Habitat for Humanity joins World Vision, Save the Children and others in a global effort to end poverty such as that surrounding this child in his home fishing village of Isla Verde in the city of Davao on the island of Mindanao. In January, Habitat for Humanity began building and transforming lives in partnership with the Badjao, or sea gypsies there.

... And All for One
Habitat joins global effort to end poverty.

By Bill Walsh

This is not the best of all possible worlds. If it were, poverty and preventable disease would not run roughshod over so many around the globe. If it were, governments in developed countries would not be so eager to offer aid packages that come with so many strings attached--the better with which to strangle, according to critics. If it were, developed countries would be embarrassed to extend a largesse so small to those in such desperate need.

Hence the ONE Campaign.

Many of the more than 50 humanitarian organizations and two million individuals who have signaled their support for the ONE Campaign are veteran activists, certainly much more grizzled in these endeavors than Habitat, whose role in government affairs has been relatively low profile.While the campaign's more politicized efforts aimed at relieving debt, confronting AIDS and reforming trade are on the front burner for many who support the movement, Habitat will concentrate, at least initially, on efforts to prompt the federal government to significantly bolster the size of its international aid package, according to Habitat CEO Jonathan Reckford.

"This is a key part of our new thrust into advocacy," Reckford says of Habitat's enrollment in the campaign. "What we want to do is promote the idea that we are joining in a coalition to advocate to end poverty. Decent housing is a big part of this, but only a part. The other piece of it for us is...to try to identify where 'ONE-like' campaigns are at work in other countries where we are building. We can help support those efforts through our area offices." Reckford sits on the campaign's nine-member governing board.

"What the ONE Campaign is doing is attempting to influence the United States to increase its humanitarian aid by about $25 billion per year, or about one percent of the budget," he explains.

That's a statement that leaves many scratching their heads. A majority of Americans, according to campaign research, believe that fully a quarter of the federal budget is spent on foreign aid, not the 0.7 percent that is reality. More than 85 percent of U.S. citizens, according to that same study, support spending at least one percent on foreign aid. Given the high profile of the ONE Campaign--it is closely associated with rock star Bono, with Bill and Melinda Gates and with a bevy of Hollywood celebrities--both percentages figure to rise.

"Moral authority has never been a problem for (charitable) groups on Capitol Hill," political columnist Ronald Brownstein wrote in late October. "What they have lacked is political clout. Other than venerable but limited church networks, development advocates have never built a mass community of voters for their cause. ONE wants to change that."


The $25 billion figure has others scratching their heads in wonder over its affordability. But "to put this in focus," according to campaign literature, "Americans spend $42 billion on diet and health books each year, almost three times what America gave in official development assistance to the world's poorest people in 2003."

As this is being written in December, the U.S. has heretofore spent nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars fighting the war in Iraq, and ONE Campaign literature is quick to point out that "poverty in the developing world is a serious global security threat, a fact acknowledged by the U.S. when President Bush included development as a priority area of his National Security Strategy."

Diet books and terror threats aside, "Habitat is committed to the major biblical injunctions to work to end poverty in the world," Reckford says. "After an extensive, comprehensive process involving our leadership worldwide, Habitat for Humanity identified advocacy as one of its major mission goals in its 2006-2011 strategic plan. In its advocacy commitment, Habitat implicitly and explicitly states the goal of eliminating poverty worldwide in terms of the Millennium Development Goals."

Prominent among those eight goals is the call for halving the number of people in extreme poverty and hunger by 2015. "We will have time to reach the Millennium Development Goals--worldwide and in most cases, or even all, individual countries--but only if we break with business as usual," says United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan. "We...must start now. And we must more than double global development assistance over the next few years. Nothing less will help to achieve the goals."

Individuals can indicate their support by signing on to the ONE Campaign on our Web site, www.habitat.org.