Meeting Notes from Tue 13th

[Tess]

Hi Everyone

THanks for attending East London's Oxfam Group's first meeting!

Lucy has writtenup the key points Oxfam are focusing their campaigns
and things groups can get involved with so have a read and then I
think in the next meeting we can decide which campaign to focus on (I
think the Robin Hood tax is a great one) and interesing ways to let
people know about it!

UMMARY OF FIRST MEETING:

Oxfam fights global poverty in three ways:

Emergency work
Sustainable Development
Campaigning - this is where our Oxfam Societies sit. Campaigning is
changing the rules that leave people in poverty.
Read more about Oxfam here: http://www.oxfam.org.uk/oxfam_in_action/what_we_do/index.html


2 main campaigns

Health and Education:
Unjust world, barrier to getting out of poverty cycle.
One woman every minute dying in child birth
4000 children an hour dying from something as simple as diarrhea.
72 million children can't go to school
771 million adults worldwide are illiterate (64 per cent are women)

Situation where agencies such as the World bank are still pushing for
private health care provision rather than the accessible, public
health care that is needed.

Recently we heard that the Prime Minister is introducing legislation
to ensure that 0.7 of the UK budget is given to overseas aid. We have
been campaigning on this since Make Poverty History so this is a huge
success!!

Still need to change public opinion on aid as most don't believe it is
important.

Climate change
150,000 people currently dying every year form the effects of climate
change
A huge injustice when richer countries produced the carbon but poor
countries are feeling the effects.
We are calling for a fair and honest global deal to be made, which
means cold hard cash given to countries that are suffering to help
them adapt.
We also have been campaigning on really concrete, practical things
such as energy. Last summer energy company EON declared that they have
shelved the plans for a new coal station at Kingsnorth. We have
campaigned on this loads this year - with 1000 activists joining hands
around it in July.

Groups have raised awareness on this by holding film screenings,
dressing as polar bears and making digital videos.

Robin Hood Tax
This is a tiny tax on financial transactions 0 0.05% in order to
create over 2 billion for tackling poverty and climate change. THe
campaign has gone down really well- 160,000 online campaigners and
loads of groups getting active on this, holding Days of Action in
their town where they dress up and get people to support it. The
public absolutely love this campaign! More info: www.robinhoodtax.org.uk

Oxfam campaigning Groups
Are very influential in bringing about change. The activities they
get involved with very much reflect who is in the group. Often groups
do film screening, host debates or talks, many do stalls or stunts in
their towns on the weekends or at gigs, some came with us to the
Copenhagen Summit last year

What we do to support
Access to an amazing network of people across the UK - particularly
through online vehicles such as The Enabler
Training – media, political, online campaigning, leadership and public
speaking- available to all activists
Campaigning resources - posters, petitions, table cloths- all the
stuff you need to mount a campaign!
We also can supply great speakers for events.

What now?
Let’s plan another meeting- April 27th at 7pm - Again at Rich Mix and
that evening part of the East London film festival are showing short
films about lfe in the East and it starts at 8.30pm - perfect!

http://www.eastendfilmfestival.com/index.php?/programme/C17/#eastendtales


--
Subscription settings: http://groups.google.com/group/eastlondonoxfam/subscribe?hl=en