Email This StoryONE Campaign third in nation
March 5, 2009
By Shanna Taylor
Reporter
 Photo by Shanna Taylor |
After months of competition for Baylor's chapter of the ONE Campaign, it has all come down to one week, $1,000 and a quest for 1,000 names.
The ONE Campus Challenge announced national finalists on Wednesday, and Baylor earned the third spot out of over 800 participating schools.
The group will now be competing with other schools from the top 10 for the grand prize, a free concert by Vampire Weekend held on the winner's campus in April.
The competition, which encouraged student groups on campuses across the nation to raise awareness about issues of global poverty and disease, allowed campus ONE chapters to earn points in weekly challenges beginning in September. Challenges covered a variety of areas, from designing a ONE themed T-shirt, a challenge Baylor won, to hitting the phones and encouraging Congress to pass legislation dealing with poverty and disease initiatives.
"You are ranked based on what you do on your campus to promote the ONE Campaign," said Chesterfield, Mo. junior Justin Kralemann, the president of the Baylor chapter and an intern with the ONE Campaign that helps develop chapters on new campuses in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi.
Groups earned points for activities like setting up tables to encourage students to join the campaign and getting involved in sporting events.
The Baylor group campaigned at a women's basketball game this season where they "ONE the game" by getting players, spirit squad members and even Bruiser to sport ONE gear during the game, Kralemann said.
The Baylor chapter, along with the other finalists, will receive a $1,000 grant to host an event on campus in March that raises awareness of the goals of the ONE Campaign.
Each school will submit a video to the national committee, and the winner will then be chosen by the committee and the online votes of members of the ONE campaign nationally.
"From here each of the schools will develop their own projects," said Kimberly Cadena, the nationalpress secretary for the ONE Campus Challenge, adding that the last challenge has no specific guidelines so that students feel free to use their own creativity.
"We're really excited to see what Baylor will do," she said.
"The top 10 schools have a time frame to come up with the best event to promote the ONE campaign on their campus," Kralemann said. "We'll be having several days of events, and we are going try to encompass all of the things that we feel ONE represents here at Baylor, and what Baylor represents to ONE."
Planned events include a 'Day of Service' that will be held March 21, where students will work with Mission Waco and the World Hunger Farm to alleviate poverty in our own community and internationally. A worship and prayer event will be held March 22 as a 'Day of Faith.'
Group members will be in many places around campus the following week, hosting a speech and showing a video on Monday, speaking in Chapel and working with Campus Living and Learning to 'Storm the Dorms,' encouraging students to join the campaign.
Kralemann said he has high hopes for Baylor finishing at the top.
"I think we may be able to get more than 1,000 people signed up through these events," he said. "I think we're going to have a very good chance to win this."
That goal reflects the drive that has allowed the group, which has about 20 active members, to recruit 1247 people for the campaign during its first year on campus.
"We may not be the biggest organization at Baylor," said Houston junior Ayesha Mahmoud, a member of the group, "but we have a lot of determined and hard working members. We are really excited."
The ONE Campaign's goal is to be a non-partisan political advocacy group encouraging elected leaders to do more about poverty and disease worldwide, specifically aligned with the U.N.'s Millennium Development Goals.
The goals seek to end poverty and hunger, ensure universal education and gender equality, promote child and maternal health, combat HIV and AIDS, support environmental sustainability and encourage global partnership.
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