One Campaign: Do You Even Know What It Is?!

You’ve seen the celebrities in the black and white videos. You’ve seen people wearing the white bracelets. You’ve heard Bono talking about it more often than he does his day job. I’m talking about the ONE Campaign; a U.S.- based non-profit organization that is dedicated to eradicating extreme poverty.

The ONE Campaign seeks to increase international assistance by pressuring America’s leaders through a grass roots campaign to fund more international development and relief programs with an amount equal to ONE percent of the U.S. budget. This amount of money, they believe, will reduce half the amount of world hunger, provide free access to education for 77 million children, provide access to clean and sanitary water for up to 700 million people, and save 16,000 lives a day by fighting HIV/AIDS and other various diseases in the third world. They also believe that global poverty and terrorism are linked and that increasing assistance to foreign development will destroy that connection. So how successful is the campaign?

ONE was launched in 2004 with Bono as its most prominent spokesperson. It has been successful in closing the partisan gap, gaining support from leftwing icons like George Clooney to those on the far right like Pat Robertson to spread their message of awareness about poverty and AIDS in Africa. In 2005, it started to gain visibility with the release of the white wristband (of which three million have since been sold). It gained its highest visibility with the Live 8 concert, organized by Bob Geldolf, and featured the reunion of Pink Floyd (unfortunately there was no follow up tour). The concert helped pressure the G8 leaders to double their aid to Africa by 2010. Meanwhile, in 2007 ONE was successful in getting Congress to increase the funding for relief and development to $1.45 billion.

In terms of raising awareness and money, ONE has been a successful campaign thanks in part to celebrity support. The big question is what happens to the money they’ve raised? After all, corrupt governments like the Derg instead kept the money from Live Aid that was supposed to be spent on the people. Despite these concerns, ONE continues to march forward with a voting initiative that encourages college students to ask presidential candidates questions that address the issue of global poverty. Time will tell the effect ONE has on the world but so far, so good.