Welcome to iHeartRadio Communities, a public affairs special focusing on the biggest issues impacting you. This week, here's Ryan Gorman. Thanks so much for joining us here on iHeartRadio Communities. I'm Ryan Gorman, and we have a really important conversation lined up for you. Over seven hundred million people across the world live in extreme poverty. Regions across Africa, Asia and Latin America are the ones most impacted, and unfortunately, we've seen an increase in global poverty for the
first time since nineteen ninety eight, following the COVID nineteen pandemic. Now, if you're wondering what exactly global poverty means, it's defined by the World Bank as the share of the world's population living on less than a dollar and ninety cents a day. One organization working tirelessly to tackle this issue is Global Citizen, and right now I'm joined by co founder and CEO Hugh Evans. You can learn more about all the vital work they do at global citizen dot org.
Hugh, thanks so much for taking the time to come on the show, and let's start with the backstory to how your organization was first created. Well, firstly, thank you Ryan for having me on your show, and it's great to connect with you. Global Citizen was born based on that belief that Nelson Mandela said when he said that overcoming poverty is not to suggest here of charity, but it's an act of justice. He said, like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It's man made and can be overcome
and eradicated by the actions of human beings. And really it all started in twenty two thousand and six when the G twenty World leaders were coming through Melbourne, where I'm from in Australia, and me and my mate Dan had this idea to run this small concert because we were trying to convince the Australian government and the G twenty leaders to increase their investment to combat hunger all around the
world. All my life, if I've been passionate about the eradication of poverty from living in the Philippines, in India and South Africa when I was a kid, and we saw this opportunity with the G twenty in town to try to make a difference, and so we hosted this small concert and one day it all of a sudden blew up when we got a phone call from Bono from YouTube, and Bono said, in his thick Irish accent, he said, hey boys, I'm coming to Melbourne. I want to perform at your
Make Poverty History concert. And at the time we thought it was a prank call. We didn't believe it that I know, but sure enough he was serious and he asked Pearl Jam to perform with him, and they created,
obviously an amalgamation of you two and Pearl Jam. They called it Ujam and they came on stage first on our bill and sang Rocking in the Free World by Nearly Young and it went viral in the days before viral was a thing, and we ended up standing on a million Australians behind our Make Poverty History campaign, and we convinced the government the following year to double foreign aid, so we raised six point two billion dollars in new funding for the world's poor.
And off the back of that, we got a phone call from the United Nations here in New York and they said, you know, we've seen what you've done in Australia. Could you build this youth movement all around the world. And me and my friend Simon, we went to watch an Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore, and we said, wasn't it great how our Gore, you know, talk so simply about the challenges of climate change. You know, could we do something similar on global poverty? And so we started
with this small presentation with the flag. So we used to take around to college campuses. And then we had this dream a senior if we could pull off a concert on the Great Lawn of Central Park in New York City. But there was this big problem because when we when we were in New York, everyone's like, no, no, no, you can't do it on the Great Lawn. You know, no one's done it on the Great Lawn on a week since Simon and Garth Uncle back in nineteen eighty three. It's
not going to happen. And so we just kept getting no, no, no, no no. So one day we managed to get a meeting with Mary Bloomberg's team and they're like, yeah, you can do it, but you have to come up with an innovative way to give away all the tickets for free, and you have to get the world's biggest artists. And I remember we went over to meet with the Foo Fighters and they were the first to sign on and their manager, John Silva, but were This is how
we were such a startup in those days. We were working out of a broom closet type office and Lafayette Street in New York with literally a couple of volunteers and nothing else. And we were a month out from the festival and we hadn't raised all the money, and we had no headliner because the Foo
fighters said that sixty thousand people they wanted to have another big headliner. And this is why I do believe that sometimes miracles can happen, because I'll never forget the day when we were in la and some in the Redstone, you know, for the late head of Viacom. He called us and said, come come to my house, and he literally wrote a check on the spot
for over a million dollars to help us make it happen. And then half an hour later, Nearly Young called us from Hawaii saying he wanted to headline the first year. And I was like wow. And so we were already in August and our festival takes places and know every September, and amazingly, you know, a month later, sixty thousand people came and were able to secure commitment commitments of over a billion dollars to support our mission of eradicating poverty.
And the cool thing about Global Citizen is that none of that money that's announced on stage goes to us. We give it directly to all the charities that we support. And we thought that year one was going to be the end of it because we were so tired at the end of pulling it off. But the day after we got a call from Stevie Wonder and his agent Rob Liked, and Stevie's like, you know, boys, I saw what
you did. I want to headline Year two and you said, with all respectness to Wander, there is no Year two as well, there is now and so that's that's why Global Citizen grew to now become the largest movement of its kind around the world. You know, we now have millions of members all around the world. The festival has gone to South Africa with Beyonce and
Jay Z for Mandela's one hundredth anniversary, which we've been to Germany. We've been most recently in Paris with obviously two years ago with Ed Shearon and with Elton Johnaman this year with Billie Eilish and Lenny Kravitz and her. So we're thrilled that the movement has now become truly global and as as inspiring young people all around the world. But we've always stayed true to that idea that you have to earn your way into the festival. You can't buy tickets to Global
Citizen. It's eighty percent of the tickets are given away for free in exchange for your actions, and you use the Global Citizen an apt to take action because we believe, as Mandela said, that our collective voice is so much more powerful than just our individual voice, and so we use the power of that collective voice to convince world leaders to make multi billion dollar pledges because you and I know that extreme poverty is a three point five trillion dollars challenge.
You know it's not going to be sold through a bunch of black tie gala dinners. That's never going to make the difference. We need. Such an incredible story. I have to go back though to the very beginning, when when you're just starting with this concert in Australia, How did Barno get wind of it? Well, it was actually in the day when my space was still and I remember, I remember that I remember still the lady from my
Space. And then with Rebecca Horn, we met with her in Sydney and she agreed to put global it was called Make Poverty History back in those days. She agreed to put the Make Poverty History confort on the front page of my Space and so everyone everyone like, our numbers of sign ups were huge, and so Bono heard about it because obviously he was, you know, touring with you two around that time, and you know, his manager Paul McGinnis at that stage reached out and was like and was like, yeah,
Bonno wants to do this, and we're like, wow. We just didn't believe it because I was I remember I was in the law library. I was studying law at the time, and I was like, now, this isn't real. We all thought it was a prank call. But sure enough, you know, Bono really has been, as you know that the godfather of this movement. And you know, he and I have worked together, most recently on our Stand Up for Ukraine campaign last year after Russia's unjust invasion
of Ukraine. Bono was the first to call and we mobilized the international community to come together to raise over six billion dollars to support refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine. So his coman through his own one campaign and everything he's done with Red is enduring, and so we're happy to be in a bigger alliance to change the world. I'm Ryan Gorman, joined by Hugh Evans, co founder and CEO of Global Citizen. You can learn more all about their very
important work at global citizen dot org. This mission it's very personal to you. You can tell as you talk about the work you're doing. Do you mind sharing with us a bit about your personal experience with poverty? Yeah. So I grew up in just middle class Melbourne in Australia, and there was an experience that changed my life. When I was fourteen years old. I'd started raising money for an organization in Australia and their work to alleviate poverty around
the world. And I was a very eager young kid, so I raised as much money as I could and event I became the highest fundraising kid in Australia. So the charity decided to send me to the Philippines when I was fourteen years old, and there was one night in the Philippines that changed my life forever. On a slum in the center of Manilla called Smoky Mountain.
It's the community that's built on top of a rubbish jump or the community revolves around scavenging, so they run up to the garbage trucks when they come in every single night to try to get bits of scrap nets or pieces of food or things that they can recycle. And that night I was placed in the care of a kid my own age named Sunny Boy, and we were both fourteen at the time, but our lives couldn't have been more different. And when it came time to go to sleep that night, you know, I'll
never forget. We lay on a concrete slab the size of part of my bedroom with myself and Sunny Boy in his whole family, seven of us in this long line. And we lay there that night with the smell of rubbish all around us and cockroaches crawling all over us. And I just knew that it was pure chance that I was born where I was born, and he was born into extreme poverty. And so I decided that night I was going
to commit my life to this commission. And I came back and I said to my mum, you know, I said, I'm inspired by what I've seen, and I am inspired by Mother Teresa. Would you let me go to India to live there? And she she wasn't excited about that idea, and she said, you know, there's no way I'm going to let you go. But I made a deal with my parents. I said, if I can get a scholarship to study in India, would you let me go?
And so I worked as hard as I could and got this academic scholarship, and when I was fifteen years old, went off to live in the Himalayan mountains of India at a school called Woodstock School in northern India, and would volunteer with Mother Teresa's orphanage in in Deradoon in Uttarakhand. And so it
became very personal for me at a young age. And when I graduated from high school, I went to live for a year and a half in Quazalinatal in Southern Africa, and I spent my whole time living at an orphanage for about a hundred children orphaned by HIV AIDS and violence. And since then it's been my lifelong mission. And I've seen again and again how charity and implementation
is important. But if you really want to achieve scale. You need to convince governments, the private sector and philanthropy to give at a clique that they're currently not giving. That we're never going to achieve the eradication of poverty, which I believe is the greatest challenge of our generation, and it's certainly the one challenge that everyone seems to agree on, whether you're from the political left or the political right. Everyone believes that no child should be hungry. Everyone
believes that that everyone should have the opportunity for economic development. And so it's certainly come my life's passion and the mission of our organization, Global Citizen,
and it is possible. And it's interesting we're having this conversation following a UN report that just came out, which I'm sure you're aware of, highlighting the fact that four hundred and fifteen million people were lifted out of poverty in India, place that you just mentioned, over the course of the past fifteen years. Yeah, So it's really an interesting story, the story of poverty alleviation. When I was born in nineteen eighty three, fifty two percent of the
planet lived in extreme poverty. We then, by about two thousand and five, two thousand and six that rate was reduced to around twelve percent of the
world's population, so enormous progress in our lifetime. Unfortunately, however, there was a new report that came out just a few days ago that I saw Bloomberg report on and this is the tragedy of the current circumstances, the fact that we now have gone through years of COVID, we've had economic recession, and obviously the war in Ukraine, and it highlights that there's now as a result of these factors, one hundred and twenty two million more people have been
pushed into hunger since twenty nineteen. So the last three years have been devastating for the movement to tackle hunger and to tackle acute malnutrition. And so what we're focused on right now is we obviously need to invest into Africa because hunger is not inevitable. Africa alone has sufficient arable fertile land to be the world's bread basket. And so as the world's biggest economy, the US and Congress must protect not flash critical funding for foreign aid in its twenty twenty four budget.
We know that Congress is debating the budget right now and they're considering a foreign aid cut at exactly the right moment where we have mounting food insecurity and multiple global crisis. We need the US to stand strong in helping developing countries respond to global challenges and honor their commitment to protect foreign assistance in the twenty twenty four budget. And that's one of the big things we're calling on as
part of this year's Global Citizen Festival campaign. We need citizens to rise up now and say, you know what I stand against hunger. I believe that you know where you are born shouldn't determine whether you live or whether you die, as Bono said so famously, and this is something that we all need to stand for right now. I'm Ryan Gorman, joined by Hugh Evans, co founder and CEO of Global Citizen. You can learn more at global citizen
dot org. How do you choose the organizations you work with to help distribute the funds to get that help to where it's needed around the world. So it's a great question. So I think that what we often find, Ryan, is that you have to work with implementing partners that have scale. Let
me give you an example. Right now, we're campaigning on girls education globally, but specifically we're also looking at education for children who've had their education disrupted by either famine or natural disaster, or a factor beyond their control that's made them a refugee. And there's only a few partners that are capable of reaching into the most vulnerable situations. One of those partners is Education Cannot Wait.
They're a part of unitstaff and they have the ability and I've seen it firsthand. I've been on the border of Peru and I've seen the Venezuelan refugees cross over the border and need access to education, and Education Cannot Wait has literally had portable education sent to set up to those kids don't miss out on a year of quality education, because if they do, then they're never going to
get back to school. And so we work with the partners that have the ability to have scale, that have the ability to receive billions of dollars in funding, because not every organization is set up to receive that amount of funding, but the ones they're focused on this year, if A focused on agricultural
development. As I've mentioned earlier around hunger relief. If AD is one of the few organizations set up to be able to support smallhold agricultural farmers with the ability to have fertilizers, seeds, and support to grow the crops they need to make Africa the bread basket that it can be. Education cannot wait.
That I mentioned. We do a ton of due diligence on all of the organizations that we support, and we have an entire policy and research team whose entire job it is to monitor and evaluate every commitment that's made by a government or a world leader, or a business leader or a philanthropist on the global citizen stage to make sure that they track that commitment so that the money ends
up with those who need it most. And we have a really, really great success rate over over ninety seven percent of all the commitments that have been made on the global citizen stage who have been followed through in time and accurately, because we hold world leaders feet to the fire to make sure they actually follow through on it, so we don't just let them use the global citizen stage as a huge platform. We then hold them accountable to make sure that
they actually deliver on that promise. Let me expand out beyond the issue of poverty for a moment, because while that's a core mission for global citizen your organization also does other crucial work, from working to stop child marriage in Tanzania to partnering with Rihanna to call for the education of millions of girls around the world. Can you spend a moment running through some of the other significant challenges
Global Citizen is taking on. Yeah. Absolutely so. The Rihanna example is a good one because you know, prior to Rihanna getting involved, there really hadn't been a major financing summit focused on education around the world. But Rihanna and her manager, Jay Brown and I met with President mccron and he agreed together with the President of Senegal to host the first see first ever major education
financing summit, and Rihanna's advocacy was critical. She literally managed to convince the French government to double their investment into global education that was two hundred million euros at the time the contribution was given. It was absolutely phenomenal and in total they raised billions of dollars through that one summit that was held in Senegal. It's a great example of how artists using their platforms very thoughtfully can create enormous
change. Another great example is right now, we've been focused most recently on
the climate crisis we had. We had Billie Eilish, We had her, we had John Baptiste, we had Lenny Kravitz join us in Paris because just a few weeks ago, President mccron hosted the Global Financing Summit to try to reform global financing, and our cohol to action was calling on the World Bank because for too long, the World Bank hadn't been lending enough money to the world's poorest nations to help them transition to clean energy and withstand natural disasters.
So we called on the World Bank to change their policy and issue what are called debt pause clauses. This sounds very technical, but let me make it super simple. It's basically saying that if a country is struck by a natural disaster, they shouldn't have to repay that debt immediately to the World Bank. They should invest that in actually supporting their own populations to rebuild and be able to build infrastructure that is actually more climate resilient. And amazingly we got the
commitment on stage. Just a few weeks ago, we had the new President of the World Bank. He's only been in the job for the last three weeks, and his first ever public engagement was on the Global Citizen stage. Committee, not just for the World Bank, but for the many multilateral development banks like the Asian Development Banking into American Development Bank, all committed to introduce
these debt pause clauses for the most vulnerable countries. This will save billions of dollars that is usually spent in repaying interest rates actually is now will be able to be spent on supporting communities if they are struck by a natural disaster lack a hurricane. And I'm going to tell you the cool thing about this is that it's important to realize that this doesn't just affect people overseas. This affects people all across America right now, because as we all know, America has
also been struck by hurricanes, and as we saw in Florida. You know, many insurance companies are now saying that they're not even willing to ensure in Florida because of natural disasters. So it's actually all of our interests to adopt policies that help the most vulnerable people. This isn't just about those people over there that happen to not be Americans. This is about all of us.
We all are affected by by the reality of increasing natural disasters, and so it's in everyone's interests to take action on this issue, and I think that's at the heart of being a global citizen. It's recognizing that the issues that previously we thought, you know, as the old saying goes, no man is an island unto themselves. You know, these issues affect all of us.
Whether it's refugees, whether it's economic downturn, whether it's the challenges of climate change, whereas we saw in the war in Ukraine, whether its seeds not leaving the port of a deaths are and ending up in Africa and creating a global fruit security crisis. These issues are all connected. Right now, I'm Ryan Gorman joined by Hugh Evans, co founder and CEO of Global Citizen. You can learn more about this tremendous organization at global citizen dot org.
Two more things I want to touch on, and they both focus on taking action. So before we get to the upcoming festival, just whenever somebody is ready to join this movement, how would they go about doing that and what would they be doing. So the way in which you join the Global Citizen
movement is you download the Global Citizen app and you start taking action. What we try to do is make action taking really simple because often people say, well, how do I make a difference in the world, And we want to be the first place that people who want to make a daily difference go to make that difference. And the reason why, you know why you can
trust Global Citizens. We have a team of researchers that think through, Okay, if millions of citizens all take this action calling on this world leader, what change is possible? Like example I gave earlier with the World Bank. So that's why every action you take on Global Citizen has had a team of
thoughtful researchers behind the scenes working to design that action. And all of your actions earn you points and you can use those points, yes, to come to the Global Citizen Festival, but you can also use that to earn rewards to see your favorite artists all around the world wherever you are on the planet. So it actually incentivizes daily activism and daily action taking because we really believe in the power of everyone taking action together and that's why we designed the platform
the way we did. And this takes the participation of artists to work correct. Yeah. Absolutely. For example, Chris Martin of Coldplay, he made a commitment in twenty fifteen to help us curate the Global Citizen Festival until twenty thirty. He jokes with me regularly that he's halfway through his commitments and so he's going to a way to go. But you know, like it absolutely
requires on the commitment of artists. You know, we were honored when the third year into the festival, jay Z decided to headline, and then he also came to India with Coldplay, and then he came to South Africa with Beyonce in twenty eighteen. You know, we're thrilled when artists support the movement
over a long period of time. And whether it's been artists like Ed Shearon or Pearl Jam or Stevie Wonder or The Weekend, we're thrilled the world's greatest artists have a key moments when we need them signed on to support highly targeted campaigns to make a difference from them in the world. And then I was reading and everyone can find this at global Citizen dot org. The five activists who were winners of the Global Citizen twenty twenty three prize, I mean,
the work that they did is just incredible. Absolutely every year we award Young Action Takers, Young social entrepreneurs from around the world with the Global Citizen Prize, and then what we do is we don't just give them the prize on a fantacy stage. We then work with them over the next twelve months to support their campaigns because we believe that these young entrepreneurs they need a platform and they often want to work with us to design a specific campaign that can have
a scalable impact. And all of them are making such a big impact. And we also partner with technology company Cisco to award one of those action takers with a two hundred and fifty thousand dollars cash prize. It's called the Cisco Youth Leadership Award, so that that winner can go on and actually scale their project and scale their impact in their community over the coming years as well. And so we love working with those grassroots community leaders wherever they are in the
world to have the biggest impact. I'm Ryan Gorman, joined by Hugh Evans, co founder and CEO of Global Citizen. Let's talk about the upcoming Global Citizen Festival happening September twenty third in New York City's Central Park. What can we expect and of course I'm sure a lot of people listening right now they'd
love to be part of it. How can they do that? Well, We're so thrilled that the Red Hot Chili Peppers as Lauren Hill as well as Megan the Stallion, Conan Gray and Stray Kids, have all agreed to perform for free at the Global Citizen Festival on September twenty third this year. I'm so excited to have the Red Hot Chili Peppers headline the festival because for many decades, I think they've occupied that creative space where action taking and music meet.
In fact, the first song I ever learned to play on the guitar was under the Bridge by Red Hot Chili Peppers. Signs on a personal level that they're going to be part of it. They're going to do a really long set on September twenty third, and if you want to earn free tickets to come to Global Citizen. We want to encourage people all across America to be part of this, so you can download the Global Citizen app today.
Start taking action on issues of hunger, on issues of gender equality, on issues of as we've talked about earlier, protecting the planet, and all of these actions. Earn your points and you can enter the draw to win a pair of free tickets at the festival in Central Park this summer. It's going to be an amazing event, as it is every year, and it's really really important work that's being done all across the world thanks to your organization.
Hugh Evans, co founder and CEO of Global Citizen Again, you can learn more at Global citizen dot org. Q I want to thank you so much for the time and like I said, for all the tremendous work that you and your organization are doing. Thank you, Ryan, and thank you to
everyone at our Heart for your partnership. Of course, thanks again, Hugh, and I got to say after navigating the website and downloading the app, it couldn't be easier to start to take action with Global Citizens or again global citizen dot org and you can also download the app, and that's going to do it for this edition of iHeartRadio Communities. As we wrap things up, I want to offer big thanks, of course to Hugh Evans for coming on the show and to all of you for listening. If you want to hear
previous episodes of this show, we're on your iHeartRadio app. Just search for iHeartRadio communities. I'm your host, Ryan Gorman. We'll talk to you again real soon.