Previous Campaigns
1GOAL
In 2010 VSO lent its support to 1GOAL: a coalition campaign calling for world leaders to stick to their commitments and give every child access to primary education. Around the world over 18 million people took part, urging nations to step up and honour their promises.
1GOAL culminated at the Millennium Development Goals summit at the UN in September. As a direct result of the global support for the campaign the Australian government pledged an unprecedented $5 billion for education over the next five years, and the World Bank $750 million - together this could be enough to get an additional four million children through school in the next five years.
It’s a great result, but we'll be continuing to push policy-makers for stronger commitments to education funding.
Make your Mark
VSO ran Make Your Mark to coincide with the 2010 UK General Election. The campaign was aimed at engaging voters with their local parliamentary candidates, and candidates with development issues.
Over the two months that Make Your Mark ran campaigners exchanged emails with some 724 parliamentary candidates across 235 constituencies, keeping development firmly on the parties’ political agenda.
Help Women Help the World
Help Women Help the World was a campaign supporting the creation of a new UN Agency for Women. Launched in November 2008, the campaign mobilised thousands of supporters, who in turn contacted 88% of all the MPs in the House of Commons.
On the 14th of September 2009 the UN General Assembly’s 192 members unanimously passed a resolution allowing the creation of a new UN Agency for Women and the appointment of an Under-Secretary General to lead it.
This was a truly historic occasion, and one which VSO hopes will mark a real step forward for millions of women around the world.
The efforts of VSO’s campaigners played a crucial role in ensuring the strong support of the UK Government during the final negotiations, which at times we feared would end without agreement. Many thanks to all of you for the part you played in persuading the UN to at last take discrimination against women seriously.
Women Matter
In 2007 we launched the Women Matter campaign to help stop women being disproportionately affected by the AIDS pandemic.
Thanks to your efforts, when the Department for International Development (DFID) published its new HIV and AIDS strategy in June 2008, it included a number of significant commitments that will help protect millions of women.
DFID’s commitments include:
ensuring that the impact of HIV and AIDS on women is understood, measured and integrated within national AIDS programmes
ensuring the impact of AIDS programmes on women is properly measured
increasing by at least 50 per cent DFID’s funding for vaccines and female-controlled HIV prevention such as microbicides
making HIV and AIDS services more accessible for women by integrating them with maternal and child health services, as well as increasing access to family planning and female condoms.
