I recently caught up with some high school ONE members in northern Virginia who are fighting illiteracy in Africa through the service and awareness- raising group “Action Africa.” Below, Thomas Jefferson High School student Sydney Schrider tells us more about their incredible work.
Action Africa is a service club at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Virginia. We are trying to increase awareness of African issues and complete service projects at our school.
One of our ongoing projects is a pen pal relationship with a school in Bupoto, Uganda. Last year, as our big spring service project, we did literacy outreach with the Arlington Academy of Hope (AAH), a school in rural Uganda. We collected easy-reader books and recorded them on tapes, and then sent the books and tapes to the students of AAH in Bupoto.
We continue to learn about different issues, such as food security and AIDS awareness, and are working with ONE on many more events.
–Sydney Shrider, Thomas Jefferson High School, Alexandria, VA
Check out this great post from Becky Guldin of North Lebanon High School.
Throughout middle and high school, my best friend Laura Whitman and I have been involved in PASC, the Pennsylvania Association of Student Councils. Each year, PA District 8 hosts a conference for student council members and their advisors to share ideas and communicate between schools. Laura Whitman and I have submitted a workshop on the topic of our choice for several years to share with other school’s student councils.
This year we chose to focus our workshop around ONE. On March 6th, we presented our workshop, “Be ONE in a Million,” to 60 students in District 8. Our workshop focused on ONE’s main priorities and growing ONE membership. The students also viewed numerous ONE videos which were all received very well. Each student received two wristbands and two stickers with the promise that they would wear one set and give the other set to a friend. Some students even won ONE t-shirts and ONE lapel pins through a raffle.
This workshop proved to be a learning experience for the presenters and the students, and was also a great experience to connect with other teenagers through tough issues like global poverty. Hopefully, Laura and I will be submitting our workshop to the PASC State Conference in November!
-Becky Guldin, Northern Lebanon High School, Fredericksburg, PA
ONE Volunteer Adam Stackhouse attended the Clinton Global Initiative University meeting this weekend at the University of Texas at Austin. CGI U brings together students, university presidents, nongovernmental organizations, and national youth organizations to make commitments to action against global poverty and injustice.
He wore his ONE shirt and even struck up a conversation with Paul Begala who told Adam that he was a big fan of ONE! He put on his white band and posed for a picture to show his ONE (and Longhorn) pride!
Greetings from snowy Oslo, Norway, where government ministers, campaigners and education experts are currently gathered for the High Level Group meeting on Education for All. The conference is the eighth annual since the historic World Education Forum in 2000, which set forth the Dakar Framework for Action, a roadmap to achieve quality education for all by 2015.
Participants here in Oslo are acutely aware that halfway towards the target date set for achieving the goals set out in Dakar and the MDG targets on education, the world remains seriously off track: according to new statistics published a couple weeks ago in UNESCO’s annual Global Monitoring Report (GMR), there are still 75 million primary-school aged children out-of-school around the world, 35 million of whom are living in sub-Saharan Africa. 55% of these children are girls, and over one-third live in fragile states. If current trends continue, 29 million children will still be out of primary school in 2015.
Another common thread in many of the discussions here is (more…)
It’s time to kick off a new year of the ONE Campus Challenge, and we’re calling all students, alumni and college fans to sign up under your favorite school’s banner on our OCC website.
I’m Maisie Pigeon, ONE’s Student Coordinator, and I’ll be managing this year’s OCC—a good-natured competition between universities to see which school will be the national champion at tackling extreme poverty.
Our quarterback is three-time Super Bowl winner and two-time Super Bowl MVP Tom Brady of the New England Patriots. An active ONE supporter since 2005, Tom visited health clinics, schools and other life-saving projects in Ghana and Uganda in 2007 with ONE. Hear what he has to say about OCC at:
Last year, more than 1,400 colleges and universities competed through seven months of rigorous activism, awareness-raising and action-taking. OCC students signed up over 33,000 ONE members, took 182,000 actions, and convinced campuses, cities and even states to declare their support for ONE. And they engaged candidates including Barack Obama and John McCain on the campaign trail, getting them to pay attention to and talk about global poverty and disease.
In January, the 100 top schools sent representatives to the Power 100 Summit, an exciting three-day conference in Washington, D.C. They heard from leaders of the global anti-poverty movement and influential members of the Democratic and Republican parties, and joined forces through workshops and forums to become smarter, stronger advocates.
This year’s ONE Campus Challenge is going to be even better, but we need you to help your school get started. Sign up here.
On Friday, August 15, ONE members from the Pembroke Pines Charter High School, located in Pembroke Pines, Florida, met with Representative Alcee Hastings (D-FL) to talk about the accomplishments of the school’s ONE chapter, which has over 150 members including students and faculty.
The passionate students, along with their teacher Ms. Danielle De Pas, spoke about how they got involved with the ONE Campaign and how they are energizing their peers to become educated about extreme poverty. The school’s charter has been so successful that the ONE movement is now spreading beyond Pembroke Pines High School into the neighboring school districts.
In response, Representative Hastings talked about the importance of engaging young people in the political process early on so that they can help make a difference for generations to come. He hopes that the upcoming election will bring an unprecedented number of young people out to vote who want their voices heard on issues such as extreme poverty.
At the end, he commended the work of the ONE Campaign and slipped on the ONE bracelet to show his support. We thanked him for cosponsoring PEPFAR (The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) and urged him to continue to support legislation that will alleviate global poverty.
The students, who are organizing a ONE event to be held at the school in January, invited the Congressman to attend and provide a few remarks. We are hopeful that he will be able to be there to show his support.
-Sara Paterni, FL Field Organizer
(Photo from left to right: Andre Riley, Rafael Batista, Rep. Alcee Hastings, Danielle DePas)
My name is Maisie Pigeon and I’m the new ONE Student Coordinator. Right now, I’m working non-stop to make this year’s ONE Campus Challenge a success. The ONE Campus Challenge is a nationwide competition between universities where schools have the opportunity to earn points by taking actions against poverty. (Actions range from signing up your friends and family, to “ONE-ing” your campus mascot, to writing letters to your members of Congress.)
Currently we are working to get everything ready for the OCC 2008/2009-kickoff. The competition between schools last year was pretty steep, in the end Western Kentucky University won out over more than a thousand schools nationwide. This year the competition only looks to intensify. We can’t wait to see what tricks you guys have up your sleeves!
This will be my second year working with OCC, as I was a Regional Outreach Ambassador (aka – ROA) last year. I want to let you know that we’re currently looking to fill positions for this year’s crew of Regional Outreach Ambassadors. ROAs are active student leaders who help college students across the country promote ONE and fight extreme poverty by acting as liaisons between ONE staff and ONE student leaders across the country.
Find more information on becoming a ROA and pick up an application here. And stay tuned to the ONE Blog for more updates on OCC in the coming weeks.
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