Watch Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY) and Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) eloquently argue against the amendment and defend U.S. multilateral aid on C-SPAN:

The vote on the Lewis amendment is slated for sometime between 6 and 6:30 this evening. Stay tuned for more news!

-Emily Stivers

It has been another extraordinary year for me not to mention my many trips to Italy for both work and pleasure. Bella Italia! I am honoured to share with you a project, which I have recently been dedicated to, and something I am deeply passionate about.

A year ago I visited Downing Street in London to meet with Sarah Brown, the prime minister’s wife. At the meeting Sarah spoke at length about The White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood (WRA), which she is a patron of, and their grassroots network which campaigns to stop women dying in childbirth around the world. That was the start of my work with the WRA right then and there. As Sarah spoke eloquently about her work with the charity, I was shocked at the extent of the problem, a problem I was completely unaware of at that point.

Millions of women are dying needlessly around the world. In the developing world a woman dies every minute giving birth, and almost always her baby will die too. In these places, women are often the breadwinners and leaders in the family. So, when a mother dies it affects not only her children but also her entire family, their livelihood and future.

There are solutions to this problem and they are immediately attainable. However, we must act quickly in support of this cause. By acting, we will help save half a million young women’s lives a year. It’s important for our global future; healthy families are vital to peace, stability and prosperity everywhere.

Last September I hosted with Sarah a catwalk show in aid of the WRA at London Fashion Week to raise funds and awareness of the cause. It was a great success thanks to an entire team of people including the WRA team, the celebrities who came out in support, the designers who donated, the production teams and many more. But what I really took away from last year’s event was knowing that thousands of people in the UK became aware of the work of the WRA and this critical cause.

My work continues and each day I am learning more and more. You may not know this either – because it has been a hidden scandal, of all the Millennium Development Goals agreed by the international community, reducing maternal mortality lags furthest behind. There has been no progress for 20 years. And yet I, like so many others, didn’t even know these problems existed before becoming actively involved myself.

How sad, and how unnecessary, that half a million women die every year from causes (like bleeding and high blood pressure) which we can help prevent. And for every single death, about another thirty women suffer terrible injuries, which leave them in pain and often rejected by their husbands. Providing trained health workers is critical. Professionals who know how to save women’s lives when things go wrong – when the baby gets stuck, or the mother bleeds too much or develops dangerously high blood pressure. We have the knowledge and the medicines to do this – but we have not yet committed the resources to those countries most in need.

When mothers survive they make sure their girl children go to school – so breaking the vicious cycle of early marriage, which leads to so many early maternal deaths. When mothers survive they give love and care, they put food on the table, fetch clean water, get the children vaccinated, tend the fields. If we treat a mother for HIV to prevent it being passed on to her children, she can look after her family, rather than the other way around. If we help a mother survive, she can help prevent her children being hit by malaria.

This week the G8 has an historic opportunity to end an old scandal and start a new chapter. I really hope that they do the right thing and deliver the resources and leadership to save millions of lives. This must be a priority for governments all over the world.

Trust Ghanaians to find business opportunities in even the mundane things of life. That is exactly what the U.S President Barack Obama’s visit to the country (this Friday and Saturday) offers some Ghanaians.

Those who want to take advantage of the visit to make some cash are already in business. Miniature flags of Ghana and the United States of America are being produced, along with ceremonial cloth with the photographs of the two Presidents. People in the Arts and Entertainment sector are not being left out of this. Some musicians have composed songs welcoming the first Black President of the United States to our homeland Ghana. Francis Mensah sells Barack Obama souvenirs along Osu Oxford Street here in the city of Accra. I had a brief conversation with him:

Me: How long have you been in the business of selling paraphernalia and other souvenirs.

FRANCIS: I started selling on this street for the past ten years. I usually sell replica jerseys of Ghanaian football stars in Europe such as Michael Essien, Stephen Appiah

Me: So why have you emptied your stand of these replica Jerseys and are instead selling Obama souvenirs.

FRANCIS: This is a special occasion for Ghanaians and they will want to be part of it and they can feel a part of it by buying such items as the cloth, T-shirts and other souvenirs.

Me: Are people buying these items?

FRANCIS: You won’t believe it. The shelves were well stocked but within a week stock has depleted. A number of them are purchasing the T-Shirts.

Me: Do you have a manufacturer who supplies you with these items?

FRANCIS: Yes. There is a vendor from the Akosombo Textiles who supplies me with the cloth, whilst another person supplies me with the T-shirt.

Me: What can you tell us about sales then?

FRANCIS: As I said earlier, sales are good contrary to what I was dreading that people will not buy but they are buying

-Jessica Gomez-Duran

Poverty and climate change are the two great challenges of the 21st century. Our responses to them will define our generation, and because they are linked to each other, if we fail on one, we will fail on the other. Unmitigated climate change poses huge risks for the planet. If we carry on emitting carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, global average temperature could eventually rise by more than five centigrade degrees, to levels not seen on Earth for more than 30 million years.

However, we understand the scale of the action that is necessary to reduce emissions and the areas on which we must focus: greater energy efficiency, more low-carbon technologies, and a halt to deforestation.

We also know which policies and economic instruments will make these ambitions happen, and we can see a path for investment and economic growth that is attractive for all parts of the world. All we need now is the political will.

The United Nations conference on climate change, due to be held in Copenhagen in December, will be the most important international meeting since the Second World War. It must result in an agreement to halt and reverse the growth in annual global emissions, leading to a reduction of at least 50 per cent by 2050.

Developed countries should lead the way by cutting their annual emissions by at least 80 per cent. The people of developing countries are least responsible for the current levels of greenhouse gases, but they are the most numerous.

Of the projected global population of 9 billion in 2050, 8 billion will live in countries today considered to be part of the developing world. They should play the leading role in shaping the global plan of action against climate change, and they must eventually control their own emissions.

But no matter how successful we are in reducing emissions, we are now committed over the next few decades to some degree of further climate change due to the levels of greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere.

The poorest people in developing countries in Africa and across the world will be most exposed and vulnerable to the impacts of climate change that will occur. These are also the people who are least able to afford the costs of adaptation. For developing countries, adaptation is essentially development in a more hostile climate. It is for them to shape their integrated plans for development and climate change.

The developed countries should provide at least US$100 billion a year by 2020 to help developing countries to adapt to the impacts of climate change. This sum should be in addition to current commitments to raise official development assistance to 0.7 per cent of GDP, and in the future this figure should be closer to 1 per cent.

While the two big global challenges of this century are poverty and climate change, we are also facing a crisis in the financial markets and the worst global economic downturn for 80 years which, some may argue, should be all that we focus on now.

But delaying our efforts to tackle poverty would condemn millions of people to many more years of hardship. And delaying action on climate change would mean the stock of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere grows, making the task of dealing with the problem more costly and difficult in the future.

We cannot afford to delay. We can and must, now and simultaneously, handle the short-term financial crisis, foster sound development and economic growth in the medium term, and protect the planet from devastating climate change in the long term.

Developed countries must provide strong financial support, but they must also demonstrate that low-carbon growth is possible. It offers a productive, efficient and attractive route to overcome world poverty.

New York Times: Obama Enlists Major Powers to Aid Poor Farmers with $15 Billion
Barack Obama has enlisted the world’s leading powers to contribute $15 billion to help millions of the world’s poorest farmers grow enough food to feed themselves, in a plan set to be unveiled Friday. The money, spent over three years, would come from the US and the other G8 members. The countries have promised to better coordinate their efforts so they don’t have overlapping programs, with the World Bank playing a pivotal role. President Obama has made the productivity of farmers in the developing world a priority since taking office. If the promised aid is delivered and is actually new money, it will be the largest international effort in decades to combat hunger by investing in agriculture.

New York Times Op Ed: Nicholas Kristof: Would You Let This Girl Down?
In an op-ed in today’s New York Times, Nicholas Kristof asks why the G8 countries are collectively so far behind in meeting aid pledges for developing countries. He argues that aid organizations are ineffective at selling their causes: “Any brand of toothpaste is peddled with far more sophistication than the life-saving work of aid groups.” He says humanitarian appeals also emphasize the scale of the challenges in ways that are as likely to numb people as to galvanize them and advises that aid groups ‘go back to the drawing board’ in order to influence G8 leaders and others.

New York Times: Poorer Nations Reject a Target on Emission Cut
Yesterday the world’s biggest developing nations, led by China and India, refused to commit to specific goals for slashing heat-trapping gases by 2050. Negotiators for 17 leading polluters abandoned targets in a draft agreement for climate change meetings in L’Aquila. But the countries embraced a goal of preventing temperatures from rising more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, and developing nations agreed to make “meaningful” if unspecified reductions in emissions. The Times says the mixed results underscore the challenges facing President Obama as he tries to use his first G8 meeting to force progress toward a climate treaty.

The Hill: High Expectations Surrounding Obama’s Trip to Africa
Coverage in anticipation of President Obama’s trip to Ghana is ramping up. Here is a story from The Hill that discusses the expectations surrounding the visit and how Obama could shape US policy towards Africa. It quotes ONE’s Tom Hart.

Reuters: White House Unhappy with IMF Limist in US Spending Bill
Later this week Congress is expected to consider a $48.8 billion spending bill for the State Department and U.S. foreign operations that would impose several limits on U.S. participation in the International Monetary Fund. The Obama administration said yesterday it strongly opposed the bill, which would restrict its ability to respond to future financial crises through the IMF. The legislation in the House also requires the U.S. representative to the IMF to oppose allowing countries that have supported acts of terrorism to withdraw hard currency like U.S. dollars, Japanese yen or Euros from the IMF.

-Grace Lamb-Atkinson

The G8 Summit in Italy has been going on for half a day and already the first of a reported 10 communiques has been released.

In predictable fashion, the release of the communique covering the world economy, climate change and development was of great interest to us, and we quickly issued this reaction to it yesterday.

While the scramble for the communique was going on, a group of over 100 journalists were shepherded into an auditorium to meet with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

On development, Berlusconi started by recalling that the Global Fund stands out as a success of the Summit in Genoa, having saved millions of lives since it was founded in 2001. He also said that the 2009 dues would be paid by the end of the year. Otherwise, he referred vaguely to a commitment to increase aid.

No mountains have been moved yet, but we’re working to keep the pressure on for a better outcome tomorrow. More soon!

-Eloise Todd

This amendment must not pass. Our funding for multilateral institutions, including the World Bank’s IDA, is money well spent. IDA supports important programs—including debt cancellation, health, education, agriculture, microfinance, business development and more—under a strong, performance-based criteria to make a real, measurable difference in the fight against global poverty.

Please call your Representative now and ask them to vote against the Lewis amendment.

-Tom Hart

PS- For ONE members who’ve never called your member of Congress before, it’s very easy! Here’s a quick video we put together with some helpful tips:

Yesterday, for the second time in less than a week, ONE members, staff and interns set off on the metro from our headquarters in Washington DC to Capitol Hill to meet with Senate offices about a top anti-poverty priority: global agricultural development and the fight to end hunger.

We went to deliver messages from the almost 30,00 ONE members who took action through our Invest In Agriculture Campaign, which calls on senators to fully-fund President Obama’s request for $1.36 billion in global agricultural development funding.

Those 30,000 messages poured in during just a few days, as ONE members went all out over the July 4th holiday weekend to convince their senators to tackle the root causes of hunger, at a time when this most basic form of poverty and suffering is on the rise. In fact, the number of hungry people in the world passed the 1 billion mark this year.

Reacting to the urgency of the humanitarian crisis and buoyed by such strong backing from so many of you, nine of us, including myself, made the trek over to visit 99 Senators offices on a hot summer DC morning, knowing that we had an opportunity to make a last minute impact before the final appropriations decisions were made.

In meetings with more than fifteen senate staff members, we hammered home your message that by investing in agriculture, we can not only stop hunger, but help end the instability it causes, as demonstrated by last year’s food price riots in countries across the developing world.

We met with key staff in the offices of Senators Burris, Bayh, Menendez, Murkowski, Reed, Bill Nelson, Voinovich, Shaheen, Pryor, Barasso, Hagan, Cantwell, Inhoffe, Johaans, and Johnson. The reception we got was enthusiastic and universally impressed with the passion and commitment ONE members are showing in speaking out on this important issue.

And the timing of your messages to the Senate could not have been better. We delivered your messages just before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on State-Foreign Operations met to deal with the very bill that controls this critical agricultural funding.

This campaign is also poised to have a global impact. When President Obama meets with the other world leaders the second half of this week at the G8 Summit in Italy, one of the central issues on the agenda will be the global response to the scourge of rising food prices and the plummeting agricultural yields in the developing world. If the Senate decides to fully fund President Obama’s request for $1.36 billion in global agricultural development funding, it will set a powerful example for the rest of the world and help build global momentum toward our ultimate goal of ending hunger.

But our work on this important issue isn’t done. The subcommittee has marked up the bill and now it moves to the full Appropriations Committee, so we’re making one last push today to make sure our senators know that as ONE members and constituents we’re counting on them to Invest In Agriculture.

-Tyler Rattray

Anyone arriving in my country, Ghana for the first time, will know right away that Ghanaians are expecting an august visitor in the month of July. The beautification that’s currently taking place in the capital Accra and the ancient capital Cape-Coast tell it all. In Accra, trees along what we call ceremonial roads have been given a new lease of life. They have either been painted or white washed with emulsion paint, or have been draped with paraphernalia of U.S President Barack Obama and that of the Ghanaian President, John Evans Atta-Mills.

The drains and other gutters that usually harbor stagnant water and mosquitoes are being worked on tirelessly to ensure that they are clear and free flowing. This is all because Ghana at this time of the year is experiencing its rainy season so one can imagine the amount of work being done by Zoom Lion personnel. Zoom Lion is a private waste management company tasked with ensuring that the city of Accra is clean all the time. You remember your first date and how badly you wanted to look your best and put up your best behavior in a bid not to lose him or her? Well that is exactly what I am talking about. This is the state of my country Ghana today.

My country is preparing to receive the first black president of the United States of America Barack Obama on Friday. Accra is seeing a facelift temporarily with daily cleanup exercises, patching up of pot holes on our roads in anticipation of Barack Obama. But how Ghanaians wish for more high-profile visitors so that those responsible in Ghana will continue to do that for which they are paid.

-Sena Atoklo