ONE Co-founder Bono gave a powerful speech on activism and global social movements to a crowd of 700 students at Georgetown University last night. His nearly hour-long speech received a standing ovation and praise on Twitter and Facebook. Many students walked away feeling inspired and uplifted. “Best speech ever,” one student remarked as he left the building. “This is going to be all over YouTube tomorrow,” another said.
Living in the UK I was aware of the television show Big Brother, but nothing quite prepared me for the African version, Big Brother Africa. Whereas the show in the rest of the world is a simple country specific affair, Big Brother Africa is different. Very different. It’s the first ever version to feature contestants from multiple countries and on a completely different scale. Now in its seventh season, the show is a continent wide phenomenon, screened 24 hours a day,...
ONE Global Policy Director Ben Leo offers his analysis on this year’s G8 Summit in Camp David. The G8 Summit in Camp David last weekend marked the three year anniversary of the 2009 L’Aquila Food Security Initiative (AFSI). It also previewed the expiration of most of the financial pledges by the end of 2012. With one of the worst droughts in 60 years in the Horn of Africa — which ravaged the livelihoods of more...
ONE is in full-gear on all fronts heading into the G8 meeting this weekend, including our co-founder Bono. In addition to participating in our ONE Street Tweet action (you can see his message in the photo above) and speaking at tomorrow’s Chicago Council Symposium on Global Agriculture and Food Security, he has written a piece in TIME magazine that calls on G8 and African leaders to work together to ensure that Africa’s immense natural resources —...
This piece by Bill Gates, Sr. was originally published on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Impatient Optimists blog. When my wife was pregnant with our first child, one of the worst polio epidemics in history was tearing through the United States. When my daughter was born, I was excited to be a new father, but I was also terrorized by visions of my newborn daughter confined by an iron lung, so much so that I didn’t let her...
What does it take to get a lifesaving vaccine to the children who need it most? To coincide with immunisation week, globe trotting UNICEF ambassador Ewan McGregor has made a documentary telling the stories of the remarkable journeys getting these precious vaccines to some of the most inaccessible places in the world. The term ‘cold chain’ refers to the fact that these vaccines need to be kept at between 2 and 8 degrees centigrade, a feat made all the more...
Today ONE has published new research that shows the impact UK aid spending will have on the lives of some of the poorest people in the world. The UK has committed to hit the UN target to spend 0.7% of national income on aid from 2013, something Chancellor George Osborne is expected to confirm when he delivers the annual budget on Wednesday. Our report – “Small Change: Big Difference” – shows that by the government sticking to its commitments on...
It’s been a good few days for Millennium Development Goals. Not one but two targets were reported as met last week, which means that we have reason to celebrate. First, the Economist reported on March 3 that global poverty in 2010 was half the level it was in 1990, meaning that in spite of the worldwide economic downturn, fewer people are living in absolute poverty. And on March 6, the United Nations reported that in 2010, 89...
Today Bill Gates addressed a meeting in Rome where he told the international agricultural community it had fallen short of delivering the help that small farmers in developing countries need, and that a better approach to supporting farming was needed to feed a billion hungry people. “If you care about the poorest, you care about agriculture,” said Gates. “Investments in agriculture are the best weapons against hunger and poverty, and they have made life better for billions...