Global Citizen Festival Today (Rain or Shine!)
A little rain will not stop the Global Citizen Festival today. Just get there early and bring rain boots!
Dear Friends and Supporters
TODAY is the big day!
If you plan on joining Global Citizen today, pack your wellies and a waterproof jacket – a little rain won’t stop the Global Citizen movement! The movement has taken a record-breaking 3 million actions, and we anticipate Saturday night to be a historic evening. I don’t want to ruin the surprise, but be ready for a night of unexpected moments and huge surprises.
As I’m sure you can imagine, it’s been a hectic week (including squeezing in book writing where I can!), so read on below for more on what we’ve been up to.
This Week on CBS news
We’ve been in back to back interviews this week ahead of tomorrow’s festival. This morning, I had the pleasure of speaking on CBS news about this year’s campaign, and how our audience have been using their voices to support organizations like Education Cannot Wait and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.
Check it out here.
Global Citizen Expanding Sustainability Initiatives at 2023 Festival
In keeping with Global Citizen’s campaign to push global leaders to take meaningful action to combat climate change (among other initiatives), the organization is making 2023 its most sustainable festival so far.
To that end, Global Citizen has announced a partnership with Everland – an organization that works to deliver wildlife conservation for communities at scale – to cover the estimated carbon emissions of the event. Everland currently represents projects in Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Cambodia.
And there’s more beyond that. The festival’s stage will be made of recycled and repurposed material from past festivals, and the stage set-up will incorporate indigenous trees that will be planted in various NYC city parks following the event. The menu for performers and attendees will be all vegetarian and come with fully compostable packaging and utensils. (Excess food will be donated to local organizations.) Citi will hand out 30,000 reusable water bottles at the event, and Sure We Can, a nonprofit recycling center in Brooklyn, will accept a donation of cans from the fest.
You can read more about this year’s sustainability efforts here.
Message Received!
On September 21, attending a working breakfast on Addressing the Existential Threats Posed by Sea-level Rise, I had the good fortune to briefly meet Senator Penny Wong, Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs. Readers of this newsletter will know that Global Citizen spent the past few months joining together the voices of Australian and Pacific farmers, politicians, and civil society leaders to call on the Australian government to rejoin IFAD. While Senator Wong has yet to respond to the campaign publicly, it gives me great pleasure that I was able to handover the letter in person and communicate the urgency of this endeavor.
This handover occurred on the heels of our major campaign activation, where Global Citizen took out a full page advertisement in the September 12 edition of nationally syndicated newspaper, The Australian, in addition to sharing 4 statement of support videos from key Australia leaders who had signed on the open letter, including: Kylie Woodham, Managing Director of Magners Farm, Kyle Stice, Executive Director Pacific Island Farmers Organisation Network, Tim Costello AO, and Anika Molesworth, a scientist and sustainability advocate.
Citi Hunger Panel
On September 19, Global Citizen and Citi co-hosted a panel discussion where we brought together private sector leaders and policymakers to discuss solutions to both the global hunger crisis and spiking malnutrition rates. As we approach the 2030 deadline to eliminate hunger and achieve SDG2, we are witnessing the loss of nearly a decade of progress. Today, 122 million more people are facing hunger compared to 2019 and as many as 970,000 people face catastrophic, famine-like levels of hunger.
In this discussion, Global Citizen unpacked how the private sector can address the hunger crisis and malnutrition by advocating for policies that address the root causes, and leveraging resources, expertise, and innovation to support and implement effective solutions. Panelists included Brandee McHale, Head of Community Investing and Development at Citi and President of the Citi Foundation, Ute Klamert, Assistant Executive Director of Partnerships and Advocacy at the World Food Programme, Darci Vetter, Head of Global Public Policy, PepsiCo, and Asma Lateef, Policy and Advocacy Lead, SDG2 Advocacy Hub. One of the clearest takeaways was the importance in making key investments in effective avenues and partnerships - particularly those led by farming women. Participants also spoke about leading initiatives to transform food systems like the Private Sector Zero Hunger Pledge, of which the PepsiCo Foundation is a significant champion.
Global Citizen NOW: Climate Sessions
Last week, Global Citizen held Global Citizen NOW: Climate Sessions, a dynamic series of private sector roundtable discussions. The purpose of these action-focused discussions was to bring together senior leaders from the private sector, civil society, and government to tackle some of the most pressing global issues related to the intersection of climate change, extreme poverty, and education. Global Citizen NOW: Climate Sessions served as a platform to encourage collaboration across sectors, provide tools for companies to reduce carbon emissions, and to create a roadmap for how companies can make smart investments into transitions in countries facing the worst impacts of climate change. As part of the Power Our Planet campaign, we are encouraging companies to sign onto the Private Sector Declaration on Transformative Investment to Tackle Climate Change ahead of COP 28.
I was honored to be part of the Global Citizen NOW: Climate Sessions, co-hosted by Cisco! Rodrigo Salvado, Joseph Mwakima, Sonia Guajajara, and Bogolo Kenewendo joined me to discuss how we can end extreme poverty by investing in countries on the forefront of climate change
The sessions featured opening remarks by President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, which you can check out in full here.
Face up to hunger
If a few world leaders won’t call out the elephant in the room - 100,000 of us will. For the Global Citizen Festival, Global Citizen has launched one of its largest actions ever: a mosaic of faces representing the global collective seeking a resolution to the global food and nutrition security crisis.
The 2023 Global Citizen Festival campaign is driving urgent action to address the Elephant In the Room — the global hunger crisis. As part of the Hungry for Action Campaign, global citizens are calling for coordinated and urgent action to the global food crisis that saves lives now, builds resilience now, and secures the future now. Global citizens are rallying to sign a petition calling on world leaders to fund the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), which has a funding target of $2B by the end of the year. IFAD’s funds go to support frontline farmers, who are the best solution to the global hunger crisis. See below for assets and suggested copy for you to promote the petition on your social channels.
Check out our toolkit here, and join global citizens in taking action.
Good Food for All
In order to break the cycle of crisis upon crisis and to prevent continued backsliding on food security and nutrition indicators, what are the systems that need to be put in place or scaled to ensure more resilient individuals, communities and nations? From addressing urgent immediate needs to long term development, what interventions are needed to build resilience in key areas: nutrition, access to healthy diets, livelihoods and smallholder farmers, and climate adaptation.
These are the questions explored in the Good Food for All event, hosted by SDG2 Advocacy Hub. With a panel moderated by Global Citizen’s Mwandwe Chileshe, participants explored what it means to build a resilient food system. Discussants explored the policy levers to scale up investments in resilience–moving from rhetoric to action.
Global Citizen’s Commitment to Transparency
This week, PWC, published this piece validating our impact work and explaining how we use Salesforce to help manage the myriad of commitments in the days leading up to a festival. By monitoring commitments in Salesforce across their life cycle, Global Citizen can determine, and credibly claim, the role we played in helping make a global impact. This process is managed by our stellar director of impact, James Salazar.
As of 2023, the systems, processes, and governance that PwC helped implement have enabled Global Citizen to track more than 300 commitments valued at more than $64 billion. The results of these commitments — interventions dedicated to reducing poverty, driving equity, and climate action — have helped nearly 1.3 billion people. “
Youth Leader Award Still Open
This week, Global Citizen opened the application process for the Youth Leaders Award.
In March 2024, As ASEAN leaders gather in Melbourne, Global Citizen will convene world leaders, influencers, artists, advocates, journalists, policy experts and more than 250 of the best young leaders across Australia and the Asia-Pacific to take action on climate, innovation and fighting poverty.
To this end, Global Citizen is providing 30 young people from the Asia-Pacific region the opportunity of a lifetime - an all expenses paid trip to join us at these events through Youth Leader Awards.
Winners of the Youth Leaders Award will receive travel and accommodation to Melbourne, Australia’s most diverse city, attendance at the thought provoking and innovative leadership summit, participation in peer networking training day with other Awardees - and each winner will receive $5,000 AUD to support and further the incredible work they are doing!
Global Citizen is seeking applications from Young Leaders from the Asia- Pacific who are between 18 and 30 years old and have made significant impact in their local community through their work focused on the UN Global Goals. As part of the selection process each applicant will be evaluated based on the following 5 criteria: Impact, Collaboration, Vision, Catalyst, and Global Citizenship and must be someone who can act, communicate, and is committed to making a difference to achieving the Global Goals.
Awardees must be aged between 18-30 years old by 29th February 2024. We are seeking to capture diverse experiences and perspectives within this cohort of Awardees and strongly welcome applications from indigenous peoples, women, LGBTQIA+, non-binary & gender diverse people, people of color, culturally and linguistically diverse people, and people with disabilities.
If you know someone who fits the bill, please help us get the word out about this transformational award available to young impact makers.
More information can be found in our social toolkit here.
My Weekend Reading List
COP28’s Biggest Conflicts Are on Display at the UN General Assembly
Palestine Writes literary festival at Penn to celebrate Palestinian culture
As always, if you’re enjoying the weekly newsletter format, and want even more, you can subscribe to my Substack here where I publish reviews, lists and articles on a regular basis.
Til next week,
Mick