Celebrity Chefs and ONE Members in DC to Fight Energy Poverty

WASHINGTON – Passersby at some of Washington, DC’s most iconic spots will do a double take this week when they see life-size cardboard cutouts of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Speaker of the House Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) dressed as electrical utility workers.

The stunt is a playful yet respectful way for The ONE Campaign and its nearly 3 million US supporters to send a message to lawmakers to pass a reconciled version of the bipartisan Energize Africa Act and the Electrify Africa Act.

Tom Hart, US Executive Director of ONE, said:

In order to help provide first-time electricity access to 50 million people in sub-Saharan Africa by 2020, Congress must act now or it’s back to the drawing board – erasing more than a year of hard work crafting and advocating for a commonsense, bipartisan, and transformative piece of legislation.

On Wednesday, four celebrity chefs will also join ONE on Capitol Hill to make case for the fight against energy poverty from a food and nutrition perspective.

Andrew Zimmern, Hugh Acheson, Pati Jinich, and Nina Compton will explain that nearly three billion people in the developing world cook food and heat their homes with traditional cookstoves, or open fires, resulting in about four million premature deaths every year due to toxic smoke inhalation. That’s more annual deaths than those caused by AIDS and Malaria combined – and women and children are most affected. The lack of energy access also means that billions of dollars’ worth of crops are wasted due to a lack of refrigeration and processing facilities.