Closing Out a Summer of Impact: What We Achieved—and What’s Next

It’s been a whirlwind summer: from announcing the 2025 Global Citizen Festival to spotlighting entrepreneurs around the world.

Dear Friends and Supporters,

It’s been a minute.

When I said this would be a summer of impact (or winter of impact if you’re in the southern part of the world!), I didn’t anticipate just how much we’d pack in. In the two months since my last newsletter, on the Global Citizen front, we’ve...

• Announced the 2025 Global Citizen Festival lineup featuring The Weeknd, Shakira, Tyla, Arya Starr, Mariah the Scientist, and Hugh Jackman, with millions of actions already taken (more on that below),

• Produced the first-ever halftime show for the FIFA Club World Cup and helped raise over $10 million for the FIFA Global Citizen Education Fund,

• Brought Global Citizen NOW to Sevilla, Detroit (featuring Mark Cuban), and Amazonia—each packed with meaningful announcements.

On the book front, I’m thrilled to share that the paperback edition of From Ideas to Impact is coming in late October—complete with a brand new chapter and preface (you can already pre-order it here). I spent what little free time I had this summer—mostly Saturday afternoons while my daughter was napping—racing to get this finished and submitted to the publisher.

And on a personal note, Wendy and I somehow managed a few precious days with Miki, visiting farm animals and celebrating my third wedding anniversary before heading to the mountains.

Enjoying the summer months with Miki and Wendy

This newsletter is packed with more ways to get involved and what’s coming next, as, for those of us in the northern part of the world, we are approaching the end of summer.

The Goals of the 2025 Global Citizen Festival

On September 27, the world will come together on Central Park’s Great Lawn for the Global Citizen Festival. This year, our campaign is about turning voices into impact on three urgent fronts:

• Energy: Help provide clean power for 1 million people across Africa. With partners, especially businesses and investors, we’re working to be able to announce major energy projects that light up homes, schools, and hospitals.

• Forests: Protect the Amazon by raising $200 million to support Indigenous and community-led projects that safeguard 30 million hectares of rainforest—an area the size of Italy.

• Education: Through the FIFA Global Citizen Education Fund, help 30,000 children learn to read, write, and play by ensuring safe classrooms, teachers, and sports programs in over 150 countries. You can donate here or even check out these cool FIFA collectibles. For selected drops, 20% of all proceeds will contribute to the Fund.

To get tickets to the festival, you need to take action using the Global Citizen app (or buy tickets here). Every action, whether signing a petition, sending a message, or volunteering to mentor a student, brings us closer to the campaign’s goals. You can also sign up to volunteer - from beach cleanups to park revitalizations, mutual aid drives, and more. More than 2.5 million actions have already been taken!

Meet the 2025 Global Citizen Waislitz Award Winners

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Earlier this year, Global Citizen put out a global call for bold ideas to end extreme poverty. The three changemakers selected for the 2025 Global Citizen Waislitz Awards—now in its 11th year of spotlighting grassroots leadership - are:

🌍 Osei Boateng, Founder & Executive Director
🌾 Maryanne Gichanga, Co-Founder & CEO
💧 Joshua Ichor, Founder & CEO

Each will receive a $100,000 cash prize, along with networking support, to help accelerate and scale the impact they are already having through their organizations.

What Happens When We Show Up Together?

Last week, more than 100 Global Citizens joined together virtually for a robust conversation on grassroots advocacy. In the lead-up, we invited people from around the world to share their own stories of action, and the responses were nothing short of inspiring.

Here’s the truth: 74% of Americans say they want to work with others on a shared goal—but only 17% actually do. We crave connection, but often hesitate to act. One way to shift that is by spotlighting the powerful success stories already happening all around us. Here are a handful of stories submitted (there were many more!):

🌿 Chen rallied neighbors in the UK to reverse a local council decision and save local green spaces.
🚍 Isaac in the U.S. pushed his city to pilot two electric bus routes.
🧵 Lilian in Ireland turned a school project on fast fashion into a national policy influence.
💧 Priscille in Rwanda wrote to her local rep—and got clean water on the agenda.
🌍 Zainab in Nigeria mobilized her community to tackle pollution during Ramadan.
⚖️ Mari in the U.S. sparked a policy conversation about fentanyl and school safety after writing to her local member of Congress.

The common thread amongst all these was persistence and not being afraid to ask for help from fellow neighbors.

For now, here’s what you can do:
📣 Keep sharing your stories.
🧭 Stay persistent, even when progress feels slow.
🤝 And whenever you can, show up together.

On that note, one final story I want to share is from Liv Sarmento, a resident of Belém, Brazil, whom I had the pleasure of meeting last month.

Liv first discovered Global Citizen just before the pandemic. During the lockdowns—when her community was grieving the loss of friends and family—Global Citizen’s campaigns offered something vital: a sense of unity and joy. Over the past five years, Liv has taken hundreds of actions through the Global Citizen app, proudly showing me her points as proof of her sustained engagement. Today, Liv is proud that Belém will host the Global Citizen Festival Amazonia on November 1st. She called it a “mandatory route” to show the world the Amazon’s importance, not just for local communities, but for all of humanity.

Liv’s closing message was a heartfelt thank you to the Global Citizen movement around the world—and a reminder to keep going. “You truly make a difference in people’s lives,” she said.

Meeting Liv during the margins of Global Citizen NOW Amazonia

Big Boost for Amazonian Entrepreneurs

At Global Citizen NOW: Amazônia, Axcell Aceleradora, in partnership with Idesam, announced it’s doubling its investment in the Amazon’s dynamic economy—committing an additional R$25 million (approx. $4.5M USD) to support local entrepreneurs. Even better? This marks Axcell’s first-ever open call for proposals. Applications are open until August 31 for those building innovative solutions and community-based conservation in the region. Apply now at axcellam.com.br/edital or elosdaamazonia.org.br.

One of the many entrepreneurs this could support is a fascinating start-up, Amazomel, which I met last month, also in Belém. They train locals to raise native stingless bees—critical pollinators responsible for 90% of the Amazon’s biodiversity. Their deceptively simple solution? Selling rainforest honey. Bottled like fine wine, it’s sustainable, high-value, deeply rooted in the ecosystem, and delicious! “No bees, no trees,” they told me. “Every beekeeper we train becomes a guardian of the forest.”

The Amazomel team conducting rainforest honey tastings during Global Citizen NOW Amazonia

But there’s a catch: outdated policies. Brazil’s current regulations were copied and pasted from Europe and don’t reflect the unique properties of rainforest honey, like its higher natural moisture content. These laws make it harder to scale and sell products that are perfectly adapted to the Amazon’s biome. If we want to protect the Amazon, we need to back the people who live there—and clear the policy paths they’re already navigating with investment and ingenuity (this, of course, also happens to be the subject of the new chapter for the paperback edition of my book :))

Something Big Is Coming to Singapore Next Month

Stay tuned for an exciting announcement about Global Citizen’s first-ever foray into Singapore, in partnership with IMPACT WEEK (September 16-18).

For now, you can learn more about the week and register here if you—or anyone in the region—wants to be part of it. More details coming very soon.

My Reading (and listening) List

I was honored to guest-edit a recent edition of one of my favorite writers, Katharine Hayhoe’s, newsletter, about the story of my home state of Western Australia. Check it out here, subscribe if you haven’t already—and if you haven’t yet, I highly recommend her book Saving Us.

On the subject of Western Australia, some of you might recall Collie’s story from my book, which I genuinely believe is one of the world’s best examples of a just transition that doesn’t punish workers or communities. If you’d like to follow its continuing journey, the podcast below provides regular updates on how the town is continuing to reinvent itself. You can also stay up to date on the transition’s newsletter here.

📚 Some Other Reading Highlights

• 💡 My exchange with Purnima Memon on the value of policy research

• 🌍 Video messages from Global Citizens urging the German government to protect the Amazon.

• 🎤 A BBC interview with Ajay Banga, World Bank President, on why the world must focus on creating jobs.

• 🤖 A thoughtful article by my friend Maha on why AI is the new foreign aid.

• 🇧🇷 My interview with Brazilian media about Global Citizen NOW: Amazônia.

• 🕊 A tribute to Dr. David Nabarro, a great humanitarian who sadly passed away this summer.

• 📖 Orchestrating Connection: How to Build Purposeful Community in a Tribal World — a powerful new book by David Homan.

• 🌐 The New Age of Geoeconomics — an insightful read on today’s shifting global landscape.

• 🇪🇸 Coverage of Prime Minister Sánchez’s speech at Global Citizen NOW in Sevilla.

• I joined the To Save Us From Hell podcast for a wide-ranging conversation on what it really takes to move the needle and support the types of entrepreneurs I’ve written about in this newsletter:

Until next time,

Mick

PS: I’ve mentioned Belém, Brazil, a few times in this newsletter—so here’s a fun fact I recently learned. Belém was actually the last stop President Roosevelt made before heading to Casablanca to meet Churchill during WWII.

PPS: If you’re new to the newsletter and have read From Ideas to Impact but haven’t left a review yet, I’d be so grateful if you could share one on Goodreads or Amazon—it really helps others discover the book.