04 January 2006
A month in the life of an Oxfam campaigner
Ever wondered what it takes to campaign for Oxfam? Amy Merone is a volunteer campaigner for Oxfam in Manchester, and here she tells us what she's been up to.
Wednesday 30 November
I have been asked to appear as a guest on a programme for a community radio station in Manchester ahead of World AIDS Day. The interview goes well - I share my experiences of the time I spent in Kenya and South Africa working with HIV communities. We discuss the impact that the virus is having on communities in Africa and Asia and I stress the need for greater awareness, better access to anti-retroviral treatments and continued pressure on the world's leaders to act. We also talk about the number of people living with the virus in the north west of England, and everybody in the studio seems genuinely quite shocked, but it's important that people know that HIV is one of the world's biggest killers.
Thursday 1 December
This evening we campaign at a nuclear disarmament event in Manchester. Myself and two of the members of the local Oxfam campaigning group have come along to take photographs of people for our Control Arms photography exhibition, Manchester's Faces. We are asking people to support the call for an International Arms Trade Treaty by having their photograph taken as part a photographic petition. Everybody at the meeting is keen to be photographed. We've just heard some truly horrifying stories of how weapons are used to violate people's human rights and cause death and suffering, so it gives everybody in the room a sense of vigour to do something about it.
Saturday 3 December
It's the Christmas Fairtrade Market in Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester. The local Oxfam group has spent hours wrapping Christmas parcels of tea, coffee, sugar and chocolate to sell to Christmas shoppers. It's out last Fairtrade Market before Christmas and we have a full campaigning presence. It's absolutely freezing and people seem reluctant to stop at first, but Serena, Chair of the group, is determined to tell people why they ought to buy fairly traded goods. We also take the opportunity to campaign ahead of the World Trade Organisation meeting in Hong Kong later in the month. Some people stop to ask what Fairtrade means. We tell them how the current trade barriers are preventing millions of people in developing countries from being able to work themselves out of poverty. It's great to be able to raise people's awareness of issues that they might not ordinarily know about.
Monday 5 December
I have a meeting at The Printworks in Manchester today. They are interested in displaying our Manchester's Faces exhibition there and would like to meet to find out more about the project. He loves the idea and shows us an exhibition space where we can launch the campaign and display the photographs. This is great news. The campaign is starting to engage people's interest and raise their awareness of the arms trade. At the local Oxfam campaigners' meeting this evening, I tell the group. Everybody seems genuinely inspired and we come up with loads of ideas for campaigning events and artists in Manchester to approach.
Friday 9 December
One of the volunteers from the group, Dom, has organised a fundraising gig at a bar in Manchester to raise money for the Pakistan Earthquake. It's another fantastic opportunity to take photographs for the Manchester's Faces exhibition, and so a group of us set about doing just that. The music is brilliant. There are four unsigned bands playing and the bar is packed. At the end of the night the gig has raised £464 for the Pakistan Earthquake Relief Fund and we've collected almost 100 photographs of people supporting the Control Arms campaign. Everyone is in a brilliant mood.
Saturday 10 December
It's White Band Day 3 and campaigners in Manchester have organised an event in Great Northern Square to remind people of the Make Poverty History campaign as 2005 draws to a close. Campaigners from Oxfam, the Trade Justice Movement, Christian Aid and other organisations are there to raise people's awareness of the work still to be done in combating global poverty. People also remember the devastating disasters that have happened around the world this year. The day ends with a candle-lit vigil and a one-minute silence to reflect upon the work that still needs to be done.
Saturday 17 December
Myself and Amy, one of the photographers working on Manchester's Faces, go along to our local MP Gerald Kaufman's surgery to photograph him for the campaign. The meeting overruns, which makes us late for an anti-deportation rally in Manchester where we also take photos for the exhibition. It's a rally to protest against the deportations of Iraqi and Kurdish asylum seekers, many of whom have witnessed gun crime in their countries of origin. The more campaigning events I attend in the city, the more I realise that gun crime affects people all over the world and reaps destruction. We need to stop the madness.
Monday 19 December
Tonight we're campaigning at the Coldplay gig in Manchester. There is a group of 20 of us who will be going around asking people to sign up to the Make Trade Fair campaign. People seem genuinely quite interested to know what it is about. We tell them that we want communities in developing countries to be able to export and sell their products overseas and get a fair price for it. 'I'm up for that', is most people's response.
We get 1,834 sign ups, which is fantastic. Everyone has worked really hard and so we get to enjoy the Coldplay gig afterwards. It's a brilliant end to a year of campaigning!
|
|
I graduated with a degree in journalism and spent the first half of last year in Africa. I used to volunteer for the Oxfam Campaigns office in Manchester, and am now volunteering in Nigeria with VSO.
