Global Weekly Update November 5, 2012
Exercise Your Right to Vote on Election Day, November 6!
No matter how much corporations and political super PACs spend, voters are the only people who hire elected officials into their jobs. We hire them, we fire them – nobody else has this kind of power. Claim your power, get out and vote, and ask your friends and colleagues to vote. That is the first step in our work in RESULTS. Let your voice be heard.
Get Ready for World AIDS Day Outreach
1. This Saturday, November 10, is our National Conference Call for our global poverty grassroots advocates. Linda Mafu, Head of Civil Society and Political Advocacy for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and Peter Staley, founding director of Treatment Action Group and key figure featured in the documentary How to Survive a Plague, will be our special guest speakers. Built around the theme of World AIDS Day (December 1), the call will be a great occasion to gather with your group. Meet. Be inspired. Make plans. Join us! Dial (888) 409-6709 a few minutes before the 2 pm ET start time to join activists from all over the country!
2. Partner with an International Advocate on an Op-ed. Consider working with a newly trained international Global Fund media advocate on a World AIDS Day op-ed! Allies from Burundi, Kenya, Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, and Zambia can be paired with you or your group to write an op-ed that, with their stories, can bring the global perspective to your local story. Contact Ken Patterson, Global Grassroots Manager, for more information on this cool opportunity.
3. Take Advantage of World AIDS Day Outreach Opportunities. Consider hosting a screening of the documentary How to Survive a Plague. This film is a powerful look at the genesis of AIDS activism at the start of the pandemic. It shows us the passion of everyday people when lives are on the line. Some of the tactics are different than RESULTS uses today, but many of them are the same. Our job going foward is go beyond surviving the plague to ending it around the globe – this movie is great inspiration for our work. Let us know if your group would like to participate in this outreach opportunity by providing the following information to Allyson Goldsmith, Outreach and Advocacy Associate:
- Date, time, location of your event(s)
- An estimate of the number of people you’ll be gathering for the screening
- Contact person responsible for receiving and returning the DVD (and the address to which we’ll be mailing the DVD)
- Short description of the event(s)
Considerations
- We have a special licensing agreement, so please only request the DVDs if you are organizing a real outreach event and inviting people to join you.
- You cannot charge to see the movie as this would violate our licensing agreement.
- The DVDs must be returned to us in a timely fashion.
- Let us know if you would like a movie no later than November 14.
We’ll provide you with the following:
- A DVD and return envelope
- A sample meeting outline and discussion guide
- An action you can ask people to take
- Guidance on how to make the most of your outreach event
4. Use the 2012 World AIDS Day Outreach Resources page. This page is continually being updated with helpful tools like meeting agendas, links to the How to Survive a Plague trailer, and more (including the soon-to-be-available November Action Sheet relating to World AIDS Day).
Education for All Act: Let’s Get to 100 Cosponsors
The story of Malala Yousafzai’s struggle for girls education in Pakistan should awaken a sense of urgency to get all children in school around the globe. No family or country will advance well if people do not have the ability to read, write, and do math. And from Malala’s story one can see how anxious extremists are to keep girls in the dark. We must not allow it.
One way we can demonstrate our sense of urgency around universal access to global education is by asking our Representatives to cosponsor the Education for All Act of 2011 (H.R.2705). We have set a goal of getting 100 cosponsors by the end of the year, and are 75% of the way there. Have you asked your representative to stand up for access to an education for every young child? Check to see if your representative has cosponsored (scroll to the bottom of the page). If he/she has not, there is still time to use our action sheet, companion laser talk, and shareable online action. These tools can all assist you in crafting your own letter or making a call to your Representative asking him/her to cosponsor the Education for All Act.
You’ve done a great job so far supporting this effort and on our entire Education for All campaign push this fall. In fact, check out how well you did with our media campaign holding the World Bank accountable for its share of global education funding, by reading the details on our blog! So, as fall draws to a close, help us get to 100 cosponsors on the Education for All Act! We can do it, and high cosponsorship will give us momentum for new legislation during the next congressional session.
The time for action on education for all is now.
More Grassroots Good News
1. Fundraising. Thanks to Lydia Pendley who dedicated her 69th birthday party to raise funds for RESULTS. She says it was “fun and easy” fundraising. She hosted an easy-prep supper with 36 friends and has raised about $1200 so far from guests as well as others who mailed in donations or made contributions online. Lydia says, “Celebrate something in your life and ask the people you know to celebrate with you by giving to RESULTS. It really is doable and a great way to spread the word about the incredibly important and effective work of RESULTS!”
We agree, Lydia. And to make it even easier, we’ve set up a RESULTS Celebrations fundraising page. Go to the site, click on “Register,” and you’ll be on your way to fundraising for your own birthday, wedding, bar mitzvah, graduation, or anything else you’d like your friends to celebrate with a gift to RESULTS. Contact Cindy Levin, Grassroots Development Associate, for assistance using the site. Whatever you’re celebrating . . . mazel tov and thank you!
Upcoming fundraisers:
- November 9: RESULTS Inland Empire hosts Meredith Dodson, Director of Domestic Poverty Campaigns. Contact Mark Campbell for more information.
- December 2: RESULTS Austin hosts Julie Clawson speaking. Contact Anne Child for more information.
- December 5: RESULTS Olympia (WA) hosts a house part with speaker Dr Laura Hart. Contact Beth Wilson for more information.
2. Expansion. Know anyone in Nashville or Richmond (VA) who might want to check out RESULTS? Meetings are being held in those cities soon!
- November 8: RESULTS Nashville Global Poverty Group Start, 6:30-8:30 pm CT. To be held at Belmont United Methodist Church, Room 124 (2007 Acklen Ave.). Contact Lisa Marchal for more information.
- November 28: RESULTS Richmond (VA) Global Poverty Group Start, 6:30-8 pm ET. To be held at Ellwood Thompson’s Local Market, Community Room (4 North Thompson St.). Contact Nick Arena for more information.
”When she fell, Pakistan stood and the world rose. This is a turning point. In Pakistan, for the first time, all political parties, Urdus, Christians, Sikhs, all religions prayed for my daughter . . . She is not just my daughter, she is everybody’s daughter.”
– Ziauddin Yousafzai, Malala Yousafzai’s father. Read more.
1. November 8, RESULTS Nashville Global Poverty Group Start, 6:30-8:30 pm CT. Belmont United Methodist Church, Rm. 124, 2007 Acklen Ave. Contact Lisa Marchal, Global Grassroots Associate, for more information.
2. November 10, 2 pm ET: RESULTS National Grassroots Conference Call for Global Poverty Campaigns. Special guests Linda Mafu and Peter Staley. Dial (888) 409-6709 to join.
3. November 14, 9 pm ET: RESULTS Introductory Call. Please RSVP for the call so we can welcome you. Dial in number: (712) 432-3100, passcode 761262.
4. November 19, 8 pm ET: RESULTS Free Agents call for global poverty advocates. (218) 486-1611, passcode 7378587 (RESULTS). Are you a RESULTS activist with our global poverty campaigns, living in a town with no RESULTS group? You are alone no more! Contact Lisa Marchal for more information on this monthly group call.
5. November 28 and December 5 (first session repeated on those dates) and December 12 (second session), 9 pm ET. Final New Activist Orientation for 2012. This two-session orientation is ideal for those who are activists with us but who are still relatively new and would like more information on RESULTS’ history and methods. Contact Lisa Marchal to RSVP and dial in to (712) 432-3100, passcode 761262.
6. November 28, RESULTS Richmond (VA) Global Poverty Group Start, 6:30-8 pm ET. Ellwood Thompson’s Local Market, Community Room (4 North Thompson St.). Contact Nick Arena for more information.
7. November 30, 1 pm ET. RESULTS Introductory Call. Please RSVP for the call so we can welcome you. Dial in number: (712) 432-3100, passcode 761262.
8. House and Senate on recess until after the election.
9. July 20-23, 2013 – RESULTS International Conference in Washington, DC. Dr. Muhammad Yunus and author/speaker Marianne Williamson are already set to join us. Mark your calendar now!