1. Last week, we decried the 220 tons of food waste that pile up in the world’s richest countries every year. Check out this poverty-fighting project through Fair Trade USA’s Gift of Fairness. It’s not traditional, but financing a girl’s education or supplying a clinic with a doctor will last longer than the bags of chocolate kisses that unfailingly disappear in a heartbeat.

2. Some of us can’t resist February chocolate sales. Luckily there’s lots of fair trade goodies like those from the folks at Divine Chocolate. Their cocoa comes from Ghana’s Kuapa Kokoo, a fair trade cooperative that owns nearly half of the company. The farmers participate in running the company and have a say in the industry at large. That’s sweeter than their heart-shaped chocolates — which is definitely saying something.

3. Our partners at World Vision have made available a With All My Heart gift set. As part of their Given product line, 30 percent of the order goes toward projects dedicated to women and girls. It includes a T-shirt, a necklace and a soapstone paperweight, all decked out in a red heart theme.

4. ONE’s sister organization (RED) always has the color of love in stock. Half the proceeds from each purchase goes to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, so you can rest assured that whether you’re stepping up the beat with Dr. Dre headphones or stepping in style with a pair of red Converse, you’re doing your part this Valentine’s Day.

5. As any advice columnist will tell you, you’ve got to invest in a relationship. fashionABLE, an Ethiopia-based nonprofit, has opportunities to invest in a woman and her family. The organization works to expand opportunities for Ethiopian women, so purchases do a lot more than make your valentine look stylish.

6. And we can’t forget our very own ONE Store! Just because we love you, we’re giving 10 percent off all orders with the promo code FB10VONE. Purchases of $55 or more qualify for free standard US shipping with the code SHIPVONE. Happy shopping!

Do you have any other great Valentine’s Day gift ideas that give back? Let us know in the comments below.

Last Saturday, the town of Dexter, Mich., came together to celebrate Airplane Day, a unique advocacy event that commemorates the life and legacy of Laurence Carolin, a Dexter teen who passed away due to brain cancer two years ago.

Laurence was a truly incredible and selfless individual who was passionately involved with ONE and committed to raising awareness about the fight against poverty and disease. He even dedicated the last year of his life to this cause and donated all of his Make-A-Wish Foundation money to the United Nations Foundation, one of ONE’s partners. Laurence’s compassion was so inspiring that he was not only invited to meet Bono (a co-founder of ONE), but even inspired his family and friends to commit to carrying on his legacy of activism. Airplane Day is the culmination of this promise on the date that marks Laurence’s arrival in the US after he was adopted from his birth country of South Korea.

This year’s Airplane Day was an amazing experience and a true testament to the ability of just one voice to motivate and mobilize an entire community. In fact, the event was largely organized by a new ONE chapter at Dexter High School that was founded by a group of Laurence’s friends. Our University of Michigan ONE chapter was also empowered by Laurence’s story, so some of our leaders have been working closely with this group to help establish and run the organization. Through the combined efforts of Laurence’s friends, family and both ONE chapters, the event was a huge success, filled with great music, inspirational speeches and advocacy of all forms.

Furthermore, this event brought together people of all ages to learn about Laurence’s passions and ONE. Thus, throughout the event, both ONE groups were able to engage participants in conversations about ONE’s mission and inspire them to get involved. By the end of the night, we had signed up around 50 new members. We also generated 32 petition signatures for Feed the Future, 35 photo petitions to President Obama, and more than 40 letters to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Furthermore, the event inspired many more to pledge to hold their national leaders accountable in the fight to end extreme poverty and disease as well as to donate money to the United Nations Foundation.

Observing the ripple effects of Laurence’s compassion on Saturday was extremely moving. Though Laurence may no longer be with us, I truly believe his legacy will never die and his selfless dedication to ending extreme poverty will continue to empower all of us until one day his dream becomes a reality.

-Chelsea Davis, ONE member, Michigan

I grew up in West Africa. I lived in Togo and la Côte D’Ivoire until I was 14 years old. Ever since then, I always wanted to come back. Africa gets in your blood, and stays forever like malaria. That is cliché, but true. I heard about CURE and the great work they do through a friend, so when the opportunity to come to Niger came up, I jumped at it. We jumped at it, I should say. My wife, who works here with me, is actually much more jumpy than I am.

The CURE hospital is primarily a children’s hospital, and we specialize in treating burn victims and children with cleft lip or cleft palate and clubfoot. As spiritual director, I provide spiritual and emotional support to the patients and staff at the hospital. In practice, this can mean many different things. My job description is pretty vague, and purposely so, I think, because it is hard to define what I do. I work very closely with the hospital’s social worker in trying to determine what the needs of our patients are and what we can do to help. Giving a child a life-changing, life-saving surgery is a big deal, but I am realizing more and more that often, it is just scratching the surface.

For example, consider this (hypothetical but very typical) case: A mother of a child with cleft lip lives in a village a couple hundred kilometers from Niamey. She hears about our hospital, decides to come. She gathers together all the money she can for the trip; maybe she sells a few chickens, or some roasted peanuts. Usually, it does not amount to very much. She is not used to handling money anyway. She comes to the hospital and her child is treated, but she learns that they have to stay in the hospital for three weeks. She also learns that the child will be fed, but she will have to feed herself. Her money runs out after the first week, and she has nothing to feed her other baby (the one that is always on her back) or herself. Also, it is cold at night and her child does not have anything warm to wear.

So we try and figure out how we can help, aside from the medical care that we provide. There are so many things that I would have never thought of, and I am learning new things all the time. There are also a lot of emotional issues to deal with, for the patients and for their family members. People with disabilities are viewed with suspicion, discriminated against and generally mistreated. Usually people say that their condition is because of some sin they committed, or the result of a curse someone put on them. Life is very difficult even for people that are totally healthy in Niger, for the sick and disabled it is nearly unbearable.

They are suffering physically, but often they are also traumatized by the way they have been treated. Having a disabled child is a burden for the whole family, and community, in many different ways. Not least among them is the financial burden it represents. It is another mouth to feed, and usually one that cannot work. The surgeries we provide are very literally helping people get back on their feet, back to a normal, productive life, and back to work. They alleviate a real burden, which frees up resources for other things, and the impact of these operations is felt well beyond the patient and immediate family.

The culture in Niger is very communal. When you talk to someone, you are not just talking to them, you are talking to their whole family, their whole village, their whole tribe. The same goes for healing. When a child is brought to the hospital and receives treatment, it is not just the child that is healed. The child’s family is healed as well, and their whole community is blessed by it. Almost every time we talk to parents after their child has been healed, their first reaction is, “Wait until we get back home and everyone sees this!”
Everything and everyone is connected.

But more importantly, at CURE, we try to encourage and empower people, even as we offer them help. We do this by asking the patients and their families to contribute towards their own healing. We ask them to pay for their surgery if they can. If they cannot pay for all of it, we ask them to pay for a part of it. Even if it is a tiny fraction of the real cost, it makes a difference, for us and for them. Even if they cannot pay anything at all, they are still expected to contribute in other ways. They have to follow the post-op instructions from the doctor (which can be quite extensive and can take months, especially with the clubfoot cases). They have to come to their follow up appointments. They have to take their medicine. Sometimes they even have to change the dressing, etc.

The point is, they are involved in the process. They come to our hospital for help, but not for a handout. They don’t want a handout. They come to us for help, but we try to give them a chance to help themselves.

To sum it up, I love my job. Basically, I am here to welcome those who are usually unwelcome, to care for the uncared for, and to love the unloved. I am always blown away by how generous the Nigerien people are.

Even if they have nothing, they will share with you the little they do have. And they are really full of joy. Niger may be one of the world’s poorest countries, but they have a wealth of natural resources: smiles, handshakes, laughter and general friendliness abound. Also, it seems to me like they really embrace the fullness of life, both the good and the bad. They don’t ignore the aspects of life that are difficult. You can’t when you live in a place like this, where signs of poverty and hardship are everywhere, and drought and famine are common. But they also don’t dwell on the hardship. They don’t sit around feeling sorry for themselves, letting hopelessness set in. They take the good with the bad because they recognize that life is filled with both good and bad.

Read more about Josh and Julie’s life in Niger on their blog, http://joshjulieblog.wordpress.com/.

Twelve years ago, Equatorial Guinea made world sports headlines in the Sydney Olympics when Eric Moussambani posted the slowest record for swimming the 100m freestyle at an Olympic competition.

Eric had trained in the pool of a hotel in Malabo, the capital city, because there were no Olympic-size pools in the country.

Now, as the Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) kicked-off this week in Equatorial Guinea, only two years after South Africa became the first African nation to host a major world sporting event, many Equatoguineans feel a surge of pride to co-host star African footballers like Yaya Toure, Didier Drogba, Michael Essien and many others.

But at what cost? One can’t eat pride. Pride can’t pull you out of poverty or illiteracy. Pride alone can’t build basic infrastructure like roads, bridges, reliable electricity and internet. You can’t drink, bathe in, nor cook with pride. Pride is no substitute for basic medical care.

My country’s people understand that, if managed responsibly, oil and gas revenues could prove a blessing for our once-impoverished nation and lift us all out of poverty. But instead, our government is choosing to bet the house on fleeting, high profile events like a football tournament, an $830-million luxury resort to host the 2011 African Union summit, dozens of presidential palaces and monuments exalting the president.

We Africans have seen this before. Our rulers demonstrate through actions their misguided belief that modernization is synonymous with development, that glistening skyscrapers, stadiums and luxury resorts somehow magically dissolve poverty.

They circulate slick press releases touting ribbon-cutting ceremonies for stadiums and monuments. What they fail to mention is that most of their people still lack running water, electricity or functioning hospitals.

Sadly, what is happening in Equatorial Guinea is not new. Yet the widespread poverty and inequality in this small nation of 700 000 people and the missed opportunity by our government to significantly improve the well-being of all people with our natural resources, make it a particularly shameful example of the lack of leadership that has afflicted far too many Africans countries since the end of colonialism.

My country’s government remains tone deaf to the basic needs of its people. Most people lack access to affordable medical care. The general hospitals in the country lack electricity and basic supplies like bandages and antiseptics to care for patients. Unfortunately, the two new modern hospitals built by the government to showcase its petrodollars are unaffordable for ordinary citizens.

If one fielded a football team with 11 randomly selected local children, seven would be from families living below the poverty line, according to World Bank poverty figures. Seven would attend schools lacking electricity. Only three or four would likely complete primary school. And these are the lucky ones, the children who survived the nearly one in eight chance of dying before the age of five.

Even when it comes to sports, our government invests little in its own people. Few local players will experience the thrill of playing in front of home crowds in the new stadiums during the Africa Cup of Nations. The national football authorities decided to heavily recruit foreign players rather than investing in football academies and cultivating home-grown talent. Players from Brazil, Spain and several African countries were granted citizenship and spots on the national team.

Our government officials, however, have invested heavily in themselves. Forbes once estimated President Teodoro Obiang’s wealth to be $600-million, although that is but a guess since the finances of both the government and its officials are kept secret.

President Obiang’s eldest son and heir apparent, Teodorin, has a taste for haute couture, fast cars, luxurious mansions and Michael Jackson memorabilia. Perhaps too much so: he is now under investigation in France and the US for allegedly stealing his government’s money. But his namesake father looks out for him.

Shortly after French police seized 11 of his sports cars in Paris last year, Teodorin was appointed to serve as one of his country’s representatives at Unesco, providing him with diplomatic immunity to continue his playboy lifestyle on the Champs Elysees.

But who looks out for the rest of the children in Equatorial Guinea? It’s hard to imagine that the lives of the children who play barefooted in the slums of Malabo will be improved as a result of the Africa Cup of Nations. Just ask the children of Soweto or Khayelitsha how much their lives and those of their families have improved since the 2010 World Cup.

There is something fundamentally misguided about diverting a country’s finite resources away from fighting poverty and inequality to host a football tournament and for the personal enrichment of the presidential family.

There is something wrong with wasting national resources and revenues with the sole purpose of entertaining outsiders for three fleeting weeks of hollow pride. It can’t be justified.

Unless the government rethinks its priorities, regardless of the new stadiums, hotels and other amenities built to impress foreigners, we will still be coming in last in human development index records, despite the vast resources available in the country.

Tutu Alicante is the executive director of a small human rights organization working to promote human rights, democracy and civic participation in Equatorial Guinea.

To be honest, I don’t have any personal feelings about Governor Romney or about any of the prospective candidates. But I think our attitudes toward the poor need some examining. And while I’m sure Mitt was speaking about the poor here at home, the issue of poverty is really a global problem and the poor here in the U.S. are just a small part of it.

He also explains why it’s important to pay attention to the world’s poor, because they hurt the overall growth of their countries’ economies, including our own:

But the cost of poverty goes beyond the direct costs of feeding the poor. To be cold and calculating about it, people who are too poor and too hungry to work represent a major drain on global productivity. And with no money in their pockets, they’re too poor to buy the goods and services produced by the industrialized world. As every capitalist should appreciate, though many apparently don’t, the poor are bad for business.

Read Mark’s full article here, and let us know what you think in the comments below.

2 x 2 equals: a) 3, b) 0, c) 4, d) 2

If you can answer these questions, you can help feed the world’s poorest right now. No, really.

Today marks the start of the first-ever World Freerice Week, a campaign to help end global hunger through Freerice, an online game managed by the World Food Programme. For each correct answer on trivia questions like the ones above, you get 10 grains of real-life rice that end up on the plates of hungry people.

This year’s theme, “6 Degrees of Separation,” aims to exponentially increase the amount of donated rice. Play the game in teams of six and compete against Freerice players all across the world. Players have already helped donate 94 million grains of rice since the game first started — so just imagine how much more we could help give if we got more people to play?

Register or join a group now, and play Freerice like a madman until Friday, February 11. Let us know how you do, and good luck!

Imagine you had to make one decision that could change your community and livelihood dramatically. Wouldn’t you want to be 100 percent sure your decision created the best opportunities possible for you and your family?

On the flip side, what if that decision involved an investment of millions of dollars? You would want all the information you could find about the possible outcomes and risks of your decision, wouldn’t you?

Today, across the globe, citizens of resource-rich yet poor countries and investors in oil, gas and mining companies have a problem just like this. These odd couples both need to make very important decisions about natural resource projects and the companies that undertake them, but they don’t have enough information to make sure their choices are right.

SEE ALSO: US regulators feel pressure to weaken transparency law… and why you should care

Without the disclosures required by the Cardin-Lugar Amendment (Section 1504 of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act), investors cannot put an accurate dollar amount on the risk to their investments caused by things like social or political conflict. In turn, citizens of countries where those investments are taking place don’t have the necessary information to hold their governments accountable for the cash windfalls from those resources, or to make informed decisions about whether natural resource development is the right choice for their communities.

The disclosures mandated by Cardin-Lugar also create broader benefits that local communities, investors, companies and consumers around the world can all share. The stability that happens when a country’s citizens feel they are getting a fair return on their natural resources lowers the risk of investing in companies that operate there. In addition, it also lowers a company’s cost of doing business and, in turn, may lower the costs of some of the commodities on which the entire world depends.

The support of ONE and its members is critical in making the case that these disclosures matter. You’re helping ensure that the world’s choices about natural resource development and investments are fully informed ones.

You can find out more about sustainable and responsible investing at www.calvert.com and follow Paul on Twitter at @paulbugala.

In honor of International Women’s Day on March 8, Women Deliver is calling on international development advocates (like you!) to submit nominations for their Women Deliver 50 List, a collection of the top 50 inspiring ideas and solutions that deliver for girls and women.

According to their guidelines, “these advancements could have been made by an individual, governments, the private sector, or civil society, but they must have helped to improve the condition of girls and women around the world, in one or more of the following 5 categories:

Nominations must be submitted by February 10. The winners will be announced on International Women’s Day and at the Women Deliver 2013 conference in Kuala Lumpur.

Click here to nominate an idea now.

If you can’t think of an idea, no worries — help Women Deliver out and forward the application to friends and family. Good luck!

United Against Malaria represents a diverse group of partners – national football teams, African corporations, policymakers, NGOs -– all committed to reaching the malaria community’s No. 1 goal: reducing malaria deaths to near zero by 2015.

During Africa’s premier football championship, Africa Cup of Nations, hosted this year by Equatorial Guinea and Gabon, several of the continent’s most popular football stars are doing more than showcasing their moves on the pitch … they are partnering with United Against Malaria to deliver life-saving messages about malaria prevention and treatment, helping protect fans and save lives.

Six players are lending their voices to a new series of PSAs that are airing in countries across Africa throughout the tournament:

Malaria is preventable and treatable, but a child still dies from the disease every 45 seconds. The United Against Malaria PSA series aims to tap into the popularity of these football stars and their sport to educate fans on the simple steps that can help protect them and their families from malaria, including sleeping under treated mosquito nets and seeking medical assistance at the first sign of fever.

“United, we can beat malaria,” the football stars urge viewers in the new PSAs.

Their support, along with the help of key African partners including Marathon Oil and Standard Bank, who are extending messaging further through billboards and educational materials, is helping United Against Malaria reach these fans in a powerful way.

To learn more about the football community’s commitment to the fight against malaria, and to view the new PSAs, please visit our website at www.UnitedAgainstMalaria.org.

In the East African country of Uganda, a staggering 276,000 young people cannot find jobs each year. Even though many of these youth are university or trade school educated, there is simply not enough infrastructure to accommodate them in the job market. And without jobs, many of these youth will relapse into the cyclical poverty endemic in much of their country.

Young women are particularly vulnerable to unemployment. Many find themselves caught in premature marriages, struggling to support their children with little hope of saving for the future of their families.

But in the heart of Jinja, Uganda’s second largest city, five young women work diligently to create beautiful handmade bags and other accessories for Tukula (meaning “we grow” in Luganda), a for-profit social enterprise based out of Lancaster, Pa. The women, who range in age from 16 to 33, have different life stories.

All of them have completed some amount of tailoring school, and two are continuing their education using the money they earn at Tukula. The women hail from different tribes and ascribe to different religions. But what brings them together is their desire to better the future of themselves and their families.

One of these women, Ayakaka Sally, talks about the impact that Tukula has had on her life. “I used to depend on people,” she says. “But Tukula has made me to be on my own. Now I can afford my food. I can pay my rent. It’s good for me.”

Tukula works with its artisans to create budgets and savings programs aimed at preparing each woman to attain her future goals. By creating and selling beautiful, high-quality products, the company hopes to impact more women in the future.

Tukula is working to eliminate abject poverty in Uganda before it begins, one woman at a time. To learn more visit tukula.org.