Hugh Jackman’s Plans To Eradicate Extreme Poverty

Hugh Jackman has narrated a video on the Global Poverty Project's plan to help the poorer nations of the world.

Dissatisfied with the G8’s progress, Jackman and the Global Poverty Project are attempting to re-energize a movement against extreme poverty.

A few years ago in a bolstering speech, former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair said, “If we actually put the money we say we’re going to put through aid and give primary education to young people in Africa, think of the change that will be.”

Thus, a motivated G8 formed the following eight goals in 2000 to curb the downward spiral created by poverty: to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, to achieve universal primary education, to promote gender equality and empower women, to reduce child mortality, to improve maternal health, to reduce HIV/AIDS, malaria and other related diseases, to ensure environmental sustainability and to develop a global partnership for development.

While India and China are showing some progress, sub-Saharan Africa – where nearly a billion people live on $1/day – is not. After eight years, the G8 has delivered well under a quarter of the promised aid although the timeline has more than half passed – it is clear that their Millennium Development Goals cannot be reached by the 2015 target.

Jackman feels it is possible to build on the successes of past movements to recapture that momentum. In the clip he outlines the plan: the Global Poverty Project “will create a presentation about the eradication of extreme poverty, synthesizing ideas from research in collaboration with an expert advisory panel. We will activate this presentation, taking it around the world in a variety of languages to engage and inspire a global audience from which we will create a film that captures the global state of affairs to inspire a global grassroots movement of the people, for we are the first generation that can eradicate extreme poverty.”

“It is time for a new movement,” Jackman says. “Are you ready?”