Hey guys!

I have been meaning to write for a while but there is a tornado of things to do here and we are barely holding on by the skin on our teeth it is moving so quickly!

We are using our Stand to launch a few projects namely:

1. Critical Mass Engagement- an intense all year advertising campaign for Make Poverty History!

2. Millennium Villages Referendum - to implement a $15 fee students will pay towards these amazing villages.

3. Institute Building- There is a serious disconnect at our university between faculty, students and the world! We are going to use our social justice coalition of student groups to encourage professors from all faculties and disciplines to join up and start communicating on how to address global issues and end extreme poverty through development frameworks that work ie. Millennium Villages.

4. Sphere Network- we have invited people from all major spheres of society which we consider the following 8:

-Politicians

-Media

-Businesses

-Academics

-Faith Groups

-NGO/Grassroots

-Government Organizations

-Labour Unions

At the Stand, we have devised the itinerary in such a way that each sphere gets a keynote to speak on their behalf. Each keynote only gets 5 minutes except for the sphere that has the honor of delivering the Poverty Pledge. We have 7 politicians attending, our President, our Dean of Students, faculty from other universities as far away as a 2 hour drive!, we may have CIDA representatives speak, our Chaplain Chair, Students' Union President, and many more. Each sphere gets a chance to explain what they have done and are doing to end extreme poverty.

We messaged nearly every high school in our city to attend or hold their own events and plan to have them all planning for Stand 2010. We currently have our countdown clocks out, banners up, hundreds of posters and chalking stencils made. Next week we plan to implement our whitebanding of hundreds of trees on campus (we received 10 roles of whitewrap from the MPH national office), chalking, class canvassing, pamphlet soliciting and powerpoint presentations.

We also contact all major universities in Canada to get them to hold Stands as well. We tried to coordinate our efforts in real time through livestream.com but it looks like we'll have to leave it for next year.

Needless to say, we are busy!