Our ONE members know that Bono is just as much an activist as he is a rock star – you see it in the work he does with ONE during every campaign. But for those of you who know him mostly as the front man of U2, you may be wondering: What drives him to care about poverty so much?  

Acclaimed interviewer and broadcast journalist Charlie Rose set out to find the answer to this question and more during his nearly hour-long interview with Bono on his activism, rock music, business and more.

One of the first things he does is clarify his thoughts on poverty. Like Nelson Mandela, he believes “poverty is not a natural condition,” and that it is “manmade.” To him, activism is about fighting injustice. “I’ve always been on a justice tip,” he said, “rather than a charity one.”

Bono discusses the impact of US foreign assistance. “The United States — it’s a heroic story. You are way out in front in the fight against AIDS. Of the 8 million people that are on anti-retroviral drugs, most of them are alive because of America — Do Americans know that?” he says. “Do people know that they’re part of this incredible story? To me, this is as heroic as your intervention in the second World War. And no lives down, just lives saved.”

The discussion also reveals some illuminating things about Bono, like his thoughts on religion and his relationship with Bill Gates. He even talks about his songwriting process and the work on U2′s next album.

The interview was aired last night on PBS’s The Charlie Rose show, which is now available to watch in the player below. This video a great way for ONE members to learn more about our cofounder and his mission to fight poverty, and for those who just know Bono for his music – see a different side of the rock star.

Here are more of our favorite quotes from the interview: 

- “I am a salesman … I think I’m a good salesman of ideas, songs, melodies, if I believe in them. People getting out on the streets, getting organized and fighting to eliminate extreme poverty is working, and that’s the mission, because I believe if people understand it and see the successes of it, then they’ll do more of it.

- Talking about John Lennon and the song Imagine: “I loved so many things about John Lennon. He wrote the blueprint. But imagining wasn’t one of them. I’m more of a doing, more of an actions, more of a building, following my nose, following my curiosity to understand people better, understand the world better, understand myself better.

- “People say songs are like your children, no they are like your parents. They they tell you what to do, they tell you how to behave, they tell you how to misbehave, how to dress. Everything you do is directed by the songs.”

What was the most surprising thing you learned about Bono in the interview? Tell us in a comment below.

Model and activist Lauren Bush was first asked to design a bag to benefit the United Nations’ World Food Programme’s (WFP) School Feeding program in 2006, the largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger worldwide. The collaboration was so successful that she went on to co-found FEED Projects LLC to expand the line of totes and branch out to offer other products, including accessories and apparel.

After starting FEED, Lauren also established the FEED Foundation, dedicated to supporting programs and organizations that combat hunger and malnutrition in the developing world. ONE is proud to sell FEED products as part of our petition to pressure world leaders to tackle the issue of food insecurity and poor nutrition at the G8 Summit this coming June.

The reversible burlap and organic cotton bags are designed to look like the bags of food aid distributed by WFP to children and families all over the world. They use environmentally friendly and artisan-made materials, along with fair-labor production, in creating all FEED products.

Buy a FEED Bag at the ONE Store now

Hunger and malnutrition can have serious consequences for health and development. It weakens an individual’s immune system and makes them more susceptible to contracting diseases in addition to stunting mental and physical growth. The sale of FEED products help ensure that children are well-fed and provided with all the nutrients that they need to grow up to be healthy and productive adults- something that every parent wishes for their child.

FEED bags have made an incredible impact over the years. Revenue from the sale of FEED products have donated more than $6 million dollars and provided more than 60 million school meals to children around the world. FEED has also collaborated with the US Fund for UNICEF to raise funds for their Vitamin A and micro-nutrient supplements program to provide over 46,000 children with essential vitamins and nutrients.

Visit the ONE Store and check out the FEED products that we sell on our site to help feed one child enrolled in school for a full year. Looking to do even more? Sign our petition and urge world leaders to make measurable commitments to end chronic malnutrition.

Devex: Will G8, G20 tackle reproductive health? – Ahead of the upcoming G8 and G20 summits, a group of parliamentarians held a global summit in London to drum up support to keep family planning on the agenda. The legislators called on heads of state gathering at both meetings in June to recognize family planning and sexual and reproductive health rights as “fundamental” to gender equality and development. (John Alliage Morales)

AllAfrica: Obama Expected in Senegal and South Africa Next Month - President Barrack Obama will visit Dakar next month, according to reports in the Senegalese press. The newspaper L’As said today that the President will be in Dakar June 26 to 28 and will be accompanied by First Lady Michelle Robinson Obama and daughters Malia and Sacha. Newspapers in South Africa have also been reporting an upcoming visit by the American president. Tanzania has also been mentioned as a possible stop, with Rwanda mentioned as a less likely choice.

NYT: Rebuilding of Mali Faces Daunting Obstacles, Despite Outside Aid - At an international conference in Brussels this week, donors pledged $4.2 billion for Mali on a range of fronts, including roads, energy and business development, hoping to help rebuild a nation that alarmed governments around the world when much of it collapsed and fell to Islamist militants last year. What is unclear is whether these efforts will be enough to remake the nation, after its civilian and military institutions have fallen, leaving a vacuum for the militants to exploit.

Ten years after the Ethiopian famine of 2003, when international food aid rushed in to feed 14 million people, another World Food Program (WFP) tent has been erected on an open field. But this isn’t a scene of food distribution. It is a scene of food purchase.

Leonida and her surplus food, stored in this hut. If farmers have the confidence their food will get sold, they will grow more. Photo credit: Roger Thurow

The action happens on the grounds of the Sidama Elto Farmers’ Cooperative Union in Awassa, Ethiopia. Sidama Elto is one of 16 cooperative unions in Ethiopia that have signed forward contracts with the WFP for the purchase of more than 28,000 metric tons of maize grown by their smallholder farmer members. The maize, which is part of 112,000 tons of food the WFP purchased in Ethiopia last year, will be used for WFP relief distributions in the country. Ten years ago, many of those farmers and their families were receiving food aid from the WFP.

One of the major lessons in agricultural development over the past decade is this: markets matter. The 2003 famine tragically, and incomprehensibly, followed two years of bumper harvests in Ethiopia. The surplus production overwhelmed the country’s weak and inefficient markets. There were no export channels; the domestic market’s ability to absorb the harvests was crippled by woeful infrastructure. The food piled up on farms and prices collapsed, upwards of 80% in some areas. Farmers lost incentive to plant the next year. Then the drought hit, and feast turned to famine. The markets had failed before the weather did.

That gobsmacking turnaround triggered a reversal of the neglect of agricultural development that had set in since the 1980s, as I noted in my TedxChange talk last month. In the past decade, science and research geared toward improving the work of smallholder farmers (who produce the majority of the food grown in the developing world) have been reinvigorated; so too have trade and business efforts accelerated to provide greater market incentives and opportunities for the farmers. Prior to 2003, boosting agricultural production – growing more food — was the primary focus and developing markets was considered to be a “second-generation problem.” Now, markets share top billing with production, as it should; markets provide incentive to produce more.

In Ethiopia, it started with the creation of the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange in the wake of the famine. Now, the mantra spreads, in radio dramas, government pronouncements, business negotiations: If you grow it, someone will buy it.

The WFP’s partnership with Sidama Elto is part of its Purchase for Progress (P4P) program, which uses the WFP’s purchasing power to create markets for smallholder farmers. Supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and implemented in collaboration with the government of Ethiopia through the Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA), P4P works with the farmers to improve the quality of their crops and the post-harvest handling. Simiret Simeno, deputy manager of Sidama Elto, says that for the first time its 13,000 farmer members see that better quality can bring better prices. And they can also see their contribution to healthier communities, as one of the markets is an expanding network of school feeding programs supplied by locally grown crops rather than food being shipped in from abroad.

The ultimate goal of the WFP purchases is to demonstrate to commercial buyers that smallholder farmers can reliably produce high-quality food worthy of their business. Sustainable success here could also bear witness to the potential impact of President Obama’s proposed food aid reform, which would allow for nearly half of the US food aid budget to be used to buy food nearer to the hunger crises – providing markets for smallholder farmers — rather than shipping it all the way from American farms (as has been the US policy for decades).

These public-private ventures bring both maturity and modernization to markets that hadn’t changed much for centuries. Working with local banks and donor governments, P4P has introduced forward contracts to participating cooperatives and smallholder farmers. The ATA has also been crafting links between farmers and commercial buyers of several crops, like teff, barley, sesame and chickpeas.

Above all, says Khalid Bomba, the chief executive officer of ATA, “Smallholder farmers need confidence that there will be buyers for what they grow.”

And confidence that the misery of 2003 – the misery of failed markets — won’t happen again.

This post is part of a series produced by The Huffington Post and The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, marking the occasion of its annual Global Food Security Symposium in Washington, D.C., which will be held on May 21st. For more information on the symposium, click here. Follow @GlobalAgDev and use #globalag on Twitter to join the conversation on May 21.

Want to do more? Tell world leaders to make measurable commitments to reduce chronic child malnutrition for 25 million children. Sign the petition here.

In my job as the executive director of 1,000 Days, I am an advocate for mothers and children around the world. But it wasn’t until I learned I was pregnant last year and then finally welcomed my first child, Beatrice, that I actually started living first-hand the 1,000 Days mission – to ensure that moms and babies get the right nutrition, right from the start.

Beatrice shows off her Future Fortified bib while enjoying one of her new favorite solid foods – eggs!

Being responsible for my little one’s own nutrition has been one of the toughest jobs I’ve ever had. Knowing full well the impact that nutrition during Beatrice’s early years can have on the rest of her life has made my awareness of the 1,000 day “window of opportunity” take on a whole new meaning.

The funny thing is, the academic papers and rigorous studies I so frequently read haven’t necessarily been my guides since becoming a new mom – instead, it’s been my sister, other moms in my neighborhood, co-workers and mommy bloggers who’ve helped me figure out the answers to some seemingly basic questions: how to use a breast pump, how often should I breastfeed, and whether fruits are appropriate at 6 months.

Beatrice has grown tremendously – in both size and personality – during her first 6 months. I know that her healthy growth and start to life is due to my ability to eat right during my pregnancy, exclusively breastfeed her in her first 6 months, and recently start her on the right kinds of nutritious solid foods. Her new favorite foods include eggs and avocado, in addition to breast milk!

The right nutrition will be critical as Beatrice continues to grow and learn about the world around her and, luckily for me, the community of mothers that I am now a part of will help me along the way. And also along that way, we’ll not only nourish my daughter and her future, but our future as well.

Let’s make sure that mothers around the world have the information, resources and support they need to ensure that their children are eating healthy foods in the first part of life. Sign our petition and urge world leaders to make measurable commitments to end chronic malnutrition. 

About the Author: Lucy Sullivan is the Executive Director of 1,000 Days, a non-profit organization dedicated to targeted action and investment to improve nutrition for mothers and young children during the critical 1,000 days from pregnancy to age 2, when better nutrition can have a lifelong impact on a child’s future and help break the cycle of poverty.

Water, water everywhere…but not enough that’s clean, says a new WHO and UNICEF report released this week.

As part of the Millennium Development Goals, the world aimed to halve by 2015 the population without access to clean drinking water and basic sanitation.

The good news is that we met the drinking water goal back in 2010. But, with less than one thousand days to go until the deadline, the report warns the global community that it is not on track to meet the sanitation target by over half a billion people. It projects that in all, 2.4 billion people – one-third of the world’s population – will be without access to basic sanitation in 2015.

What does that number mean? Well, it’s over twice the population of Africa, nearly three times that of Europe, and about half that of Asia. In short, it’s a lot of people without access to basic sanitation measures like toilets and a way to wash hands with soap and clean water.

When we talk about health, we talk a lot about the transmission of HIV and the prevalence of malaria, but it’s important to keep in mind the role basic sanitation plays. Diarrhea, the third biggest killer of children in developing countries (responsible for 11% of all childhood deaths), is most often caused by poor sanitation.

Other big diseases among adults and children like cholera, schistosomiasis and trachoma, are also common thanks to lack of sanitation. That’s why the WHO and UNICEF report is calling on the global community to join together and keep working to improve sanitation even after the MDG deadline of 2015 is past.

Do more. Donate your Twitter or Facebook accounts to Water.org and let them share facts and stats about the global water crisis to your social networks. 

AllAfrica: Unlocking Africa’s Future Country By Country – The World Economic Forum on Africa has highlighted that many investors are no longer talking about investing in Africa, but about hot to consolidate their investments on the continent. Some African countries have also embarked upon targeted interventions to improve their competitiveness and that of the continent as a whole.

The Guardian: Poor countries endanger development by spending less than promised – According to a recent report by Oxfam and Development Finance International (DFI), countries are barely funding social protection, gender equality and climate change programmes, which are crucial for meeting sustainable development goals after 2015. (Mark Tran)

BDLive: Sub-Saharan Africa’s growth ‘could rocket’ – Moody’s Investors Service believes that Sub-Saharan Africa would be the fastest-growing region in the world if it manages to address the gap in its infrastructure spending needs. The African Development Bank says that $93bn a year must be spent on infrastructure for energy, water, transport and ICT (information communication technology) until 2020 in order to meet sub-Saharan Africa’s development requirements.

The findings reveal that only 11 of the 58 countries assessed have satisfactory standards of transparency and accountability in oil, gas and mining. In the other 47 countries, citizens lack fundamental information about where the revenues from natural resources are going.

The RGI, which measures four key components (Institutional and Legal Setting, Reporting Practices, Safeguards and Quality Controls, and Enabling Environment), is an important step in giving citizens and civil society a voice in the decisions that are made about their country’s natural resources. After all, poor governance in oil, gas and mining affects nearly 450 million people living in resource-dependent countries.

Here are some of the highlights:

A big part of GDP

Revenues from oil, gas and mining are a substantial proportion of a large number of economies. For resource-rich developing countries, the proper governance of these resources is essential to ensuring that revenues from natural resources are being used toward eliminating extreme poverty in those countries instead of lining the pockets of corrupt rulers.

The revenues from oil, gas and mining in these countries are no small part of their economies. In 41 countries, oil, gas and mining contributed to one-third of gross domestic product and an average of 50% of total exports.

Low scores, high poverty rate

The RGI finds that the deficit in governance around natural resources is most severe in countries that are the most dependent on their natural resources, and that the worse a country scores on the RGI, the larger the proportion of its population that lives in poverty.

In countries whose score was “satisfactory”, 7% of the population lives on less than $2 per day. In countries that scored in the moderate range, 32% of the population lives on less than $2 per day, and in the 26 resource-rich countries with weak or failing performance in the index, half of the population – more than 300 million people – live on less than $2 per day.

The silver lining

However, it’s not all bad news. Chile, Columbia and Peru were among the top 11 performers in the “satisfactory” category. Though no African country’s composite score puts them in the “satisfactory” category, five African countries score in that category in Institutional and Legal Setting – Guinea, Liberia, South Sudan, Ghana and Zambia. Ghana, Liberia, Zambia and South Africa all score in the “satisfactory” category in the Safeguards and Quality Controls component of the index.

Revenue Watch is not, of course, the only organization focused on the effective use of Africa’s natural resources. The index follows last week’s release of the Africa Progress Panel’s 2013 Report, “Equity in Extractives”, which urges African leaders to invest natural resource revenues to create jobs and opportunities for current and future generations. The Africa Progress Panel report also urges G8 countries to help by tackling international tax avoidance and evasion, corruption and weak governance in order to help African economies recoup the $51 billion in illicit financial flows estimated to have been lost in 2010. Former Secretary General of the United Nations and current Chairman of the Africa Progress Panel Kofi Annan said in an op-ed last week that seizing the opportunity provided by Africa’s natural resources will require “strengthened governance backed by international cooperation to stem the hemorrhage of revenues associated with tax evasion, secret deals and illicit financial transfers.”

We hope that the G8 takes the opportunity in June to require gas and mining companies to publicly disclose the payments they make to developing country governments so that citizens can make sure they’re getting a fair deal for their resources. In addition, the G8 should seize the opportunity to take the “anonymous” out of “anonymous shell companies” (Phantom Firms used to rob Africa of its resources) by requiring public disclosure of information about the beneficial ownership of public and private companies.

There’s much more to explore – have some fun with Revenue Watch’s Resource Governance Index data here.

1. Bumper stickers trump road safety.

2. Your email inbox looks like this:

2. You prefer wristbands to bracelets.

4. LiveAid is your favorite concert of all time. (Bonus points if you were actually there)

5. You have 1 suit. And it’s for lobby visits.

Photo Credit: ONE.org

6. Even your shoes are do-gooders.

Photo Credit: TOMS

7. You’re a doer, not a talker

Photo Credit: Stubbornthoughts.com

8. People who don’t vote make you angrier than the person who voted for the other candidate.

9. Your Netflix queue looks like this:

10. World Water Day is up there with Christmas and Valentine’s Day.

11. You stop and talk to solicitors on the street – not to give money but to refine their pitch.

Photo credit: BBC.com 

12. You’ve posted this quote on your Facebook wall.

Photo credit: www.thefreedomexperiment.com 

13. You only exercise if it’s for a cause.

Photo Credit: Susan G. Komen for the Cure

14. All of your casual wear has logos and slogans on it.

15. You think there should be an updated version of the “We Are The World” album

16. You’re definitely a ONE member… right? SIGN UP now!

Got an idea to add to our list? Tell us in a comment and we’ll add our favorites in over the next few weeks!

Special thanks to ONE staffers for contributing to this list!

WSJ: European Leaders Race to Raise Aid Money for Mali – This week European leaders are racing to line up nearly €2 billion ($2.59 billion) in international aid for war-torn Mali before the African country holds elections, due in July. Brussels will host 103 international delegations at a conference on Wednesday to raise the money Mali says it needs to rebuild, as well as stave off a resurgence by Islamist militants who nearly overran the country earlier this year. (Meichtry & Norman)

The Economist: Development in Africa: Resource optimism - The Africa Progress Report, prepared by an expert panel led by Kofi Annan, was unveiled last week at the World Economic Forum conference in Cape Town. The report addresses the question: If Africa is so resource-rich, why are its people not better educated, its children well-nourished and its adults longer-lived? The continent is not benefiting as much as it should be from its minerals partly because of the poor deals it cuts with foreign mining firms. (J.O’s)

The Guardian: Good governance applies to all, not just poor countries - Labour is calling on the UN high-level panel on the future of development to focus on inequality and provide a new definition of good governance that not only applies to governments in developing countries, but donors, multinational companies and multilateral institutions. (Mark Tran)