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

What is the fuel subsidy?
Though Nigeria produces more than 2 million barrels of oil a day, the vast majority of Nigerians see limited benefits from their country’s natural resources. Nigeria has four oil refineries that only operate at about 23 percent of their potential capacity — and as a result, the government has had to import refined products such as petrol to meet the needs of citizens. The government paid the importers in order to control the price, kept low at $1.70 a gallon, thus ensuring that Nigerians were able, until January 1st, to enjoy the low fuel price as one of the benefits of the crude oil they produce.

Why did the government remove it?
On the first day of the year, President Goodluck Jonathan removed the hefty fuel subsidy. Though the subsidy keeps fuel prices low for Nigerians, the cost of the subsidy comes out of government coffers. The $8 billion per year the government was spending on the fuel subsidy is equivalent to more than 25 percent of the government’s annual budget. Many observers argue that subsidies do not ultimately benefit the poor and the money could be better spent in social sectors such as education or public health.

SEE ALSO: Occupy Nigeria

What was the response to its removal?
The removal of the fuel subsidy, and the immediate increase in the price of fuel, transportation and food, came abruptly, and disregarded ongoing negotiations with the labor unions and civil society. The cost of a gallon of gas increased from $1.70 to $3.50 overnight. Tens of thousands of Nigerians protested the removal of the subsidy and Nigeria’s major labor unions organized strikes shutting down businesses, schools and air travel for 8 days. The fundamental grievance Nigerians had with the removal of the subsidy was not just the resultant increase in fuel prices but also that the subsidy regime was a well-oiled corruption machine that should have been addressed before the subsidy itself was removed.

Why was the removal partially reinstated?
The Nigerian President restored part of the fuel subsidy on January 16. This brought the price of a gallon of gas down to $2.27, and ended the biggest protests in Nigeria’s history. The deal also forestalled a plan by the trade unions to halt the country’s oil production, a move which would have hurt Nigeria’s economy.

What does the episode say about governance in Nigeria?
Though the President announced that the removal of the fuel subsidy would give the government the means to fix the country’s many basic infrastructure problems, most Nigerians remain skeptical that these noble objectives will ever be realized. This is because there was no way to ensure that the money would go to meet these goals. Nigeria has been plagued for decades by corruption and mismanagement especially in the oil sector.

The abrupt nature of the removal of the subsidy which was seen by some as act of insensitivity by a government that is out of touch with the economic struggles of the majority of the Nigerian people. Even with a more gradual plan, transparency and accountability would be necessary to ensure Nigerians know that the funds are being properly channeled to projects and social development programs that would benefit the poor. While the partial reinstatement of the subsidy has quelled the protests and kept the economy going, the root causes of the protests remain unresolved.

What is different about these protests?
A bulging middle class with access to the internet took to social media platforms including Facebook and Twitter to swell the protests, which organized under an “#OccupyNigeria” banner based on similar movements in Europe and the US. These platforms, and the general message that the government was not listening to the voices of the Nigerian people, gave the middle-class a channel through which to make their voices heard and engage with other protesters.

Nigeria has had a turbulent start to 2012, with fuel subsidy protests and deadly bombings by Islamic extremist group Boko Haram. Keep an eye out for updates on the landscape of governance in Nigeria on the ONE Blog.

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/.

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.

When was the last time your cell phone saved your life?

In the world’s poorest countries, this happens every day. Cell phones help mothers get the medicine they need, babies receive life-saving vaccines and families stay healthy and strong.

As a ONE member and founder of Every Mother Counts, the advocacy and mobilization campaign I started to increase education and support for maternal mortality reduction globally, I’ve seen these programs in action and they work.

That’s why I’m working ONE Campus Challenge to launch their second challenge of the semester –- a cell phone drive in partnership with Hope Phones. Every phone collected from ONE and Every Mother Counts will benefit antenatal care (ANC) programs and ensure safe deliveries of babies in Coastal Kenya. But you don’t have to be a student to help — which is why we’re extending the opportunity to help to ONE members across the nation.

Have a phone (or two) to donate? Click here to download a shipping label, and just drop it in the mail! We’ll keep track of how many phones ONE members donate from around the country and report back to you at the end of the month. We set a goal of 35,000 phones -– so we need every ONE member to chip in. Think we can do it?

Like Every Mother Counts, the challenge provides a solution to preventable deaths. I’m excited to get started!

P.S. Have questions about any of the above? Email us!

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.

As a constituent and on behalf of ONE I had the opportunity recently to meet with Peter Braid, Conservative Member of Parliament for Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario.

Mr. Braid had recently returned from a trip to South Sudan as part of his role as the vice chair of the Canada-Africa Parliamentary Association, the main purpose of which is to discuss trade, aid and strengthen ties with African parliamentarians. During this trip, and on previous trips to Africa, Mr. Braid has seen firsthand the benefits of Canadian foreign aid. We discussed my involvement in the Griot Project, and my recent trip to Washington this past December to participate in #ONErocksDC, a lobby day on Capitol Hill and the White House with ONE.

SEE ALSO: #ONErocksDC on Capitol Hill and in the White House

I provided Mr. Braid with a Living Proof brochure and ONE armband and shared some of the issues that ONE is very passionate about including encouraging the governments of both Canada and the US to NOT make any cuts to their foreign aid budgets, the benefits of childhood vaccinations and ensuring that no child is born with HIV/AIDS by 2015. I directed him to the recent petition on the ONE website in which Canadians are encouraged to ask Prime Minister Harper to protect the Canadian foreign aid budget –- you can sign the petition here.

I expressed my pride as a Canadian that my own government has been supportive of these issues as evidenced by the $1.1 billion in funding for the Muskoka Initiative on Maternal, Newborn and Child Health, in addition to pledging to maintain current funding levels of $1.75 billion over five years for similar initiatives. I expressed my concern for any threat to the foreign aid budget and my desire that Prime Minister Harper would honor his commitment to the world’s poor and most vulnerable and not make any cuts to these important programs. Mr. Braid was appreciative of the work of the ONE Campaign and expressed his support of our endeavors.

-Sarah Stone, ONE member

DIARRHEA is a leading killer and cause of illness in children in Southeast Asia, and many do not realize that a major cause of childhood diarrhea is a virus called rotavirus. The Philippines will soon become the first country in the region to provide rotavirus vaccines to its most vulnerable children. Rotavirus mainly causes illness in young children living in areas where there is a significant risk of dying from severe diarrhea and vomiting. The good news is that most of these deaths can be prevented with vaccines and managed with simple treatments, if available and accessible.

Department of Health Secretary Enrique T. Ona recently announced that the Philippines will introduce safe and effective vaccines against rotavirus—the most common cause of severe, deadly diarrhea—into the country’s national immunization program. Rotavirus is the second leading killer of Filipino children under 5, taking the lives of 3,500 children each year.

This move will make the Philippines the first country in Southeast Asia to adopt the World Health Organization’s recommendation that all countries include rotavirus vaccines in their national immunization programs. The Philippines joins 30 other countries in taking a stand against rotavirus and the deadly diarrhea that it causes. Countries that have introduced rotavirus vaccines have seen swift and significant reductions in hospi-talizations and deaths caused by severe diarrhea. The decision will prevent the unnecessary deaths and hospitalizations of thousands of Filipino children.

While you may not be familiar with the term rotavirus, you almost certainly suffered from it as an infant or young child. Nearly everyone in the world—regardless of wealth, ethnicity or geography—is at risk of rotavirus infection.

Rotavirus is found everywhere and is an incredibly resilient virus. It is easily from spread person-to-person through contaminated hands and objects. While every child is vulnerable, children under two are the most susceptible to severe rotavirus infection. The transmission of other causes of diarrhea can be adequately stopped by improving water quality, sanitation and hygiene. But not so rotavirus transmission, which makes prevention through vaccination the best way to protect children.

In addition to severe diarrhea, rotavirus can also lead to vomiting, abdominal pain, fever and dehydration. The virus becomes deadly when it leads to severe dehydration, which often requires urgent medical care and intravenous fluids. This care can be out of reach for many in the poorest areas, making prevention essential to protecting child health.

In the Philippines, more than three-quarters of children contract severe rotavirus before reaching age two and nearly one-third of all diarrhea-related hospitalizations in young children are due to rotavirus.

The Philippines’ poorest communities, where the greatest number of diarrhea-related deaths occur, will be the initial focus of the rotavirus vaccine campaign. The government aims to reach 700,000 newborns in impoverished communities across the nation beginning this spring.

While the important progress in the Philippines cannot be overstated, there is more work to be done to reach all of the children who stand to benefit from rotavirus vaccination, particularly those living in other Asian countries, where rotavirus takes the lives of 188,000 young children each year—accounting for nearly half of all global rotavirus deaths. It is our hope that this monumental move by the Philippines government catalyzes action throughout the region.

Dr. Lulu Bravo chaired the 13th Asian Conference on Diarrheal Disease and Nutrition (ASCODD) held January in Tagaytay City where the Department of Health announced the new rotavirus vaccine campaign. She is a professor of Pediatric Infectious and Tropical Diseases at the University of the Philippines Manila and executive director of the Philippine Foundation for Vaccination. Dr. Tony Nelson is a professor in The Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Department of Pediatrics, a member of the ROTA Council and was a speaker at ASCODD.

Listen to the song here:

These themes are all too real for the nearly 13 million people affected by the famine in the region. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reports that upwards of 1000 people flee Somalia every day, choosing to walk to neighboring Kenya, Ethiopia, or Djibouti for refuge. Those countries, too, suffer from food shortages.

“We wanted to give something back,” the Aires’ manager Ethan Weinberg told the UN News Service. “We have a larger following now and we wanted to use our reach for a good cause.”