 Students Bring Buddies to Congress Even after a few weeks at the NetAid office, some of the buddies are still showing signs of jetlag from their long journeys to New York. They traded some rough travel stories, most of which involved being packed in tight quarters with dozens of buddies from their school. The ones who came from faraway places like Sacramento and Seattle had it the hardest, but the buddies are stoic. They've said more than once that their journey is nothing compared to not being able to go to school, which is the reason they came together in the first place. So when the opportunity came up to meet with members of Congress in Washington D.C., the buddies from New York were the first to volunteer. After all, they'd done the least amount of traveling. They made the trip along with a student from their state, Ruben Rafaelov, who joined students from seven states in a delegation organized by the Global Campaign for Education. Rafaelov, a member of the NetAid Global Citizen Corps, brought along buddies that had been made by fellow students at his school in Queens. The students and their buddies went to Capitol Hill to lobby members of Congress to make a greater commitment to universal education. The students realized quickly that the buddies were well-suited for life in Washington; they never tired of delivering the same message to anyone who would listen - Senators, Representatives and staffers alike - telling them that the U.S. needs to give more funds to ensure that all children have the chance to go to school. Larry, a buddy that Ruben brought along from New York, proved himself a natural lobbyist. He even found his way into a photo-op with Senator Hillary Clinton (see photo above), who he thanked personally for proposing the "Education Plan for All" legislation, which aims to get children worldwide in school by 2015. Read the first entry of the BuddyBlog, Buddies Arrive at Netaid, and see buddies from around the U.S. take over the NetAid office. | 
