Agriculture Griot and ONE Congressional District Leader Daniel Young reports on his successful ONE member meetup in San Clemente, Calif.
What a beautiful night to have our first meet-up in San Clemente. Over pizza and drinks, 15 people discussed how we can make a difference locally as ONE volunteers in California’s 44th Congressional District. Whoever thought that making a difference could be this much fun?
Together we collected more than 30 phones for Hope Phones, a campaign that takes old cell phones, refurbishes them, sends them to Africa (in this case Kenya), and gets them into the hands of medical workers there. Mobile phone technology is saving lives in Africa, and it is beautiful to see how we can recycle our phones to help people get the medical treatment they need. To keep the momentum going, we brainstormed ways that we could keep collecting more phones. I have a feeling we will be collecting a lot more in the coming weeks.
We also discussed the SEC petition, oil and mineral extraction deals in African countries, and the effect that creating transparency will have on helping the people of Africa hold their leaders accountable for the money received from oil and mineral exploration occurring there. Transparency in oil and mineral projects throughout the developing world will ensure that citizens of these countries will receive the benefits of that money. With World Tuberculosis Day just around the corner, we planned out how we can make a difference by spreading the word on the wonderful work that the Global Fund to fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria is doing in Africa, the smart investments from the United States contributes, and what we need to continue to do to support their work.
It’s Leap Day today, which means we have an opportunity that we only get once every four years: one extra day to do something significant and make a difference in the world. Over the past few days, we’ve been asking our readers to share their plans for one extra day for ONE Act a Week. We received more than 300 great responses! Here are ten of our favorites:
I took a trip to Wisconsin this past weekend to meet with ONE members from Kenosha and Milwaukee. We discussed our plans as we continue to strengthen the ONE volunteer presence in the area.
Meetup in Kenosha, Wi.
In Kenosha, I met with four excited ONE members. We spoke about ONE’s priorities for 2012 and how they can be achieved in their city. We also discussed examples of cool activities that would work well in the area. All of the volunteers took action right away by writing to the Securities and Exchange Commission in support of increased transparency.
I attended a local Bread for the World event in Naperville, Illinois last week. It was a gathering of an interesting group of three generations of dedicated Bread volunteers. There were people involved with Bread for more than 30 years and others whose first event was that night. Folks had traveled for more than an hour in the winter storm to get to St. Raphael Catholic Church in Naperville for the opportunity to hear from Bread for the World President David Beckmann.
David spoke about the power of advocacy, and he shared some amazing stories about the effectiveness of domestic and international programs related to food security and agriculture. He said that advocacy for the world’s poor makes real difference to real people, before sharing the story of his adopted son, and how he recently found that as an infant, his own son had benefited from the very programs Bread for the World has been fighting for. David also spoke about the budget negotiations in Congress and how important it is that we continue to fight for the less-than-1-percent of the budget, what he called the equivalent of a rounding error, dedicated to helping the poorest people around the world.
While some people might not immediately associate ONE’s poverty-fighting mission with bicycling, an upcoming project might just prove otherwise.
Food can be a powerful vehicle for social and environmental change, and issues we see facing farmers across the world are issues we also face here on the home front — issues created because of the inequalities in the global food system. Indeed, we are all in this together. And together we can make a difference.
ONE Regional Faith Organizer Joe Mason‘s question on faith, advocacy and development got answered during a recent White House Q&A. Here’s his report:
Recently, the White House hosted an online Q&A session on innovation for global development. Since the subject is a passion of mine, I was immediately prompted to submit a question to USAID Administrator Dr. Raj Shah.
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.
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.
