The Global Poverty Project

The Global Poverty Project aims to be a catalyst for social and political change. Basically, generation Y is the first generation who could see an end to extreme poverty. We have the resources. In most cases, we have the agreements. But no one's acting on them. Hence the Global Poverty Project. The idea is to create a unified movement around the world so that our collective voices can be heard. And it works.

You'll have to bear with me on this.

Hugh Evans started by making his school the top World Vision fundraiser. He won himself a trip to see some of their projects. Soon after he spent a year volenteering in India. He was fifteen at that point. By the time he was nineteen he had talked his way into being the first youth ambassador for world vision. He raised all the money to create the programme. And he's just kept going from there. This was the guy behing Make Poverty History. It wasn't his idea, but he made it happen. Before he was involved, it was a fundraising thing at somebodies school where none of the bands even bothered to show up. He turned it into an event so big that Bono phoned and asked to be in it. From there he started the Oak Tree Foundation, putting young people in positions of power. And he really does mean young people. He retired last year when he turned 26. I've met this guy and he really believes in what he's doing. That's how I know this will work. The society its self is too young to be known, but Hugh has proven himself over and over again.

Here's an example:
Former Australian prime minister John Howard signed Australia up to the Millenium Development Goals, aiming to halve extreme povity world wide by 2015. (Extreme povity is defined as people living on less that $1.25 per day.) He then did nothing about it. Hugh organised Make Poverty History and all that was associated with it. There is no way that John Howard could have failed to notice the number of people who felt that this issue was important. But they weren't the people who would decide the next election. Or so he thought. The next concert they organised was actually a cover for a political campaign. 1000 young people went on tour with them, door-knocking in marginal electorates, making sure people knew about the issue. They got through to a lot of people. Incidentally, the current prime minister used to mentor Hugh and has been publicly supporting Make Poverty History since he was in opposition. He promised that he would increase funding to aid projects if he was elected, and he followed through. The funding boost he gave is the equivilent to setting up another world vision. And he's going to keep giving it.

I don't know where most of you guys are, but chances are you're going to hear more about the Global Poverty Project. There will be presentations late next year in several countries (can't remember them all, info's not online yet), followed by a 90 minute feature film similar to an inconvenient truth. It doesn't matter if you agree with Al Gore or not, you can't deny that he did a good job of communicating the problem in a short space of time. That's the aim here. I can't remember the details well enough to outline it, but it's going to keep growing. They've already hit two of their targets, and they technically havn't started yet. They're aiming to reach at least 3 million people in every country they visit. (That figure used to be 5 million, but NZ doesn't have 5 million people. That's the only reason they changed it.) I know it doesn't look like much now, but it's worth keeping an eye on. Trust me, this thing's going to grow.

I know I'm pushing this a bit, but if you've read that far then I've done what I set out to do. Also, if you think it's worth keeping track of and you use stumbleupon, please write a review of the site. Every little helps. :)