Trevor Wiles helps ONE at Carthage win national competition

2014 Feb 14

Third place wasn't good enough for Trevor Wiles and ONE at Carthage. Last year the student organization finished in third place in the ONE Campus Challenge, a nationwide competition to mobilize students to raise awareness about poverty, hunger, and preventable disease in developing countries through letter-writing and other awareness campaigns. This year, the student organization finished first in the competition thanks to help from Trevor. ONE is a national grassroots advocacy and campaigning organization that works to fight extreme poverty and preventable disease around the world.

Not only did the group finish first in the challenge, but they scored more points than the University of Iowa, University of Michigan and University of Virginia combined. For some perspective, Carthage has 2,500 full-time undergraduate students. Those schools combined have 64,594.

The group, which was formed in the spring of 2012, will receive a $1,000 grant to use to attract more members and build a movement of students, faculty, and friends committed to ending extreme poverty by 2030. They will also send a student representative to Washington D.C. this summer to participate on ONE's exclusive Student Advisory Board.

"ONE at Carthage is a student-driven group that not only involves the students directly active in the organization, but also involves students campus-wide in the challenges," said Ellen Hauser, the groups's faculty advisor and assistant professor of political science and women's and gender studies. "The phenomenal success of the Carthage organization can be attributed to the hard work of the group members, who are devoted to educating others about the realities of poverty in other countries as well as taking action to reduce global poverty levels and suffering."

To win the semester-long challenge the group wrote 780 letters, gave presentations to 11 classes, campaigned outside of Johnson Hall, arranged to have a display in the library and painted Kissing Rock for HIV/AIDS awareness and to help bring electricity to rural Africa. They also collaborated with Phi Kappa Sigma, Delta Upsilon, Alpha Chi Omega, Tau Kappa Epsilon, Intervarsity, and the French, Theatre, and Political Science Departments. This is in addition to the calls and tweets to lawmakers and tabling outside of many events.