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I want to introduce you
to an amazing woman.
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Her name is Davinia.
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Davinia was born in Jamaica,
emigrated to the US at the age of 18,
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and now lives just outside
of Washington, DC.
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She's not a high-powered
political staffer,
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nor a lobbyist.
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She'd probably tell you
she's quite unremarkable,
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but she's having
the most remarkable impact.
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What's incredible about Davinia
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is that she's willing to spend
time every single week
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focused on people who are not her:
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people not her in her neighborhood,
her state, nor even in her country --
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people she'd likely never meet.
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Davinia's impact started a few years ago
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when she reached out
to all of her friends on Facebook,
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and asked them to donate their pennies
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so she could fund girls' education.
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She wasn't expecting a huge response,
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but 700,000 pennies later,
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she's now sent over 120 girls to school.
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When we spoke last week,
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she told me she's become
a little infamous at the local bank
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every time she rocks up
with a shopping cart full of pennies.
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Now -- Davinia is not alone.
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Far from it.
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She's part of a growing movement.
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And there's a name
for people like Davinia:
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global citizens.
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A global citizen is someone
who self-identifies first and foremost
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not as a member of a state,
a tribe, or a nation,
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but as a member of the human race,
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and someone who is prepared
to act on that belief,
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to tackle our world's greatest challenges.
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Our work is focused on finding,
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supporting and activating global citizens.
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They exist in every country
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and among every demographic.
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I want to make the case to you today
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that the world's future depends
on global citizens.
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I'm convinced that if we had
more global citizens active in our world,
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then every single one
of the major challenges we face --
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from poverty, climate change,
gender inequality --
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these issues become solvable.
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They are ultimately global issues,
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and they can ultimately only be solved
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by global citizens demanding
global solutions from their leaders.
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Now, some people's immediate
reaction to this idea
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is that it's either a bit utopian
or even threatening.
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So I'd like to share with you
a little of my story today,
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how I ended up here,
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how it connects with Davinia
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and, hopefully, with you.
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Growing up in Melbourne, Australia,
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I was one of those seriously
irritating little kids
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that never, ever stopped asking "Why?"
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You might have been one yourself.
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I used to ask my mum
the most annoying questions.
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I'd ask her questions like,
"Mum, why I can't I dress up
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and play with puppets all day?"
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"Why do you want fries with that?"
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"What is a shrimp,
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and why do we have to keep
throwing them on the barbie?"
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(Laughter)
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"And mum -- this haircut.
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Why?"
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(Laughter)
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The worst haircut, I think.
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Still terrible.
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As a "why" kid, I thought
I could change the world,
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and it was impossible
to convince me otherwise.
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And when I was 12
and in my first year of high school,
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I started raising money
for communities in the developing world.
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We were a really
enthusiastic group of kids,
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and we raised more money
than any other school in Australia.
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And so I was awarded the chance
to go to the Philippines to learn more.
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It was 1998.
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We were taken into a slum
in the outskirts of Manila.
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It was there I became friends
with Sonny Boy,
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who lived on what was literally
a pile of steaming garbage.
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"Smoky Mountain" was what they called it.
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But don't let the romance
of that name fool you,
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because it was nothing more
than a rancid landfill
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that kids like Sonny Boy spent hours
rummaging through every single day
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to find something, anything of value.
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That night with Sonny Boy and his family
changed my life forever,
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because when it came time to go to sleep,
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we simply laid down on this concrete
slab the size of half my bedroom
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with myself, Sonny Boy,
and the rest of his family,
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seven of us in this long line,
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with the smell of rubbish all around us
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and cockroaches crawling all around.
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And I didn't sleep a wink,
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but I lay awake thinking to myself,
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"Why should anyone have to live like this
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when I have so much?
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Why should Sonny Boy's ability
to live out his dreams
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be determined by where he's born,
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or what Warren Buffett called
"the ovarian lottery"?
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I just didn't get it,
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and I needed to understand why.
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Now, I only later came to understand
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that the poverty I'd seen
in the Philippines
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was the result of decisions made
or not made, man-made,
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by a succession of colonial powers
and corrupt governments
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who had anything but the interests
of Sonny Boy at heart.
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Sure, they didn't create Smoky Mountain,
but they may as well have.
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And if we're to try to help
kids like Sonny Boy,
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it wouldn't work just to try
to send him a few dollars
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or to try to clean up
the garbage dump on which he lived,
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because the core
of the problem lay elsewhere.
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And as I worked on community
development projects over the coming years
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trying to help build schools,
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train teachers, and tackle HIV and AIDS,
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I came to see that community development
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should be driven
by communities themselves,
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and that although charity is necessary,
it's not sufficient.
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We need to confront these challenges
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on a global scale and in a systemic way.
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And the best thing I could do
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is try to mobilize a large group
of citizens back home
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to insist that our leaders engage
in that systemic change.
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That's why, a few years later,
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I joined with a group of college friends
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in bringing the Make Poverty History
campaign to Australia.
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We had this dream of staging
this small concert
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around the time of the G20
with local Aussie artists,
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and it suddenly exploded one day
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when we got a phone call from Bono,
the Edge and Pearl Jam,
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who all agreed to headline our concert.
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I got a little bit excited
that day, as you can see.
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(Laughter)
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But to our amazement,
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the Australian government
heard our collective voices,
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and they agreed to double investment
into global health and development --
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an additional 6.2 billion dollars.
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It felt like --
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(Applause)
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It felt like this incredible validation.
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By rallying citizens together,
we helped persuade our government
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to do the unthinkable,
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and act to fix a problem
miles outside of our borders.
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But here's the thing:
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it didn't last.
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See, there was a change in government,
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and six years later, all that new money
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disappeared.
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What did we learn?
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We learned that one-off spikes
are not enough.
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We needed a sustainable movement,
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not one that is susceptible
to the fluctuating moods of a politician
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or the hint of an economic downturn.
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And it needed to happen everywhere;
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otherwise, every individual government
would have this built-in excuse mechanism
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that they couldn't possibly carry
the burden of global action alone.
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And so this is what we embarked upon.
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And as we embarked upon
this challenge, we asked ourselves,
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how do we gain enough pressure
and build a broad enough army
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to win these fights for the long term?
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We could only think of one way.
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We needed to somehow turn
that short-term excitement
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of people involved with
the Make Poverty History campaign
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into long-term passion.
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It had to be part of their identity.
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So in 2012, we cofounded an organization
that had exactly that as its goal.
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And there was only one name for it:
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Global Citizen.
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But this is not about
any one organization.
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This is about citizens taking action.
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And research data tells us
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that of the total population
who even care about global issues,
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only 18 percent have done
anything about it.
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It's not that people don't want to act.
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It's often that they don't
know how to take action,
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or that they believe that their actions
will have no effect.
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So we had to somehow recruit
and activate millions of citizens
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in dozens of countries
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to put pressure on their leaders
to behave altruistically.
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And as we did so, we discovered
something really thrilling,
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that when you make
global citizenship your mission,
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you suddenly find yourself
with some extraordinary allies.
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See, extreme poverty isn't the only issue
that's fundamentally global.
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So, too, is climate change,
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human rights, gender equality,
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even conflict.
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We found ourselves shoulder to shoulder
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with people who are passionate about
targeting all these interrelated issues.
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But how did we actually
go about recruiting
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and engaging those global citizens?
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Well, we used the universal language:
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music.
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We launched the Global Citizen Festival
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in the heart of New York City
in Central Park,
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and we persuaded some of the world's
biggest artists to participate.
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We made sure that
these festivals coincided
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with the UN General Assembly meeting,
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so that leaders who need
to hear our voices
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couldn't possible ignore them.
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But there was a twist:
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you couldn't buy a ticket.
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You had to earn it.
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You had to take action
on behalf of a global cause,
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and only once you'd done that
could you earn enough points to qualify.
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Activism is the currency.
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I had no interest in citizenship
purely as some sort of feel-good thing.
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For me, citizenship means you have to act,
and that's what we required.
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And amazingly, it worked.
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Last year, more than 155,000 citizens
in the New York area alone
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earned enough points to qualify.
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Globally, we've now signed up citizens
in over 150 countries around the world,
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and last year, we signed up
more than 100,000 new members
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each and every week of the whole year.
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See, we don't need to create
global citizens from nothing.
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We're already everywhere.
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We just need to be organized
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and motivated to start acting.
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And this is where I believe
we can learn a lot from Davinia,
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who started taking action
as a global citizen back in 2012.
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Here's what she did.
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It wasn't rocket science.
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She started writing letters,
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emailing politicians' offices.
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She volunteered her time
in her local community.
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That's when she got active on social media
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and started to collect pennies --
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a lot of pennies.
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Now, maybe that doesn't sound
like a lot to you.
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How will that achieve anything?
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Well, it achieved a lot
because she wasn't alone.
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Her actions, alongside 142,000
other global citizens',
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led the US government
to double their investment
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into global partnership for education.
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And here's Dr. Raj Shah,
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the head of USAID,
making that announcement.
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See, when thousands of global citizens
find inspiration from each other,
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it's amazing to see
their collective power.
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Global citizens like Davinia
helped persuade the World Bank
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to boost their investment
into water and sanitation.
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Here's the Bank's president Jim Kim
announcing 15 billion dollars onstage
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at Global Citizen,
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and Prime Minister Modi of India
affirmed his commitment
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to put a toilet in every household
and school across India by 2019.
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Global citizens encouraged
by the late-night host Stephen Colbert
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launched a Twitter invasion on Norway.
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Erna Solberg, the country's
Prime Minister, got the message,
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committing to double investment
into girls' education.
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Global Citizens together with Rotarians
called on the Canadian, UK,
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and Australian governments
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to boost their investment
into polio eradication.
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They got together and committed
665 million dollars.
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But despite all of this momentum,
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we face some huge challenges.
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See, you might be thinking to yourself,
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how can we possibly persuade world leaders
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to sustain a focus on global issues?
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Indeed, the powerful American
politician Tip O'Neill once said,
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"All politics is local."
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That's what always
got politicians elected:
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to seek, gain and hold onto power
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through the pursuit of local
or at very best national interests.
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I experienced this for the first time
when I was 21 years old.
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I took a meeting
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with a then-Australian Foreign Minister
who shall remain nameless --
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[Alexander Downer]
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(Laughter)
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And behind closed doors,
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I shared with him my passion
to end extreme poverty.
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I said, "Minister -- Australia
has this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity
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to help achieve the Millennium
Development Goals.
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We can do this."
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And he paused,
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looked down on me
with cold, dismissive eyes,
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and he said, "Hugh,
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no one gives a funk about foreign aid."
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Except he didn't use the word "funk."
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He went on.
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He said we need to look after
our own backyard first.
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This is, I believe,
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outdated, even dangerous thinking.
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Or as my late grandfather would say,
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complete bs.
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Parochialism offers this false dichotomy
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because it pits the poor in one country
against the poor in another.
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It pretends we can isolate ourselves
and our nations from one another.
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The whole world is our backyard,
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and we ignore it at our peril.
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See, look what happened
when we ignored Rwanda,
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when we ignore Syria,
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when we ignore climate change.
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Political leaders ought to give a "funk"
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because the impact of climate change
and extreme poverty
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comes right to our shore.
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Now, global citizens --
they understand this.
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We live in a time that favors
the global citizen,
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in an age where every
single voice can be heard.
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See, do you remember
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when the Millennium Development Goals
were signed back in the year 2000?
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The most we could do in those days
was fire off a letter
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and wait for the next election.
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There was no social media.
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Today, billions of citizens
have more tools,
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more access to information,
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more capacity to influence
than ever before.
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Both the problems and the tools
to solve them are right before us.
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The world has changed,
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and those of us who look
beyond our borders
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are on the right side of history.
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So where are we?
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So we run this amazing festival,
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we've scored some big policy wins,
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and citizens are signing up
all over the world.
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But have we achieved our mission?
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No.
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We have such a long way to go.
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But this is the opportunity that I see.
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The concept of global citizenship,
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self-evident in its logic but until now
impractical in many ways,
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has coincided with this particular moment
in which we are privileged to live.
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We, as global citizens,
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now have a unique opportunity
to accelerate large-scale positive change
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around the world.
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So in the months and years ahead,
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global citizens will hold
world leaders accountable
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to ensure that the new Global Goals
for Sustainable Development
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are tracked and implemented.
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Global citizens will partner
with the world's leading NGOs
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to end diseases like polio and malaria.
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Global citizens will sign up
in every corner of this globe,
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increasing the frequency, quality
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and impact of their actions.
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These dreams are within reach.
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Imagine an army of millions
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growing into tens of millions,
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connected, informed, engaged,
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and unwilling to take no for an answer.
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Over all these years,
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I've tried to reconnect with Sonny Boy.
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Sadly, I've been unable to.
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We met long before social media,
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and his address has now
been relocated by the authorities,
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as often happens with slums.
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I'd love to sit down with him,
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wherever he is,
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and share with him how much the time
I spent on Smoky Mountain inspired me.
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Thanks to him and so many others,
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I came to understand the importance
of being part of a movement of people --
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the kids willing to look up
from their screens and out to the world,
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the global citizens.
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Global citizens who stand together,
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who ask the question "Why?"
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who reject the naysayers,
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and embrace the amazing possibilities
of the world we share.
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I'm a global citizen.
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Are you?
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
Riaki Ponist
Hi there,
The subtitle starting around 10:42 should be:
"to double their investment
into Global Partnership for Education."
Reference:
https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/partners/global-partnership-for-education-2/
Thanks,
Riaki