ONE Campaign

ONE Campaign
Motto	Actions. Speak. Louder.
Formation	May 16, 2004
Type	Development Advocacy
Headquarters	Washington, D.C.
Location	United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Belgium, South Africa
Membership	3 million
Official languages	English, French, German
Key people	Bono (co-founder, spokesperson)
Website	ONE.org

The ONE Campaign is an international, nonpartisan, non-profit, advocacy and campaigning organisation that fights extreme poverty and preventable disease, particularly in Africa, by raising public awareness and pressuring political leaders to support effective policies and programmes that are saving lives and improving futures.

It is backed by a movement of more than 3 million members around the world.^[1]

ONE was originally founded by a coalition of 11 non-profit humanitarian and advocacy organizations, including DATA, World Vision, Oxfam America, and Bread for the World, with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In 2007, ONE announced that it would be merging with DATA.

The name ONE was inspired by the belief that one voice, coming together with many others – the political left and right, business leaders, activists, faith leaders and students - can change the world for the better.^[2]

Overview

ONE is an attempt to mobilize supporters around its issues and organize them into a lobbying force, with the goal of encouraging national leaders to fund more international development and relief programs. As a campaign to fight extreme poverty and global diseases, it supports the Millennium Development Goals.

Although its central talking points center on ending extreme poverty and fighting the AIDS pandemic, ONE supports a broad variety of international development and relief issues, including debt relief, clean water, increasing the quantity and efficiency of aid, lessening corruption in the governments of the aid-recipient countries, providing basic education for all, making trade more fair, reforming the farm bill to make it more fair for farmers in developing countries, slowing deadly diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis, and increasing the international affairs budgets in the US, UK, and European countries.^[3]

History

ONE was founded by 11 organizations: Bread for the World, CARE, DATA, International Medical Corps, International Rescue Committee, Mercy Corps, Oxfam America, Plan USA, Save the Children U.S., World Concern, World Vision.

The official launch rally was held on May 16, 2004, at Liberty Mall in Philadelphia. About 2,000 people attended, including Bono, Dikembe Mutombo, Michael W. Smith, Richard Stearns (President of World Vision), and David Beckmann (President of Bread for the World).^[4]

In December 2004, ONE announced a $3 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.^[5] Corresponding with this announcement, Mark McKinnon, an adviser to President Bush, and Mike McCurry, an adviser to the Kerry Campaign, appeared on CNN's Inside Politics with Judy Woodruff in support of ONE.^[6]

On May 22, 2007, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria announced that it had saved 1.8 million lives since 2002, including a roughly doubling of services in the past year. ONE members had advocated for the increases to the Global Fund in both 2006 and 2007.^[7]

In June 2007, ONE launched ONE Vote '08.^[8] to mobilize American voters to engage the presidential candidates about the issues of global diseases and poverty. ONE Vote '08 seeks to have all the candidates make the fight against global poverty a key part of their national security and foreign policy platform. ONE Vote '08 is co-chaired by former Senate Majority Leaders Tom Daschle (D-SD) and Bill Frist (R-TN). Since the launch, state-wide initiatives have been established in each of the four early primary states—Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada.^[9][10] In addition, the ONE Vote initiative has produced official and unofficial endorsements from presidential candidates John Edwards and Bill Richardson.^[11][12]

In 2008 ONE merged with DATA. The merged entity was run by CEO David J. Lane^[13] until his departure in early 2011 to join the Obama administration.^[14] ONE's current leadership team includes former editor of Time magazine, CEO Michael Elliott, co-founder and Executive Director Jamie Drummond, and U.S. Executive Director Tom Hart.^[15]

During the 2008 U.S. presidential election, the organization launched a campaign, called ONE Vote '08, which was co-chaired by former U.S. Senate majority leaders Tom Daschle (D-SD) and Bill Frist (R-TN). Since 2009 ONE has run a series of ONE Vote campaigns around national elections, including ONE VOTE 2010 ^[16] in the United Kingdom and ONE Vote 2012 in both France ^[17] and the United States.^[18]

In 2010 ONE and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation launched the Living Proof campaign,^[19] with Bill and Melinda Gates hosting events in Washington DC, London, Paris, Berlin and Brussels.

In 2011 ONE and (RED) partnered for World AIDS Day and brought together U.S. President Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Tanzanian President Kikwete, and others at an event in Washington, D.C. In 2012 ONE acquired (RED) as a division of ONE.

ONE has worked with Publish What You Pay and a coalition of other non-government organisations^[20] around the Cardin-Lugar Amendment and the passing of extractives transparency laws in the United States and Europe.^[21]

In 2013 ONE is working towards the end of the Millennium Development Goals and is running a pilot consultation in African countries on what the new goals should be.^[22]

Methods

Archbishop Desmond Tutu speaking about ONE in a prerecorded video shown before a U2 performance of "One" during the group's U2 360° Tour in 2009.

An invitation to join ONE, shown at the end of the same show.

ONE uses a number of highly visible methods to reach out to the general public, promote its message, and encourage advocacy actions. ONE does not ask for public donations, stating, "We're not asking for your money. We're asking for your voice."^[23]

Celebrity spokespeople are used to speak to the media and undertake trips abroad televised visits to areas suffering from poverty in order to illustrate the issues ONE is attempting to solve. ONE also uses its celebrity supporters for video ads that are released on YouTube.

ONE is a largely Internet-based campaign and therefore has multiple online communities throughout cyberspace. As well as using YouTube, ONE has a significant presence on Twitter, Google Plus, and Flickr,^[24] and uses Facebook for its campus organizing.^[25]

ONE also has field organizers around the United States to support grassroots mobilization and advocacy. The field staff works with more than 200 local ONE groups that sponsor educational events, organize community awareness events, and lobby their Members of Congress.

Controversy

ONE has been criticized^[26] for its response to a book by African economist Dambisa Moyo, Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa,^[27] which was published in January 2009. Moyo accused ONE of mischaracterizing her views. She says that she is against only government aid, not "their kind of aid".^[28] However, ONE argues that governmental development assistance "plays a critical role in the fight against extreme poverty and disease".^[29] In June 2009 Dambisa Moyo told former U.S. presidential Republican speech writer Peter Robinson during a Hoover Institute-sponsored Uncommon Knowledge interview that "the harshest thing that has happened [in terms of responses to her 2009 book Dead Aid], Bono's and Bob Geldof's organization, called One, who I had tried to have a number of meetings with before the book came out, about what the theses of the book were, launched a very vitriolic attack against me. To the point that they were calling organizations ahead of my meetings and media appointments and sent a letter to African NGOs claiming, basically, painting me as a genocidal maniac trying to kill African babies. In other words, trying to get Africans to be against me. To me, that was not really fostering dialogue."^[30]

In September 2010, it was reported that ONE used only 1.2% of their funds for charitable causes. However, according to a spokesperson, ONE does not provide programs on the ground but instead is an advocacy campaign for their funding. It was also stated that the organization does not fundraise or accept donations and receives most of its funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.^[31]

References

External links

• Official website