PHOTO: EVA-LOTTA JANSSON/ OXFAM AMERICA
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xfam America, an international relief and development organization, works to end hunger, poverty and social injustice in developing countries throughout the world.
With such an expansive mission, how do you reach supporters across state lines, income brackets and ethnic, religious and ideological backgrounds? Sometimes, through music. Oxfam has worked with a wide variety of music artists—from Mavis Staples to Coldplay—to spread the word about some of the most pressing problems faced by poor people, and to talk about solutions. Of course, this all becomes possible when you have a staff member like Bob Ferguson, music outreach manager at Oxfam America, who is dedicated to creating relationships between musicians and Oxfam’s work. This past summer was Oxfam’s fifth at the Bonnaroo music and arts festival. A crew of ten volunteers staffed the Oxfam tent over three days, signing up over 3,600 new supporters. “The Bonnaroo experience is unique for us because people come back year after year. So it’s a chance for us to introduce people to Oxfam for the first time, as well as talk to returning music lovers,” says Ferguson. “People who are visiting us at Bonnaroo for the second or third time have contagious enthusiasm—they come back and are excited to tell us what they’ve been working on via Oxfam and other local organizations they care about. Oxfam’s music outreach has become a way to create and nurture activists.”
“Music and its fans are as diverse as Oxfam’s programs throughout the world. That works. We talk to people and connect them to what makes them passionate about social justice.”
ABOVE: Planting tree seedlings in Adi Ha, Tigray, Ethiopia. In exchange for working on community projects like this, some poor farmers are able to purchase weather insurance for their teff crops. BELOW: Farmers separate the teff stalk and shell from the seed, with the help of oxen in southern Ethiopia. ABOVE LEFT PAGE: The System of Rice Intensification, or SRI, is an innovative agriculture technique dramatically improving the lives of more than 80,000 farmers in Cambodia. With less water and fewer seeds, they are producing 50-150 percent more rice and increasing their incomes. BELOW LEFT PAGE: Soha Yassine, Oxfam America Music Outreach Intern with Coldplay.
In 2011, thousands of music lovers at Bonnaroo pledged to support Oxfam’s GROW campaign to ensure that the planet is ready to feed 9 billion people by 2050. With the GROW campaign, Oxfam is advocating for positive solutions for the billion hungry people on our planet now, and an end to the mix of bad policies that make hunger worse. Oxfam is campaigning for world leaders to invest in small farmers (who are the ones best-positioned to fight hunger, but are already facing more-frequent droughts, floods, and storms due to the changing climate) and to hold corporations accountable when they bet on food prices (causing costs to spike and people to go hungry). PHOTO: EVA-LOTTA JANSSON/ OXFAM AMERICA
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