ONE Campaign To Fight Poverty, HIV/AIDS ‘Should Resonate’ With Young People, Opinion Piece Says
The goals of the ONE Campaign -- a grassroots effort to fight poverty and HIV/AIDS worldwide -- "should resonate with young people," who can "embrace" its cause and "prod their leaders to demonstrate the political and economic will to help address Africa's most urgent problems and, more important, help Africans help themselves," Jim Wallis, editor of Sojourners magazine, and Richard Stearns, president of the U.S. office of World Vision, write in a Seattle Post-Intelligencer opinion piece. Irish rock star Bono -- who co-founded the AIDS, debt relief and trade advocacy group DATA -- and others in May 2004 announced the campaign, which is supported by a broad coalition of humanitarian organizations, and Bono has made it his "cause" to defeat the "silent tsunamis" of hunger and disease that are "devastating Africa," Wallis and Stearns say. "Africa's suffering is unnecessary -- and morally unconscionable," the authors write, adding that the "key to its defeat may lie with Bono's fans." According to Wallis and Stearns, Bono said, "We are the first generation that can look extreme poverty in the eye, and say this and meant it. We have the cash. We have the drugs. We have the science. Do we have the will to make poverty history?" British Prime Minister Tony Blair three years ago called for a "Marshall Plan" for Africa, and the United Kingdom at the Group of Eight meeting in July "will have the bully pulpit among fellow industrialized countries," Wallis and Stearns write, concluding, "That rock star with a cause, and a new generation, will be watching" (Wallis/Stearns, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 4/22).
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