Shoeba Hassan brings the ONE campaign to Columbia College
Shoeba Hassan brings the ONE campaign to Columbia College
by Katie Xiao, Americans for Informed Democracy
Outstanding Student Leaders Digest (published by AIDemocracy.org)
July 7, 2006
For as long as she can remember, soon-to-be junior Shoeba Hassan has been occupied with the fight for international social justice. A political science and history major at Columbia College, Shoeba Hassan believes that colonialism and imperialism are at least partly to blame for the wealth gap between the world’s richest and poorest countries. Numerous developing countries have debts to developed countries, but Hassan believes attention should also be paid to the fact that developed countries ravaged many of these nations in their quest for raw materials.
Hassan grew up in a family that encouraged her to take a stand against poverty and social injustice. Her mother, a modern renaissance woman who Hassan credits for imparting to her a social conscience, instructed her on the finer points of politics as well as on the art of cooking.
“My mother has taught me everything from religion to politics, to fashion and cooking,” said Hassan. “With parents who have always fought for social justice, it’s something you also want to do.”
Hassan has become nothing short of a renaissance woman herself in the past year, presiding over Columbia College’s chapter of the Young Democrats and their Americans for Informed Democracy chapter.
Hassan first learned about AID at a youth leadership conference. It was there that she was inspired to get her campus involved with the ONE campaign, a nationwide petition effort that calls on Americans to unite and support the allocation of 1% of America’s federal budget to overcome the most extreme global poverty.
Although many people associate the ONE campaign with famous celebrities like Bono and Penelope Cruz, there are still people to reach. Rather than wait for her classmates to go online and learn more about the ONE campaign, Hassan brought the ONE campaign to them. She bought bracelets from the website, distributed them on campus and asked people to sign a banner showing their solidarity against global poverty. All 130 of the bracelets were snatched up the first day, some even paid for in advance.
“What I like so much is the simplicity of the message in the ONE campaign,” said Hassan when asked why her event was so successful. “Every three seconds one child dies of AIDS. One person can make a difference, one cause, one message. I just carried that simplicity into my event—‘If you sat down and tried to see what you can do in one day, what can you do?’”
Hassan also added her own creative touch to the event. She and other event organizers created a makeshift photo-booth where students and faculty who had purchased a bracelet could take black and white pictures with their bracelets, much like how celebrities were pictured with theirs on television.
Hassan, who admires celebrities like Bono, Coldplay and George Clooney for their social justice work, also encouraged people to sign under pictures of their favorite celebrity on the banner.
She said that she hopes to stay involved with AID because it is an organization that educates people who aren’t particularly informed or involved in political and international issues. In the meantime, she hopes to devote time to her other leadership roles and an internship in Washington D.C.