Awareness Marketing And The One Campaign

One of the issues facing the ONE Campaign is hunger. Hunger is a pertinent issue that has been faced by the inhabitants of this world for hundreds of years. Hunger is when people do not have enough to eat. A startling statistic that “eight hundred million in 2002 and growing” (Stanford, 2007) is the number of people in the world that lack food. The issue of hunger that the one campaign is dealing with is not the temporary hunger that most people face, but the chronic one that most third world countries face every day. The world we live in today is “plentiful, prosperous, and a technological prowess” (Beckmann, 2008). The problem is not that there is not enough food, because we know from living in the United States how much waste we have each day; it is simply the people that work twice as hard as anyone else but cannot earn enough money to produce or buy enough food. “In our world, the deck is stacked against the poor and hungry” (Beckmann, 2008).

Hunger is a problem that we can solve through dedication and hard work especially with the help of the ONE campaign. “Three-fifths of the world’s hungry are politically marginalized people who live in rural areas” (Stanford, 2007). The ONE campaign promotes that “people should emphasize agricultural productivity and an integrated approach to rural development” (Beckmann, 2008). Three of the most globally hungry countries are Africa, China, and East Asia; “but the most widespread poverty is in sub-Saharan Africa where one in three Africans are malnourished” (Beckmann, 2008). That number is just astounding when you consider the amount of people that is covers. This issue in Africa especially needs to be resolved by all nations. United States activists have long been involved with solving world hunger. History has shown that United States intervention can make a huge difference in a nation’s ability to feed itself. The ONE Campaign puts for energy every day doing their best to combat world hunger.

Another issue the ONE Campaign is concerned with is disease. Tuberculosis is a highly infectious disease that attacks the lungs. In the early 90s the members of the World Health Organization declared the disease a world health emergency. The disease kills an average of 2 million people a year, and is one of the main causes of death in HIV/AIDS patients. The epidemic of Tuberculosis, Malaria, and HIV/AIDS will kill 6 million people this year alone. “AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) is a late stage of HIV infection. An HIV positive person is diagnosed with AIDS when their immune system is so weakened that it is no longer able to fight off illness.” (LIFEbeat 2008) HIV/AIDS is the fourth leading cause of deaths around the world. The majority of people who are affected live in Africa and on average are between the ages of 19-24. These diseases prevail in little communities in Africa mainly, but have recently become worldwide epidemics.

“Malaria is a disease of contradiction it is both one of the most prevalent and deadly diseases in Sub-Saharan Africa and also the most preventable and treatable.” (Bridgeland, 2007) These diseases have been known to stop the growth of entire villages in Africa due to the lack of medications and money to cure this very preventable disease. Although much is being done to help out the efforts in Africa, and around the world it is simply not enough to cover the enormous destruction these diseases have already caused. “At the recent G8 Summit in Germany world leaders promised more money for combating malaria, but aid agencies point out much of this is already promised money that still isn't materialising into bed nets for children.” (New Zealand Herald, 2007)

These three highly fatal diseases can be cured for very little amounts of money. Preventative measures to cure and/or prevent Malaria and Tuberculosis can cost as little as $2 for the entire treatment. The worldwide fight has come a long way, yet there is still not enough money.

Another major issue facing the poorest countries of the world is the issue of clean water and sanitation. Drinking water is the single most important thing required to sustain human life. Many people in developed societies such as the United States tend to take such basic necessities for granted. When we turn on a faucet, we are met with a flowing bounty of clean water for drinking, bathing, cooking, and everything else. Unfortunately, this is far from being the case for many poorer areas of the world. Many have argued that access to clean drinking water is a basic human right, and we have a right to help our fellow humans gain access to this most basic necessity (Gleick).

According to the United Nations, as of 2006, 18% of the world’s population does not have access to clean drinking water. On top of that, 40% of the world’s population lacks sufficient sanitation. As a result of these inadequacies, roughly 6,000 people die every day. (UN). Unclean water is unsafe because it can lead to diseases that are common in parts of the world, such as Africa, that are stricken by poverty. Diarrhea, Cholera, Malaria, and Typhoid are all spread and transmitted through unclean drinking water (ONE).

The lack of available water has other effects beyond the most obvious health issues. Because families in these poor countries do not have readily available water, children are forced to forgo schooling so that they can go and retrieve water. More often that not, it is the girls who must go do this (WHO). If children are missing out on education, it lowers the potential to improve the overall poverty situation in the given region.

In 2005, the United Nations announced an initiative along with many other global aid organizations. The ultimate goal is to greatly improve the status of the global water crisis. More specifically ,this means dividing the number of people without access to clean water by one half by 2015.

The One Campaign wants to encourage the national goal of promoting education in low income countries. Education is one of the most powerful tools that encompasses teaching and learning specific skills, and also something less tangible but more profound: the imparting of knowledge, positive judgment and well-developed wisdom. Education allows cultures to grow over generations. “The internationally agreed upon goal is to achieve universal primary education by 2015…meaning 77 million more children worldwide would have free access to primary education” (One). In 2002, donors and developing countries established the Education for All - Fast-track Initiative (FTI), a global partnership