Oxfam Action Corps 2012 Recruitment

Hey Everyone,

Oxfam America is currently recruiting new volunteers for 2012-2013. If you are interested in joining the Oxfam Action Corps please sign up and spread the word by February 14th at http://www.oxfamactioncorps.org.

Join the Oxfam Action Corps to support women farmers, fight global hunger, and build a better food system!  You will meet great people and work together to change laws that can save lives, defend the rights of the world’s poorest farmers, and protect communities from rising food prices and climate change.  You will gain leadership skills, have fun, and change the world!

Anybody can join the local effort!   All levels of experience are welcome.  You can also apply for Oxfam’s free four-day leadership training in Washington D.C. May 12 – May 15.

This year, we will mobilize for the GROW campaign for global food justice.  The women and men in poor countries who struggle to grow enough food to feed their families are facing competition for land and water, rising prices, and climate change.  We will call for laws that support women and farmers, sustainable practices, and resilience to climate change, and ensure a better future for people in the poorest regions of the world.

This is a year-round volunteer opportunity, with a deadline of February 14 to apply for the spring training.  Find out more and sign up at http://www.oxfamactioncorps.org .

Check out this video to see what we are all about:

An idea that's worth spreading.

Only 5 days left - Vote for Oxfam Action Corps’ Idea to Raise Awareness for East Africa!

Six of the Oxfam Action Corps teams (San Francisco, Des Moines, Chicago, Columbus, Boston and New York City) joined forces under the leadership of Elissa Yoder (Columbus Oxfam Action Corps) and submitted a proposal to GOOD to win $5,000 for awareness building here in the US about the East Africa crisis. Their idea involves hosting 6 simultaneous Oxfam America Hunger Banquets ® and linking them all via live web streaming.

How will the winning proposal be decided? The answer is by votes. Anyone can vote, and the proposal with the most votes by Wednesday, December 14 9am ET WINS $5,000 to actually implement the idea!

Will you take 2 seconds tovote? Check out their idea and vote for the Action Corps at http://fwd.maker.good.is/projects/ACTIONCORPS!

Other ways to help spread the word:
1. Take the above language and post it to your team’s blog.
2. Post on Facebook:  Got 2 seconds? Vote right now for the Oxfam Action Corps to win $5,000 to implement a cool idea here in the US to raise awareness about the crisis in East Africa. Help us win this. Vote here, http://fwd.maker.good.is/projects/ACTIONCORPS .
3.  Tweet about it: VOTE now to help @OxfamAction Corps win $5K to raise awareness about the #East Africa crisis! http://ow.ly/7QHZa @GOOD.

4. Send the above language as a one-off newsletter to your contacts.

The Oxfam America Hunger Banquet ® gives attendees extremely valuable insight into the root causes of poverty hunger, motivating them to take action against such atrocities as the famine in East Africa.

Speaking of Hunger Banquets, check out some great photos of the Madison Oxfam Action Corps Hunger Banquet!

COP17: Oxfam Style-- Can Durban be the bridge to a better future on climate change?

Originally posted by Heather Coleman on Oxfam America's Politics of Poverty blog.

My colleague Tim Gore, climate change policy advisor at Oxfam International, wrote this blog laying out what governments can achieve at UN Climate talks which are starting this week in Durban, South Africa. We’ve adapted the blog to the US context and are reposting it here.

It’s now two years since the frantic campaigning and manic diplomacy that led to theCopenhagen climate change conference, and the blame games that followed its inadequate result. As the next UN climate talks get under way this week in Durban, South Africa, we need a new script to explain what has been achieved since 2009 and what must come next in the fight to tackle climate change.

The good news is that the UN talks on climate change are not a re-run of the zombie negotiating process in the World Trade Organization. But the ten year anniversary of the launch of the ‘Doha development round’ should give us pause for thought about where we want the multilateral climate change regime to be ten years after Copenhagen, and whether we are on track to get there.

The agreements struck last year in Cancún did not deliver everything needed to address the perils of our warming world, but they are leading to action.

Giving thanks to those who harvested the food on our plates today

Community Engagement Intern Brittany Collins

Happy Thanksgiving!

As we take today to indulge in a delicious meal with our closest friends and family and reflect on what we are most thankful for, let us consider where the food on our plates has come from.  Think about the farmers that nourished their crops so that they could be on our plates today.  How many of us actually know where our food comes from? 

Say it with sweet potatoes - "don't uproot foreign aid!"

Today and in coming days Congress is debating cuts to life-saving foreign aid, and Oxfam volunteer leaders are delivering petitions to save foreign aid to Senate offices along with an unusual twist:  sweet potatoes.  Why sweet potatoes?  Because this Thanksgiving staple is also a feature of aid programs that boost nutrition in Africa. 

 

A special orange-fleshed variety (conventionally bred) is rich in vitamin-A and drought resistant.  Promoting it in place of less-nutritious varieties in communities in Africa has helped boost immune systems, prevent blindness, and improve livelihoods for growers.   (A keen-eyed foodie will know that those pictured above are actually yams doing their best sweet potato impression.)

But this noble root is just one out of hundreds of such simple, cost-effective projects that are saving lives and livelihoods around the world - and funded by US foreign aid programs like Feed the Future!  

So before scooping brown sugar, pineapple, and marshmallow on top of yours, grab a few extra and get in touch with Oxfam community leaders in your area.  Join them in delivering this letter to your Senators along with a petition signed by more than 20,000 people nationwide. 

  
  
  
  

Happy Thanksgiving, all!

SF Bay Area Oxfam Action Corps Hunger Banquet and "Africa's Last Famine" Screening

Congratulations to the San Francisco Bay Area Oxfam Action Corps on their successful Hunger Banquet and film screening of "Africa's Last Famine"!  

Posted 11/15/2011

This past weekend we held a Film Screening and Hunger Banquet in Berkeley. Thank you to all who attended! We had an educational and inspirational evening!

The evening started with remarks from Thao Nguyen, a local musician and Oxfam Sister on the Planet. We then viewed "Africa's Last Famine", a new film co-produced by LinkTV and Oxfam America. If you haven't seen the film, it'savailable online and worth watching, as it addresses the ongoing food crisis and famine in the Horn of Africa and provides examples of innovative programs that are working to give poor farmers resilience to survive and thrive during droughts.

We then moved on to the Hunger Banquet. From the start, the inequalities were evident, as only three people sat at a decorated table with place settings while most were sitting on the floor. The high income received a nutritious and gourmet meal, and middle income ate rice and beans. The majority in the low income group on the floor were served last and only had rice to eat on corn husks--no plates, no utensils. After eating, guests shared heartfelt comments about poverty and hunger. Simulating global inequalities within physical proximity made the experience very impactful for many. Several chose to act immediately by writing letters to our Senators. Thank you to those who wrote letters--we'll be hand-delivering the 11 letters soon! And everyone signed the petition asking Congress to fully fund poverty-focused aid in the upcoming budget decisions.

If you missed the event and want to take action, please consider the following:

1) Sign the online petition

2) Write or call your senator. Email us if you want help wording your request.

3) Give back this holiday season with Oxfam America Unwrapped

4) Attend Seeds of Resistance on December 6, by Women's Earth Alliance

5) Visit the Revolution Hunger website

Special thanks to Cancun Sabor Mexicano, Stella Nonna, and Gather for food donations and to Women's Earth Alliance and Revolution Hunger for partnering with us!

Oxfam America Hunger Banquets throughout the U.S.!

Another amazing blog post by Drew Love of the Boston Oxfam Action Corps!

Think Fast, Imagine 1.85 Billion Hands 

by: Drew Love 

Can you imagine my two hands? Of course you can. They look, by all accounts, similar to your two hands. Although I don’t trim my nails as often as I should, and I’m terrible at moisturizing. But for the most part, you can imagine what a pair of hands looks like. 

What about your hands and my hands? The mental arithmetic becomes slightly more difficult, but not terribly so. Yet at some point, if we continue to add pairs of hands to this mental image, there comes a time when you reach the limit of your imagination. We can only imagine so many hands at a time, and it’s usually a very small number. 

So if I ask you to imagine 1.85 billion hands, is it even worth the question? 

And if I tell you that those 1.85 billion hands are a part of the 925 million people who went hungry last year, can we really understand the scope of that hunger?  

The challenging part is that even if we could understand the depth of that problem by reading a statistic, we would reach that understanding alone, most likely in front of our computers and in silence. 

Now that’s depressing. 

But there are better ways to understand the challenges we face. The most visceral form of learning is to go through an experience, not just read a statistic. The most empowering way to resolve a challenge is to do it with a sense of community, not in isolation. 

So would you like to learn about hunger in the only way we can, by experiencing it? And would you like to learn about it in the only context that will ever create a solution, with a community? 

We ask you to become part of that experience, part of that community, and part of the solution of reaching out to those 1.85 billion hands, so that 925 million people no longer have to go hungry. 

Learn more about this experience: host your own Hunger Banquet and attend Boston's Action Corps Hunger Banquet this weekend. 

 In addition to Boston's Action Corps Hunger Banquet, there is an upcoming Oxfam America Hunger Banquet hosted by the Madison Oxfam Action Corps.


The Oxfam Action Corps teams in Minneapolis, Chicago, and San Francisco have already hosted powerful Hunger Banquets this season, as has Iowa, pictured here.  

Find an Oxfam America Hunger Banquet in your area in the ACT FAST calendar, Change the world. Start here.