WASHINGTON, D.C. –  ONE, the advocacy organization to fight extreme poverty, today announced that it is launching a recruitment drive for new members as part of the U2 360° world tour. It will use its presence and profile through the tour to raise awareness and let people know about the critical progress being made against extreme poverty and preventable disease in Africa. ONE, co-founded by Bono, will be present at the venues and featured in the show throughout U2’s tour, which kicked off Tuesday night in Barcelona and will be seen by over 3 million fans this year.

During the concerts, South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, ONE’s International Patron, features in a video on the giant expanding cylindrical screen above the stage, likening the fight against extreme poverty to the fight against apartheid in South Africa and the fight for civil rights in the US and calling on people around the world to work together as ONE on this next challenge.

As part of the video message, the Archbishop says: “Because our voices were heard, millions more of our brothers and sisters are alive thanks to the miracle of aids drugs and malaria drugs…Yes, there are many obstacles… there are always roadblocks in the way of justice… But God will put a wind at our back and a rising road ahead, if we work with each other as ONE …”

Concert-goers will be urged to sign up to ONE by text and by going to www.ONE.org

During a video link up between the band and the International Space Station during the opening show, astronaut Frank De Winne of the European Space Agency – a UNICEF ambassador — signed up to ONE from space.

ONE will operate sign up tables, shared with sister organization (RED), and “Kiss the Future” photo booths at the tour venues.   People joining ONE can get their photo taken in the booths and, as part of the preamble to the song ONE, a selection of the photos will be shown that same night on the overhead video screens.

ONE will campaign at all tour stops in Europe this summer and throughout the North America shows, which begin in September.   Along with ONE and (RED), the tour is also associated with Amnesty International, the Burma Campaign, Music Rising, The Angiogenesis Foundation and Mencap.  The tour is presented by BlackBerry.

U2’s last tour, Vertigo, launched ONE in the United States in 2004 and helped to quickly build ONE’s membership, which today is at more than 2 million people globally.

ONE works closely with policy experts, African leaders, and anti-poverty activists to mobilize public opinion in support of tested and proven methods for tackling extreme poverty. We hold world leaders to account for the commitments they’ve made to fight extreme poverty, and we campaign for better development policies, more effective aid and trade reform. We also support greater democracy, accountability and transparency to ensure policies to beat poverty are implemented effectively.

Significant progress has been made in this fight since 1999 thanks to African leadership and increasingly effective development assistance from G8 and EU countries:

• Nearly 3 million Africans are now on life saving AIDS medication, up from 50,000 in 2002
• In the past two years, Rwanda and Ethiopia have cut malaria cases and deaths by more than fifty percent
• In the past ten years, 34 million more African children are going to school
• Each year, the lives of 3.5 million children around the world are saved thanks to simple interventions like immunizations
• Since 1996, $93 billion of old debt in (SS) Africa has been cancelled freeing up resources to fight extreme poverty