NEW YORK CITY, U.S. – The Stand Up Against Poverty and Inequality event on Sunday came about in the Lincoln Center Plaza.
And this reporter got some declarations from three great women - Mary Ellen McNish, Sylvia Borren and Ngozi N. Okonjo-Iweala - on how to make the MDGs achievable. Although some videos show them on stage, right after I had a personal and exclusive talk to all of them.
(Photos credits in order: The Hunger Project, The Earth Charter Initiative, and Andrea Arzaba)
Their stirring words must be listened carefully. Many of you will notice that much of what we have discussed during the last five months on the platform is connected to their speeches.
Mary Ellen is president and CEO of The Hunger Project. Before that she was General Secretary of the American Friends Service Committee.
Sylvia Borren is, among other functions, co-chair of the Global Call to Action against Poverty and its Dutch chapter EEN, member of the Advisory Council on International Affairs for the Dutch government and former Executive Director of Oxfam Novib.
Ngozi is Nigeria’s former Minister of Finance and Minister of Foreign Affairs. Currently she is a Managing Director of the World Bank.
Let's do all possible for these beatifully spoken words not to stop here. Put pressure, spread the word.
I speak to a lot of these sorts of people and they are really inspiring - that’ why it saddens me that we don’t make more of that (see my comment on part 1)
Absolutely Ian. I totally agree. I mean, and now we come back to something Oliver Wates threw at us in Brussels, how to make people interested about that? Hard, isn’t it?
It is difficult but not imposible. Look at the range of writers who took part in this project, think of the range at the Digital Media Lounge in NYC and then think of the bloggers we took as VOICE and the events that they got into - they’ve all got decent readerships….I think social media offers a fantastic way to get these issues out there….But I also agree that it’s difficult to do it in an engaging way….we’ll keep trying though!
Yes, Luan, after all our th!nking we eventually reached the point an experienced development journalist told us about at first.
Is there any way we can make the global audience in general - care?