Barack Obama

This week, President Obama hosted the Young African Leaders forum here in Washington, D.C. The forum brought together 120 dynamic individuals from more than 40 countries in an effort to forge strong, forward-looking partnerships across the continent and with the United States.

President Obama’s town hall speech at the White House

For most of us, August is the slowest month of the year. It’s a time to go on vacation, leave work a little early just for the heck of it, and because of the congressional recess, stop watching the news.

President Obama’s three-day Young African Leaders forum officially kicks off today. The effort aims to facilitate good partnerships with Africa and reinforce Obama’s notion that ‘the future of Africa is up to Africans themselves.’
The forum comes at an important time. This year, 17 countries in sub-Saharan Africa will celebrate 50 years of independence.

On Friday, the Obama Administration unveiled the United States’ plan for meeting the Millennium Development Goals, eight ambitious targets aimed at reducing global poverty and disease by 2015.

Flynn Coleman is one of this year’s winners for Concern Worldwide’s annual creative writing competition. The following is an excerpt based on her award-winning essay, which urges President Obama to support the Millennium Development Goals for the sake of gender equality.
What if just one of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) — achieving significant progress toward gender equality by 2015 — met its target, and in the process ensured that other MDGs would be realized as well?

With the ongoing International AIDS Conference in Vienna, the global HIV/AIDS epidemic has been thrust back into the spotlight the last several days. The Guardian has this report of the US response to criticism of recent AIDS funding:

Barack Obama has been personally hurt by claims he reneged on promises to increase US funding to fight Aids, the head of his administration’s efforts to counter the disease has said, rejecting the criticism as unjust.

This week, President Obama will announce a national AIDS strategy to reduce the number of new infections. Many, including us at ONE, were startled and troubled by the news last year that the District of Columbia had an HIV positive rate that is still higher than many African countries. This pandemic is truly global and needs to be fought everywhere. We’ll keep you posted when the strategy is announced.
Here’s an excerpt from the New York Times report: