Keep on rockin' in the free world...

ONE family in their Edun ONE shirts!
Originally uploaded by Brande Jackson.

“You gotta trust your vision of visibility
if you wanna make poverty history -
Keep on rockin' in the free world”

And with that, U2 ended a 130 plus date tour, 80 nights of which ONE had a big presence at! Initially it seemed strange to suddenly be back at a U2 show nearly a year after our last date in December 2005. But we quickly fell back into place, getting over 1800 more people to join ONE (and another 4000 texted to join as well!) and spreading the word about making poverty history across the Aloha state! Judging by the amount of people I saw wearing white bands across the island the next day, I could tell that our reach was pretty massive!

Getting to go to Hawaii was of course a nice perk, but even more fun was talking to so many fans from across the country and world who had come to Honolulu for this special show. As always, we had a stellar crew of volunteers to join us in making the night a big success. Among those volunteers were Beth and Susan, sisters from southern California who joined us. Susan is currently a nurse who now lives in Hawaii, and Beth had to wake up some three hours after the show to run in the AIDS marathon Sunday AM! LA volunteer Sheri was also there, along with her sister and two friends, ‘the other’ Sheri and Sean are ONE Hawaii members who are hosting an exciting event in Oahu later this week (contact us for more info on this!), Linsey and Laura work with the local Salvation Army, Riley is a Hawaii native, and Lori, a tried (or tired?) and true San Francisco volunteer rounded out our crew. It was especially great to see Lori – she was among the very first ONE volunteers we ever got to work with, way back in April of 05 when she joined us at a U2 show in San Jose. My buddy Jamie, a veteran volunteer at this point, and her husband James also joined us in helping out at the very busy booths - we don't think poor James really knew what he was getting himself into! In fact, the night was full of familiar faces from the last two years!

ONE volunteer crew
Originally uploaded by Brande Jackson.

If anything really stood out on Saturday night, it was the REDness of the crowd – there were countless fans sporting the new RED product tee’s, the ONE Edun tee’s (Bono himself was wearing the Edun ONE shirt most of the night!) and the black ONE tee’s. It’s hard for me to believe in that in March of 2005, when the tour began, there were only 50 or so ONE shirts in existence, (for my staff and our volunteers!) and now literally tens of thousands of fans are helping to fight poverty with their fashion choices! All in all, it’s been an amazing journey watching this campaign grow and expand and really make an impact over the past two years.

ONE
Originally uploaded by Brande Jackson.

It’s always bittersweet to have something that was as amazing as the U2 tour was for us come to an end, but it’s good to know that we got over 100,000 fans to join us in that time, and were able to take great strides in spreading the word about ONE. A special thanks to all of those volunteers that have joined us on the Vertigo tour, and to the Vertigo crew for the endless support of ONE!

Keep on the lookout for exciting volunteer opportunities to come in 2007!

PS: check out more U2 Hawaii photos!

one campaign
U2
global poverty
activism
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