Global Weekly Update July 30, 2012

Top Action: Call Your Rep. This Week to Sign the GPE Letter

On Tuesday, July 24 at the RESULTS International Conference in Washington, DC, many of our advocates requested that their representatives sign on to Rep. Jan Schakowsky’s letter to Secretary of State Clinton on the Global Partnership for Education (GPE). The letter asks the Secretary of State Clinton to commit $125 million of the U.S. global education investment to GPE. This is not additional money, but a request that the U.S. allocate a larger portion of Congress’ appropriation for global education to GPE.

Take Action in 5 minutes: Call your Representative’s office and use the following EPIC laser talk to make your request to whoever answers the phone. You can find the name of your Representative here, and use the Capitol Switchboard number to make your call: (202) 224-3121.

• Engage: I’m calling to make a request for of the Representative. Can you see that he/she gets it? I’m calling because 61 million children around the globe lack the opportunity to go to school—no reading, writing, or math.
• Problem: It’s great that the U.S. invests in global education, but we should be investing more of these dollars in ensurng that all children receive a quality basic education.
• Inform: One way we could do this is by investing more in the Global Partnership for Education, or GPE. GPE is focus on getting 25 million kids in school over by 2015, and training 600,000 new teachers. GPE is an effective organization.
• Call to Action: Representative Jan Schakowsky is circulating a sign-on letter to Secretary of State Clinton requesting that the US allocate $125 million of our global education investment (last year it was $800 million) for GPE. Will the Rep. sign on to this letter? I can send you a copy of the letter if you like.

Take Action in 10 minutes (and have more impact): Call and ask for the foreign policy aide in your Rep’s office and have the same conversation. 

International Conference: Follow Up, or It’s Like You Were Never There

Follow Up, Follow Up! One of the keys to successful advocacy is persistence. Please follow up on your meetings with Congress—reiterate requests and get commitments, provide information you promised, send thank you notes. Following up will insure that your requests get the attention they need and will deepen your relationships with decision makers. Be sure to report your meetings on our on line lobby report form and your other actions on our advocacy reporting form.

Other Important Follow Up Items and Opportunities for August:

• Report your lobby meetings. It is critical that we know about your meetings during the IC. We use this information to support you with your members in the future, and our overall numbers are very important to donors, granting organizations, and partners—it is an indicator of our power. This information is also then available in the future for your reference. Please take time to fill out our on-line lobby report form, or send us copies the forms you fill out by hand. This would also be a great time to report any meetings you did earlier in the year, but may not have reported. Here is the link to the on line form: http://tinyurl.com/2012LobbyReportForm. Here is a link to see which meetings have already been reported: http://tinyurl.com/RESULTSLobbyReportData
• Write a letter to the editor. Us our on line action to send a letter to your local paper about the International Conference. Let people know that participating in our democracy really does matter.
• Schedule in-district, face-to-face meetings with members of Congress. Most members of Congress are in district/state to see constituents in August, so take advantage of this. Request meetings in their offices and attend public events that will be happening during this election cycle. Also try to meet candidates who are not yet in office. They are hungry to talk to potential constituents.
• Schedule a casual outreach event to share about your experience at the IC. Highlight the progress we are making on child survival, HIV/AIDS, malaria, education, and let people know how our voices matter. Get them to take action and ask them to consider joining you.Consider using the August 11 National Conference Call as part of your meeting, though you’ll want to meet beforehand to give people a chance to socialize before the call.
• Invite new people to our upcoming trainings. We have two Introduction to RESULTS calls scheduled in August (August 1 at 9 pm, August 17 at 1 pm), and we have a New Activist Orientation (the training takes place over several weeks including 2 training calls. Training starts on August 6 with the second call on August 20 at 9 pm ET: Dial in to (712) 432-3100, passcode 761262.
• Send a note to your donor network. Now is the time to let donors know about the International Conference and the approximately 300 meetings held with congressional offices. Thank them for their support and encouragement and let them know that their support helped RESULTS take our message of hope and action to Congress. Send them an email with some pictures and give them an opportunity to contribute to our ongoing work atour results.org donation page. Here’s a Sample post-IC thank you to donors from RESULTS Chicago.
• Fundraising thank you. They can also support our IC fundraising efforts: Thank you to our staff and partners who have raised $2750 so far by walking and running the Crystal City Twilighter 5K at the IC. It was a blast to run with all of you and high-five each other on the course! You can still help the team make their $5000 goal by contributing at the Race to End Poverty fundraising site.

Important Upcoming Training Dates

• Global National Conference Call on August 11: Make plans now to be on the August 11 Global National Conference Call. The topic of the call will be about using August recess and election season to establish and deepen relationships with members of Congress and their staff. We’ll also hear a lot sharing from each other about the International Conference and the hottest actions for us to be taking around education, microfinance, and appropriations. Be sure to join us at 2 pm at (888) 409-6709.
• Introduction to RESULTS Calls on August 1 and 17: Join us, or send people who are interested in learning more about RESULTS to our Introduction to RESULTS call. The call is 30 minutes and gives participants the information and inspiration they need to take the next step in joining us. Have them sign up here. The August 1 call is at 9 pm ET, the August 17 call is at 1 pm ET.
• New Activist Orientation on August 6 and 20: The New Activist Orientation is for people who are ready to become RESULTS advocates. The training process takes several weeks and includes the two calls. In between the calls we support the new activists to learn about the issues and take action. Contact Ken Patterson at [email protected] to join this quarters New Activist Orientation.

ACTION Relaunches!

ACTION, a global partnership of advocacy organizations working to influence policy and mobilize resources to fight diseases of poverty and improve equitable access to health services, has relaunched its website to better promote its expanded mission and enable ACTION partners another way to serve global health advocates.

ACTION — originally, Advocacy to Control TB Internationally — has a global Secretariat housed at RESULTS Educational Fund, which works daily with RESULTS Legislative team and the teams of other partners around the world. ACTION links grassroots advocates from California to Zambia to ensure that the sun never sets on this important global health work.

Check out the new website, all the updates from the International AIDS conference and learn more about the global movement you are part of! http://www.action.org

Universal access to treatment by 2015 is possible because the costs have come down.

— Former President Bill Clinton at the International AIDS Conference 2012

I never expected to learn so much, be so inspired about politics and so concerned with what my congresspeople were (hopefully!) going to be doing. Though I never volunteered to present an issue at any of my lobby meetings, by the last meeting, my hands had stopped sweating and I was able to introduce myself without stuttering. If I can make that much progress in just a few days, I can’t imagine what kind of results I can create in a lifetime.

— Jolie De Feis, first time attendee at the 2012 RESULTS International Conference