Pink Sizzling Chili Peppers, Ms. Lauryn Hill and Megan Thee Stallion will headline this 12 months’s World Citizen Competition because the anti-poverty nonprofit appears to be like to focus consideration on growing inequality for women and younger girls world wide.
World Citizen CEO Hugh Evans mentioned the Sept. 23 occasion at New York’s Central Park would be the centerpiece of his group’s marketing campaign to encourage supporters, particularly these in Gen Z, to take motion on gender inequality, local weather change and different points.
Research present that half of Gen Z “feel disillusioned and powerless to make a positive impact,” Evans informed The Related Press in an interview. “As long as you and I have been alive, there was almost this sense of positive momentum in the world that almost felt like the eradication of extreme poverty could be inevitable,” he mentioned. “But the data suggests the world is now getting worse.”
In accordance with the United Nations Inhabitants Fund, 257 million girls world wide need to keep away from being pregnant, however don’t have entry to fashionable contraceptives. The fund’s partnership to supply reproductive well being providers is presently underfunded by $100 million.
Training Can’t Wait, the United Nations fund that helps guarantee almost 20 million youngsters in disaster proceed studying, wants $670 million for its work.
The World Citizen Competition, which can even embody performances from Okay-pop sensation Stray Children and singer-songwriter Conan Grey, supplies free tickets to the occasion in alternate for followers taking actions on the group’s app and web site that help these objectives.
This 12 months, which will imply asking Canada, Norway and Japan to donate extra to the United Nations Inhabitants Fund. It could imply pushing corporations to join the United Nations Race to Zero to set targets for lowering their carbon emissions. Or urging the governments of the US, United Kingdom, Italy and Australia to supply extra funding to weak international locations to adapt to local weather change.
World Citizen’s use of supporters to persuade political, enterprise and philanthropic leaders to deal with a number of the world’s largest issues is designed to enchantment to youthful generations, Evans mentioned.
“These are pillars of what we know Gen Z cares about, but often they feel powerless because the data isn’t on their side,” Evans mentioned. “We’re talking to Gen Z in a way that they know their actions can have a scalable impact.”
Singer Angelique Kidjo, who was lately named to this 12 months’s Nice Immigrants checklist by the Carnegie Company of New York, mentioned that her Batonga Basis discovered that supporting women and younger girls finally ends up strengthening whole villages in her native Benin and all through Africa.
“Helping women in a community is like starting a rolling stone that never stops rolling,” mentioned Kidjo, including that it was the ladies who saved their villages secure through the COVID-19 pandemic by making masks and cleaning soap for hand-washing, in addition to implementing social distancing.
Not solely will Hill and Megan Thee Stallion present examples of feminine empowerment with their performances, however Evans hopes they will encourage their followers to take motion through the occasion, which might be streamed on quite a few digital platforms.
“For many decades, the Red Hot Chili Peppers have occupied that space where music and activism meet,” mentioned Evans, including that the band’s basic “Under the Bridge” was the primary music he realized to play on guitar. “We couldn’t be happier with this lineup.”
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