather!?) from snowy Park City, Utah, where the ONE team spent an amazing weekend at the Sundance Film Festival creating a new video campaign to support our big push to get to “the beginning of the end of AIDS” by 2015.
It was our first year at the festival, and it was not only a great place to film some fantastic actors for our new campaign (Blythe Danner, Allison Janney, Richard Jenkins, Ice-T, AnnaLynne McCord, Edward James Olmos, Jason Ritter, Melanie Lynsky and more), but we also had the chance to connect with artists, directors and other storytellers who shared advice on how ONE can do an even better job of getting the word out on the progress that is being made on AIDS and the other critical issues we work on.
ONE will be reporting live from the Sundance Film Festival in Utah from January 20 to 22. Stay tuned to the ONE Blog for more updates.
Greetings from Park City, Utah and the Sundance Film Festival! ONE is on the ground in Park City thanks to the great team at the Sundance Channel, who reached out to us recently to invite ONE to be their official nonprofit partner at this year’s festival. We were thrilled to be asked to come out and join the Sundance Channel at their headquarters this weekend, where we’ll shoot a new video campaign that will help raise awareness of our push to get to “the beginning of the end of AIDS” by 2015.
The new campaign won’t be released until late February, but starting this weekend, we’ll be sharing behind-the-scenes photos and other content from Sundance through the ONE Blog, Facebook and Twitter accounts — so keep checking back here through the weekend.
ONE cofounder Bono and Somali-born singer and poet K’naan interviewed with CNN’s Anderson Cooper last night on the growing crisis in Somalia and urged the world to put a higher priority on responding to what has become a humanitarian catastrophe.
Last night, ONE cofounder Bono and Somali–born singer and poet K’naan met in Minneapolis with several Somali Minnesotans to discuss and draw attention to the growing famine in Somalia, where a food crisis has led to the deaths of tens of thousands of people and is putting nearly 12 million more lives at risk. There has been very little coverage of the crisis in the US media to date, despite the gravity of the situation.
The lack of food and water in Somalia, brought on by the worst drought in 60 years and exacerbated by the lack of any governing structure following decades of conflict, has caused hundreds of thousands of people to flee the country, often on foot. Families are walking for days to reach refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia, with thousands dying along the way. The group called for swift action from world leaders at an emergency UN meeting in Rome on Monday.
After the meeting, Bono said: “The crisis in the Horn is going to be solved by Somalis taking control, taking charge. I’m here, and ONE is here, to listen and learn and to serve their efforts. We’re here to sound the alarm bell in the United States, where there has been very little media coverage of the food crisis — and now a famine which is threatening the lives and livelihoods of 12 million. This is monstrous. Pay close attention, this is a defining moment for the world. History will be very harsh if we don’t move quickly. There is a crisis summit on Monday in Rome. World leaders in the region and around the globe must step in and do their part to address the immediate crisis, and to invest in long-term agriculture development so we can finally stop the cycle of famine on the continent.”
K’naan also commented: “I am deeply saddened by what’s happening in my country, and in the region in general. But at the moment I am also incredibly energized by a new sense of optimism. We are seeing a new generation of young leaders who will not take the victim’s seat, but who instead stand proudly with an activated devotion to help their own. This is not the famine of old, this time, we will do the rescuing, but we cannot do it alone and are counting on the support of our brothers and sisters who are in the position to assist us. Think of this as an opportunity to fertilize a new African legacy. Let us together remove the psychological fence surrounding the hearts of the world. This is as important as life itself.”
Joining Bono and K’naan in the meeting were Mohammed Idris, Executive Director of the American Relief Agency for the Horn of Africa (ADRHA), Daniel Wordsworth, President and CEO of the American Refugee Committee, and 3 young Somali Minnesotans who are active in relief efforts to address the crisis: Ruqia Mohamed, Shukri Abdinur and Mohamed Samatar.
Putting some wind at the back of ONE members who have been lobbying their senators to oppose cuts that will cost lives, our cofounder Bono was in DC this week. He met with members of Congress on both sides of the aisle about the importance of preserving smart, effective programs that are delivering major results in the fight against extreme poverty, AIDS and malaria. Heading to the Hill, he met with Rep. Kay Granger, as well as a number of Republican senators organized by Senator Mike Johanns and a number of Democratic senators organized by Sen. Chris Coons, before stopping at the White House to meet with several senior staff working on the budget.
At ONE, we know that Congress is faced with making difficult choices on the budget, but effective American programs are saving millions of lives and putting tens of millions of children in school — all for less than 1 percent of the federal budget. The House budget cut several key programs that are delivering AIDS and malaria medicine to people who desperately need it and would help poor farmers grow more food for their families and communities. ONE is urging the Senate to avoid similar cuts and hopes to work with both parties to ensure these effective programs – which represent just a tiny fraction of the overall budget – get the funding they need.
As world leaders converge on New York for the UN General Assembly meeting this week, ONE cofounder Bono writes today in his column for the New York Times that one test of the meeting’s success will be whether leaders recommit to the Millennium Development Goals, “possibly the most visionary deal that most people have never heard of.”
Bono writes of the many successes achieved in part because of the goals – from millions of lives saved from preventable disease, to tens of millions more kids in school – and calls on leaders to do three specific things: 1.) fully fund the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria and the campaign to ensure no child is born with HIV by 2015, 2.) enact transparency legislation in Britain, the EU and across the G20 that echoes the recently passed US legislation requiring energy companies to report payments to government officials and 3.) better track world leaders pledges and progress against them, so we know what has been promised and whether it has been delivered.
This week we’ve been featuring a wealth of content courtesy of The Globe and Mail which was edited by ONE’s Bono and Bob Geldof on Monday.
In one feature on the future of Africa, we asked more than 16 leading figures from Africa and the West to tell us how they think Africa will impact the rest of the world this century. You can check out their answers here.
ONE is campaigning to ensure that the Congressional budget does not cut foreign assistance programs like Feed the Future that help people break the cycle of poverty and hunger.
The Horn of Africa is experiencing its worst drought in 60 years. More than 11 million people, mostly nomadic pastoralists and farmers in south-central Somalia, north-eastern Kenya, and south-eastern Ethiopia, are severely lacking access to food.
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.
As aid agencies warn more than 9 million people could be affected by a food crisis in East Africa, world leaders are failing to keep their 2009 promises to tackle the causes of chronic hunger and support farmers in the world's poorest countries.
