An important charity concert took place in Central Park on September 28 called the Global Citizen Festival. The concert included 60,000 visitors plus a variety of musical groups and celebrities that advocate an end to global poverty. Some of these groups included The Roots, Tiësto, Fun, Carrie Underwood, No Doubt, and headliner Jay Z. These people had a crowd of thousands singing along from 2:30 – 10:00 p.m. that Saturday. After a crazy performance by Jay Z, the crowd went wild when one of the biggest female advocators and singers of this generation, Beyoncé, hit the stage. As a surprise guest, she sang only two songs with her husband before the night ended. She had the audience in tears and excitement with her beautiful voice and definitely was a musical highlight of the show.
Throughout the day, there were many reminders of what the concert was actually about. Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India, came out to express his goals for the future of poverty. Modi and others, plan to end all extreme poverty by 2030. To put things into perspective, there are about 1.2 billion poverty-stricken people in the world. World Bank President Jim Yong Kim committed to spending $65 billion U.S. dollars towards this goal. It may sound like a lot of work, but these people are confident in their goal. Other world leaders were there to advocate the goal as well, including UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Prime Minister of Liberia, Ellen Johnson. Even other well-known celebrities, like Hugh Jackman, Olivia Wilde, and Jessica Alba, came to talk about their views on world poverty.
This concert did not just focus on ending world poverty, but also ending sanitation, water, child health, and education issues in the world. Jim Yong Kim announced that he committed to spending $15 billion in 5 years in order to have safe sanitation and water, which would help around 150 million people.
Many countries have each committed a donation to help end these problems one by one and also to reach the ultimate goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030. It was a fun night with the music, and yet, an eye-opening experience. Overall, with all of these goals in mind, we can help around 1.5 billion people with poverty, sanitation, water, and education problems all over the world.
If you feel that you would like to help in some way or at least learn more about the goals or the concert, visit globalcitizen.org.
