Being a Global Citizen 3 - 懂你英语 流利说 Level7 Unit3 Part1
But here's the thing: it didn't last.
See, there was a change in government, and six years later, all that new money disappeared.
What did we learn?
We learned that one-off spikes are not enough.
We needed a sustainable movement, not one that is susceptible to the fluctuating moods of a politician or the hint of an economic downturn.
And it needed to happen everywhere;
otherwise, every individual government would have this built-in excuse mechanism that they couldn't possibly carry the burden of global action alone.
And so this is what we embarked upon.
And as we embarked upon this challenge,
we asked ourselves, how do we gain enough pressure and build a broad enough army to win these fights for the long term?
We could only think of one way.
We needed to somehow turn that short-term excitement of people involved with the Make Poverty History campaign into long-term passion.
It had to be part of their identity.
So in 2012, we cofounded an organization that had exactly that as its goal.
And there was only one name for it: Global Citizen.
But this is not about any one organization.
This is about citizens taking action.
And research data tells us that of the total population who even care about global issues,
only 18 percent have done anything about it.
It's not that people don't want to act.
It's often that they don't know how to take action, or that they believe that their actions will have no effect.
So we had to somehow recruit and activate millions of citizens in dozens of countries to put pressure on their leaders to behave altruistically.
And as we did so, we discovered something really thrilling,
that when you make global citizenship your mission, you suddenly find yourself with some extraordinary allies.
See, extreme poverty isn't the only issue that's fundamentally global.
So, too, is climate change, human rights, gender equality, even conflict.
We found ourselves shoulder to shoulder with people who are passionate about targeting all these interrelated issues.
*
If a movement is sustainable, it is…able to continue over a period of time.
What does Evans say about poverty, climate change, human rights, gender inequality and conflict? They are all global issues interrelated with one another.
What lesson did Evans take away from holding a concert? A single success isn’t enough to bring long-term change.
What thrilling thing did Evans discover when he developed his organization? He could work with people who were confronting different global challenges.
When Evans says that there was only one name for their organization, he means that it represented their cause perfectly.
Why did the money invested into global health development by the Australia government disappear? The new government stopped the investment.
Why have only 18% of people who care about global issues taken action? Many people don’t know how to take action.
To be susceptible to something means…to be easily affected by it.
*
We needed a sustainable movement, not one that is susceptible to the fluctuating moods of a politician or the hint of an economic downturn.
But how did we actually go about recruiting and engaging those global citizens?
Well, we used the universal language: music.
We launched the Global Citizen Festival in the heart of New York City in Central Park,
and we persuaded some of the world's biggest artists to participate.
We made sure that these festivals coincided with the UN General Assembly meeting,
so that leaders who need to hear our voices couldn't possibly ignore them.
But there was a twist: you couldn't buy a ticket.
You had to earn it.
You had to take action on behalf of a global cause, and only once you'd done that could you earn enough points to qualify.
Activism is the currency.
I had no interest in citizenship purely as some sort of feel-good thing.
For me, citizenship means you have to act, and that's what we required.
And amazingly, it worked.
Last year, more than 155,000 citizens in the New York area alone earned enough points to qualify.
Globally, we've now signed up citizens in over 150 countries around the world.
And last year, we signed up more than 100,000 new members each and every week of the whole year.
See, we don't need to create global citizens from nothing.
We're already everywhere.
We just need to be organized and motivated to start acting.
And this is where I believe we can learn a lot from Davinia, who started taking action as a global citizen back in 2012.
Here's what she did.
It wasn't rocket science.
She started writing letters, emailing politicians' offices.
She volunteered her time in her local community.
That's when she got active on social media and started to collect pennies -- a lot of pennies.
Now, maybe that doesn't sound like a lot to you.
How will that achieve anything?
Well, it achieved a lot because she wasn't alone.
Her actions, alongside 142,000 other global citizens', led the US government to double their investment into Global Partnership for Education.
And here's Dr. Raj Shah, the head of USAID, making that announcement.
See, when thousands of global citizens find inspiration from each other, it's amazing to see their collective power.
Global citizens like Davinia helped persuade the World Bank to boost their investment into water and sanitation .
Here's the Bank's president Jim Kim announcing 15 billion dollars onstage at Global Citizen,
and Prime Minister Modi of India affirmed his commitment to put a toilet in every household and school across India by 2019.
Global citizens encouraged by the late-night host Stephen Colbert launched a Twitter invasion on Norway.
Erna Solberg, the country's Prime Minister, got the message, committed to double investment into girls' education.
Global citizens together with Rotarians called on the Canadian, UK, and Australian governments to boost their investment into polio eradication.
They got together and committed 665 million dollars.
*
When Evans describes "activism as the current " for tickets to the festival, he means…people got tickets through activism, rather than by paying money.
If there is a twist in something, it…has an unexpected feature or change.
*
Asking “Why” influences people to take action and bring about change.
Extreme poverty isn't the only issue that's fundamentally global.
For me, citizenship means you have to act, and that's what we required.
Its goal is to build the community of people with a lifelong passion for solving global issues.
The purpose of the festival was to encourage global citizens to unite and have their message heard.
The whole world is our backyard, and we ignore it at our peril.
