Be one: One.org helps raise poverty awareness and government involvement
By raising awareness about poverty across the world, USU one.org campus leader Evelyn Sardinas said she believes students can not only make a difference for those suffering throughout the world, but also become more involved in their own government.
Sardinas said one.org was created to make sure our nation’s leaders keep the promises they made in the United Nations Millennium Declaration, a declaration made in 2000 to work toward eight global development goals, making significant improvements by 2015. These Millenium Development Goals include global improvement in HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, development assistance, education, water and sanitation, trade, debt cancellation, child and maternal health and agriculture.
Sardinas said Americans often take for granted these things that many other countries don’t have.
“We don’t realize a lot of times in this nation that countries don’t have running water, let alone access to clean water,” she said. “The things we take for granted every day that millions of people out there don’t have.”
Instead of raising money, Sardinas said one.org raises awareness of global hunger and poverty and petitions the nation’s leaders to take action to make improvements in the Millenium Development Goals. Sardinas, senior political science minor, said it is important for citizens to be involved with the government and their decisions.
“It’s the way our government works – we’re supposed to be telling it what to do,” Sardinas said. “This organization is trying to keep government on task.”
Sardinas said students get involved by joining the USU one.org chapter and then competing with other campuses in the ONE Campus Challenge. She said students complete various challenges to raise awareness of one.org and global poverty by organizing events, making posters, becoming involved with other service and poverty organizations to earn points for their school. Sardinas said there are also many little things students can do to earn points, such as sporting one.org apparel or talking about one.org on their blog.
“To earn points we have partnered with Aggies for Africa, contacted local media, put up banners and had a table in the TSC to promote the organization,” she said.
At the end of the year, Sardinas said schools are then ranked on many points they have earned, and the campus leader of the university with the most points gets an all expense paid trip to Washington D.C. to attend a summit about global poverty.
Currently, USU is placed 73 out of thousands of universities, Sardinas said, ahead of big schools like Harvard, placed 119, and even their rival, University of Utah, placed 101.
Members also send petitions to government leaders to continue to work towards the Millenium Development Goals.
“The main thing is to not only be aware of the needs that are out there, but be aware that we have access to our government representatives and we can make change if we make that connection,” Sardinas said. “If we don’t make that connection we’re not exercising our democracy.”
Sardinas said she hopes funding to fight global poverty will continue with a newly elected president despite the nation’s economic woes.
“The economy shouldn’t deter us from our focus on the global poverty goals and we should be constantly trying to work toward it or change won’t take place. Even if it’s slow moving, we can’t let up on it.”
Sardinas said there are currently 35 USU one.org members. To join, she said students can go to www.one.org/campus and enter their e-mail address and graduating year. To get more involved in campus challenges, Sardinas said students should e-mail her directly at askeve66@yahoo.com.
“My motivation to get involved with one.org was to become involved and get excited about a social issue,” Sardinas said. “At a university level, people need to become active. We’re so complacent as a society.”
–karlie.brand@aggiemail.usu.edu