RI's Peace Primary Update

The Peace Primary, now three weeks old, is an exciting online campaign centered around key peace issues for the 2008 campaign season. Just twelve organizations were chosen nation-wide and Refugees International was one of them. Only one can win a $100,000 grant from the Ploughshares Fund to promote their peace agenda to candidates. This could be huge for us.

So how do we get there?

Essentially, every dollar donated through the Peace Primary for Refugees International is a “vote.” If you donate $100, that’s 100 votes for us. The organization with the most votes at the finish line (that’s October 31st) wins.

Clearly this campaign relies heavily on a wide network of supporters – the more voters you have, the better your chances are. We have incredibly passionate, dedicated supporters, but in terms of sheer volume, I realized at the very beginning of this all that our contact lists are greatly overshadowed by some of the other participating organizations. Their lists number in the tens of thousands…ours, not so much.

And so as we began planning, I couldn’t shake this frighteningly cartoonish vision of us trudging along toward the finish line in our little Flintstones car (a.k.a. “The Flintmobile”), as we watch the Jetsons go zooming past us (followed by a drawn out, exasperated “noooooo!”). I mean, can we really even compete?

The short answer is yes. After all, the winner of a similar campaign that Amazon.com ran was one of the smallest organizations involved.

The long answer is that not only can we compete, but we have to compete. Even in our little Flintmobile, Refugees International has a history of being able to do work that others can’t. And this grant would help us to have an even greater impact on an even wider scale; it would be a considerable boost to our ability to demand greater attention to refugee crises, which, if ignored, are a serious threat to peace and stability worldwide. For our work on Iraqi refugees, in Darfur, the DRC, and everywhere we focus – it’s major.

So, how can we compete, you might ask? Well, if you vote for Refugees International, and then tell each of your friends to vote, and if each of your friends tell all of their friends, and if all of those people tell everyone they know, I don’t see how we can fail! By building that kind of grassroots momentum, I have a great vision of leaving everyone in our dust.

--Sara Fusco

Assistant Director of Development