Tag Archive for: Global Citizen

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Ways to Get Involved: Eight Impactful Types of Advocacy Work

types of advocacy work
Advocacy can be done and acknowledged in many different forms. In simple terms, advocacy is the public support for particular causes and policies. The following list delineates eight types of advocacy work to help people worldwide, and some you can help with right from the comfort of your home. To support these programs and groups to continue their advocacy work, you can share their websites on social media, as well as donate and volunteer to their cause.

Eight Types of Advocacy Work

  1. Eastern Congo Initiative (ECI)
    Founded by Ben Affleck in 2010 the ECI works within the bounds of advocacy and public and private partnerships to help the people of the Eastern Congo. Its goals are to raise public awareness, promote policy change through the U.S. government, and help communities locally. Some of the types of advocacy work that ECI does daily are helping improve maternal and newborn health care, aiding the DRC security sector and creating more economic opportunities in the Eastern Congo.
  2. International Child Resource Institute (ICRI)
    ICRI is working to help improve the lives of children and families globally through education, empowerment, health care, children’s rights and community development. ECRI offers travel goals anyone can take so you can travel with a purpose. You can go to places such as The Great Wall of China, the Kakadu National Park in Australia and Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania and help fundraise for IRCI along the way; everything raised through the trips goes directly to the organization’s programs.
  3. ONE
    ONE is an advocacy group that fights and alleviates extreme poverty and preventable disease through public awareness. Due to ONE’s specific type of advocacy work, the group has been able to help over 110 million people; ONE takes on issues in disease, agriculture, energy, maternal and child health, water and education.
  4. Aids Healthcare Foundation (AHF)
    AHF a nonprofit organization that helps people in over 39 countries fight against HIV/AIDS. Some of the types of advocacy work that AHF does include testing one billion people every year for HIV/AIDS, finding new cutting-edge medicine and discovering new ways to educate, treat and prevent further spread of the disease.
  5. Global Citizen
    Global Citizen is a movement that started in 2012 that aims to help fix the world’s most significant every-day challenges. Due to their types of advocacy work, Global Citizen has gotten over $30 billion in financial aid to help over one billion people worldwide; in addition, the organization gained 130 commitments and policy announcements from world leaders. Their ultimate goal is to end extreme poverty by 2030.
  6. Survival International
    Survival International works towards the global movement for tribal people’s rights. The goal is to help defend tribal people’s lives, protect their lands and allow them the autonomy to determine the course of their own futures.
  7. UNICEF: For every child
    UNICEF works in over 190 countries to help save children’s lives and defend their rights. The types of advocacy work UNICEF focuses on are education, child survival, child protection, equality for women and girls and innovation.
  8. Intern for The Borgen Project
    The Borgen Project offers five different types of internships which can be done right from home. The internships available are Public Relations/Marketing, HR, Writing, Journalism and Political Affairs. All of these internships can further help show the types of advocacy work both The Borgen Project and one intern can do.

With just these eight options, everyone has the opportunity to get and stay involved. Increased awareness and action can change the world, it’s just a matter of picking the cause you want to fight for.

– Amber Duffus

Photo: Flickr

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Global Citizen: Success Stories of the Global Poverty Project

Global Citizen: Success Stories of the Global Poverty ProjectThe Global Poverty Project, also known as Global Citizen, is an education and advocacy organization working to increase the number and effectiveness of people taking action to see an end to extreme poverty. Global Citizen’s advocacy work focuses on eight issues: girls and women, food and hunger, health, education, water and sanitation, environment, finance and innovation and citizenship.

Global Citizen has had success stories in these areas: 

  1. Girls and Women
    At the 2017 Global Citizen Festival, Accenture, Citi, Ernst & Young and Procter and Gamble committed to sourcing $100 million each through their supply chains from women-owned businesses, a majority based in developing countries. 
  2. Food and Hunger
    In 2017, the Executive Director of the World Food Program (WFP), David Beasley, confirmed that $575 million of $990 million committed by Congress in May, helped by 49,291 actions taken by Global Citizen, was released to the WFP and others to immediately fight famine.
  3. Health
    Over the past seven years, Global Citizen has taken 1.47 million actions to increase access to global health services, including HIV/AIDS treatment. These actions have led to 48 commitments by governments and are set to affect 626 million people by 2030.
  4. Education
     In Feb. 2018, Global Citizen held the first Global Partnership for Education (GPE) Financing Conference hosted jointly by a G7 leader, French President Emmanuel Macron, and the president of a developing country, Macky Sall of the Republic of Senegal. The conference was held in Dakar, Senegal, to support $2.3 billion for education in developing countries. GPE’s global ambassador, Rihanna, was present and spoke as well.
  5. Water and Sanitation
    At the Global Citizen Festival, Nigeria committed to getting 5.5 million people out of open defecation by the end of 2018. 
  6. Environment
    In the wake of Hurricane Irma, the United Arab Emirates Minister of Climate Change and Environment committed $50 million on the Global Citizen Festival stage to fund renewable energy supplies and another $10 million toward humanitarian relief in Antigua and Barbuda. 
  7. Finance and Innovation
    Global Citizen partners with the private sector to further fight poverty. One of the biggest successes was at the Global Citizen Festival in 2015, where the European Commission committed to increase support for the refugee crisis by €500 million over the existing development aid budget of the European Commission.
  8. Citizenship
    In 2017, over three million Global Citizen supporters’ actions helped to drive $5.7 billion in 143 commitments by calling upon leaders as a collective power to step up for the world’s most vulnerable.

Because of its advocacy and supporters, Global Citizen will continue to reduce poverty significantly in the coming years. 

– Julia Lee

Photo: Flickr

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Organizations That Are Investing in Women

Investing in Women
Investing in women can cause multiple benefits for the economy, food security and healthcare. There are many organizations that have programs for women’s education and there are some that solely concentrate on getting women access to what they need. Two organizations that are dedicated to women are Womensphere and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). By supporting and helping women around the world, these organizations are creating growth in developing countries.

Womensphere was founded in 2007 by Analisa Balares, who is currently the chief executive. Balares started Womensphere with the goal of unleashing women’s potential to lead and transform the world. Womensphere does this by investing in programs that educate or help develop women and girls, mobilizing others to do the same and hosting its own conventions where women can collaborate and share their skills.

Womensphere is investing in women by hosting conventions that allow women to share their accomplishments. One of these conventions is an award ceremony for different organizations that are making a difference for female activism. One award recipient, Nicole Schwab, received the Luminary Award for her Gender Equality Project. This project is working to close the global gender gap by developing a global standard assessment for companies that is non-gender based. This allows women to be included more and have opportunities at higher positions. So far the project tested its idea on seven companies and five countries and hope to use this assessment framework for companies globally. Womensphere also funds and develops different leadership projects that advance women as public, societal, or entrepreneurial leaders.

WILPF was established in 1915 that is dedicated to bringing women around the world together to end violence for peaceful political, societal, and economic climates for all. WILPF four main programs as of this year are disarmament, human rights, women, peace and security and lastly crisis program. All of these programs unite women around the world to solve common problems that are happening in multiple areas. To achieve this WILPF creates awareness on issues like women’s rights as well as financing initiatives that advocate against violence.

The Disarmament Program started in 1915 when the organization was established. In 1999, the Crisis Program was developed to coincide with it. These projects are decreasing violence that directly affects women and children. The programs do this through monitoring, advocacy and reporting military spending. These programs also work to control and decrease various weapon systems to disallow any unnecessary violence.

Both of these organizations see the importance of empowering women and are dedicated to bringing women together. According to the Global Citizen, there are plenty of reasons why supporting women has a positive impact on society. One of these reasons is that women can change the global economy. Studies show that 90% of what women earn goes back to their families. The more women work, the more they spend on their children’s needs, food and healthcare. Education and awareness of childbirth and sex can cause lower maternal deaths of young children and decrease the number of teen pregnancies.

There are many benefits to investing in women and Womensphere and WILPF are just two organizations that are helping empower women and giving women more opportunities.

– Deanna Wetmore

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Ban Ki-moon’s Career as UN Secretary-General

Ban Ki-moon
Like all jobs, the role of Secretary-General of the U.N. comes with its own challenges and rewards, especially when you’re following in the footsteps of someone like Kofi Annon. Ban Ki-moon has served in this position since January 2007.

Ban Ki-moon’s agenda has been all encompassing — promoting sustainable development, empowering women, supporting countries facing crisis and instability, dealing with arms control and non-proliferation, all while strengthening the U.N.

“Be a global citizen. Act with passion and compassion,” said Ban Ki-moon at Our World, Our Dignity, Our Planet: the Post-2015 Agenda and the Role of Youth. “Help us make this world safer and more sustainable today and for the generations that will follow us. That is our moral responsibility.”

In his first year as secretary-general, he called attention to the genocide in Darfur and made it a top priority. Under Ban Ki-moon’s leadership, a hybrid force, part African-Union and part U.N., was established for peacekeeping, according to the BBC.

“He worked doggedly on agreements between the government of Sudan and the African Union that led to a UN Security Council resolution last summer authorizing a hybrid UN force made up largely of African Union soldiers,” said Howard LaFranchi in a March 2008 Christian Science Monitor article.

Not only has Ban Ki-moon worked to address humanitarian issues like global poverty through the use of the Millennium Development Goals but he has also made it his mission to tackle climate change through the Global Goals for Sustainable Development.

“The Goals are universal; they apply to all countries, since we know that even the wealthiest have yet to conquer poverty or achieve full gender equality,” said Ban Ki-moon in an op-ed for the Huffington Post in 2015.

According to his U.N. priorities, he also sought to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation along with increasing monies for the Green Climate Fund and putting them to good use.

Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel applauded Ban Ki-moon’s efforts to address climate change, global humanitarian issues and the refugee crisis. “With sound preparations, and when the many partners involved pull together, the international community can accept shared responsibility,” said Merkel at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Paris. “To a very great extent we have you to thank for this achievement. And I would like to thank you most warmly.”

Although Ban Ki-moon’s term as secretary-general concludes at the end of this year, he can leave knowing he had a positive impact on the global community.

— Summer Jackson

Sources: Bundesregierung , BBC, Huffington Post, UN 1, UN 2, UN 3

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H&M Designs T-Shirts for Global Citizen Festival

Global_Citizen_Festival
H&M is known for providing fashionable and affordable styles for men, women and children. However, the Swedish clothing store chain also does its part to promote sustainability across the world. That’s right – H&M knows how to make fashion sustainable.

A proud partner of the Global Poverty Project, H&M is dedicated to supporting the mission to end extreme global poverty and building sustainable lives for people around the world.

By default, H&M is also in a partnership with Global Citizen, the online platform for the Global Poverty Project that provides crucial information about ongoing problems in the world and actions global citizens can take to eliminate them.

Most recently, H&M and Global Citizen have launched an exclusive t-shirt line to promote the Global Citizen Festival this fall. Musicians Coldplay and Ed Sheeran also contributed to the designs to show their support for the fight against global poverty. Coldplay and Sheeran will also perform at the Global Citizen Festival on September 26th.

Each shirt has a design unique to the musician and is made entirely of sustainable materials. At $9.95, the shirts are on sale at all H&M locations in the U.S. and 25 percent of the proceeds go to Global Citizen.

Furthermore, H&M encourages customers to donate gently used clothing to be recycled. Donation stations are located in every H&M store nationwide until Sept. 17, in a box that advertises the Festival.

Tickets for the Festival are free of monetary charge. Instead, guests must earn their tickets by taking actions against poverty. For every customer that purchases a t-shirt or donates clothing, H&M will provide them with the opportunity to earn free tickets.

Sheeran expressed his excitement to work alongside H&M and Global Citizen to create a shirt that fights back against poverty, uniting people to take meaningful action. T-shirts and fashion are no longer all about style; fashion is now also about taking sustainable steps towards a positive future.

– Sarah Sheppard

Sources: PR News Wire, Global Citizen 1, Global Citizen 2
Photo: Google Images

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International Advocacy Organizations

international_advocacy_organizationsInternational advocacy organizations are at the heart of improving the lives of millions all over the world. But what exactly are they? How do they function? How do they differ from other “charity” organizations? How effective are they?

A simple Google search provides a basic definition of an advocacy organization: “an ‘advocacy group’ is an organized collection of people who seek to influence political decisions and policy, without seeking election to public office.” Apply this to an organization working on a global scale and voila, an international advocacy organization.

However, things get sticky when the distinction is made between an international advocacy organization and other global nongovernment organizations (NGOs). But, there is a difference between an advocacy organization and a charity or other global NGO. For example, The Borgen Project is strictly an international advocacy organization. It advocates for the world’s poor.

However, another popular NGO named UNICEF is different. It provides aid, as well as a bit of advocacy as well. This is the difference. International advocacy organizations usually focus more on advocacy and not providing physical aid to those in poverty.

ONE Campaign is a perfect example of an international advocacy organization. ONE advocates for the world’s poor, with a particular focus on those in Africa. Their mission fits the definition of an advocacy organization perfectly: “we raise public awareness and work with political leaders to combat AIDS and preventable diseases, increase investments in agriculture and nutrition, and demand greater transparency so governments are accountable to their citizens.”

ONE does not focus on raising the funds to build hospitals and schools. Instead, ONE does its work by educating and mobilizing thousands of volunteers who advocate and campaign to keep programs related to key issues regarding poverty funded by governments.

Global Citizen is another international advocacy organization, with a focus on advocacy and campaigning instead of direct aid. Global Citizen focuses on a broader group of issues and global challenges including health, education, water, sanitation and food security. Just like the ONE Campaign, Global Citizen mobilizes volunteers to campaign for awareness of these issues.

What do international advocacy organizations do to ensure efficiency and impact? The World Health Organization (WHO) suggest seven points to make sure that advocacy efforts are effective:

  1. Define the situation – identify the issue. For example, global poverty.
  2. Establish goals and objectives – specific, targeted, measurable long-term goals that can be met.
  3. Identify target audience – usually decision-makers (Congress) and people who influence decision-makers.
  4. Develop key messages – a clear, compelling, and structured message to deliver to target audiences.
  5. Develop and implement advocacy plan – plan by which messages are delivered to audience.
  6. Engage media interest – social media, advertising, and opinion pieces.
  7. Monitoring and evaluation – important to assess and monitor the impact of advocacy efforts in order to make improvements.

Global advocacy organizations are generally effective at what they do. In 2014, Global Citizen along with 18 partners successfully saw the passage of the Water for the World Act in the United States and $639 million secured for the provision of quality education to kids in impoverished countries. The ONE Campaign has a long list of successful accomplishments, including seeing the United Kingdom become the first country to meet the 0.7% as a share of national income international aid target set 43 years ago, as well as successful advocacy for the African Growth and Opportunities Act which mutually improved trade ties between the United States and Africa.

These are only a few of the many successes of Global Citizen and the ONE campaign, and only a minute number when the multitude of other international advocacy organizations around the world are taken into account. Global advocacy organizations are key to fighting poverty and with more successes, they will continue to improve the lives of millions around the world.

– Greg Baker

Sources: ONE 1, ONE 2 Global Citizen, WHO
Photo: Unicef

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Hugh Jackman Releases Video for Global Citizen

Hugh_Jackman
Actor Hugh Jackman, best known for his role as “Wolverine” Marvel’s X-Men series, recently released a video urging others to help end global poverty through the platform Global Citizen and through the initiative of the Global Poverty Project.  “The world has the resources, the policy leaders have the ideas, the question is, do we as global citizens have the will?” asks Jackman in the new video.

This is not the first video Jackman has made regarding the issue of global poverty. In 2013, globalcitizen.org released an impactful video where Jackman explains the organization’s “Live Below the Line” fundraiser. Four thousand people took part in the fundraiser by living below the poverty line, or surviving off of two dollars a day for five days. Their efforts raised $440,000 toward ending extreme poverty. “Lines can’t help it, they separate things. But we can also be the ones who color outside those lines. We can voyage out to cross over lines for the sake of each other and for the planet,” explains Jackman.

Now, Jackman is focusing on the positive: global poverty has been cut in half in the past 20 years. Poverty now has the potential to be completely eliminated by 2030. This year is crucial as world leaders will be making important decisions regarding the future of extreme poverty. Global Citizen remarks that the year 2015 could be a “turning point.”

Global Citizen launched in 2012 and quickly gained the support of many celebrities, including rapper Jay-Z, actress Katie Holmes and singer Carrie Underwood. Every year, Global Citizen hosts a festival attended by many celebrities. In order to win the opportunity to attend, steps toward ending poverty must be taken, such as signing online petitions.

“I am thrilled to be a part of this year’s Global Citizen Festival to further the movement to end extreme poverty,” Jackman was quoted as saying at last year’s festival, which was held in Central Park. “This is a cause that has been close to my heart for many years, and I look forward to joining 60,000 Global Citizens in Central Park as we change the world for the better.”

Jackman’s dedication to the cause is admirable, and chances are this is not the last call-to-action we will see from him.

– Melissa Binns

Sources: Global Citizen, Huffington Post, People
Photo: Zimbio

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Global Citizen Festival Raises Awareness

 

In many ways, Global Citizen reflects the mission of The Borgen Project by uniting American citizens in the fight to end global poverty. Global citizen is a website and mobile application that was developed to help the general population find ways to tackle extreme poverty. It is a tool to draw attention to the suffering of the 1.2 billion people in the world who live on less than $1 per day and to act upon this injustice.

A Global Citizen is one who “identifies with being part of an emerging world community and whose actions contribute to building this community’s values and practices”. It is up to the citizens of the globe to request change for the most vulnerable populations. The systems that perpetuate a cycle of poverty must be brought to light.

Although Global Citizen does not ask for donations or charity, they work to learn more about pertinent issues that relate to extreme poverty and ways we can overcome them. Initiated by the Global Poverty Project, the Global Citizen Festival kicked-off this past September in New York City for its third annual gathering.

Accompanying United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi were stars such as Jay Z, No Doubt, Sting, Foo Fighters, John Legend, the Roots and many more. Almost 60,000 people joined the celebration of global unity and aspiration to address the world’s most urgent problems. Tickets were free for all audience members, who assisted or volunteered in some way to help spread awareness about global poverty.

This year’s Global Citizen Festival efforts were aimed in improving access to education, vaccination and sanitation. Although not an official event for the U.N. General Assembly, the Global Citizen Festival has assembled a host of world leaders who have voiced their commitment to focus and address the issues of extreme poverty, climate change and sustainable development.

With less than 465 days to achieve all eight of the Millennium Development Goals, Ki-moon reassured the crowd that “a better world was around the corner.”

– Leeda Jewayni

Sources: United Nations, Global Citizen, MSNBC, Kosmos JournalE
Photo: MSNBC

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Music Stars Help Fight Global Poverty

global-citizen-project-concert-endpoverty
The long line of musicians joining the fight against global poverty has added a few more names to the roster. More than 70 artists, including Jay-Z, Beyonce, Pearl Jam, and Bruce Springsteen, have teamed up with the Global Poverty Project to turn their fans into advocates for global poverty.

The Global Citizen Tickets Initiative is the innovative way the Global Poverty Project has been using to further their cause. Artists have donated two tickets from each of their shows, totaling over 20,000 tickets to be won by their fans. To win the tickets, fans must earn points by signing petitions, pledging volunteer hours, writing to elected leaders, or donating money to aid organizations. The points they earn can either be used to enter a lottery, or, with enough points, redeemed for tickets directly.

Hugh Evans, the CEO and co-founder of the Global Poverty Project, told the New York Times, “It provides us with an opportunity to get really powerful activism worldwide.” Over the last year, Evans has collaborated with the two largest concert promoters, three major talent agencies, and dozens of band and festival managers to acquire the tickets.

The Global Poverty Project is no stranger to the music scene. The organization  has hosted the Global Citizen Festival twice in Central Park, featuring artists such as Neil Young, Stevie Wonder, the Foo Fighters, and Kings of Leon.

The initiative was created shortly after the first Global Citizen Festival, when Evans asked Kelly Curtis, the manager for Pearl Jam, to play at the festival. The concept caught on quickly with artists due to the small sacrifice, and lack of controversy about the cause.

The Global Poverty Project focuses on educating and advocating for those living in extreme poverty, as well as raising funds for their partners. Along with The End of Polio campaign, they have raised over $118 million in pledges towards the eradication of polio.

– David Smith

Sources: New York Times, Global Poverty Project
Photo: The Roosevelts

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3 Key Responsibilities to Fight Poverty

poverty 3
Poverty. Can you define this seven letter word? Many individuals can define it, and most would say that poverty is the state of being extremely poor. Yet, how many of these individuals would know the facts behind global poverty and would know what it took to prevent or fight against such a global epidemic? Many individuals are so focused on their own personal lives that they do not notice what lies beyond their own every day life. Yet, global poverty effects everyone and reducing this epidemic could benefit everyone as well.

A dollar and twenty five cents. This is the amount of money in which 1.3 billion individuals live off of every day and possibly even less than this amount, states The World Bank. This is a staggering amount of people living off of less than a dollar a day! Yet as The Global Citizen organization has stated “ In the last 30 years, the proportion of the world’s population that live below this line has halved-from 52% in 1980, to 25% today. That’s a decline from 1.9 billion people down to 1.3 billion people”. There is a notable difference seen today with this decline in global poverty, yet if individuals do not keep putting their efforts towards this cause, the percentage could once again rise to staggering levels.

So how can an individual make a difference, one may question. There are three key responsibilities to help fight against global poverty. The first is through charitable donations. A single individual can make a large difference on numerous lives through charitable donations, states Columbia University. By donating funds towards global poverty, The Millennium Promise explains, an individual can help numerous others obtain food, clean water and power, a healthy living environment, technology and the seeds for innovation, education, gender equality, the proper health care for women and their children, and finally can help plant the seeds for businesses and entrepreneurship to create future stability. These may seem easy to obtain, but without help from numerous donors, it would not be nearly impossible to accomplish these goals.

The second key responsibility to help prevent global poverty is to follow through on the government’s promise to help aid millions who are suffering from global poverty. By following through on their existing commitments to help aid these struggling individuals, it proves that there are individuals who care about fighting to eliminate global poverty, states The Borgen Project. There are many ways in which to contact your government leaders such as writing to your political leaders, organizing letter writing campaigns, writing to your local newspapers and magazines, by calling your political representatives stating your wish in that they support the fight against global poverty, and finally by joining existing networks such as The Borgen Project, The Millennium Campaign, or The Global Citizens Organization.

Finally the third key responsibility is education. By educating yourself on the subject of Global Poverty, you can also educate others. Educating the public may seen like a difficult task, yet it has proven to be a highly successful global poverty prevention tactic. By educating the public, you can help spread the word of prevention and can help lead the fight against global poverty. By educating others, you can help lead to numerous donations against the spread of global poverty, and can also help spread the word of prevention even further. When you educate an individual on this topic, another individual can continue to spread the word, and it leads to the creation of a chain reaction. By doing so, you can lead numerous individuals to make donations, contact their leaders, and to continue the chain of educating others on this crucial subject.

Overall, by making donations to global poverty prevention organizations, contacting your political leaders, and by educating others, you are helping to end poverty. By taking on these three key responsibilities, an individual has started their own personal fight against global poverty and has joined in the movement with numerous others to end this global epidemic.

– Grace Beal

Sources: World Bank, Global Citizen, Columbia University, The Borgen Project
Photo: The Guardian