In Case You Missed the Global Citizen Festival
Global Citizen Festival is an annual music festival held in NYC that aims to bring awareness to global poverty. The annual festival is organized by the Global Poverty Project, who have made it their goal to end extreme poverty by 2030. Many celebrities, politicians, artists, and activists have come together to perform and bring awareness to causes they are passionate about since it launched in 2012.
Every year, the tickets are free, but in order to get tickets, you have to earn them. Interested participants must download the Global Citizen app and do different tasks in order to earn enough points to make it into the ticket lottery. This year, some of the tasks included tweeting about certain topics like calling on Germany to fight AIDS, TB and malaria, and making sure refugees have lifesaving vaccines. Other tasks involved signing petitions, posting photos, referring friends, and calling the Canadian government to take action for health and education. Canada must have gotten A LOT of phone calls, considering 70,000 people attended the event.
The Global Citizen website is broken down by categories, including Girls and Women, Health, Education, Finance and Innovation, Food and Hunger, and more. This makes it easier for people to choose the cause they’d like to impact. Since Global Citizen Fest has begun, over 1.3 million actions were taken by the Global Citizens, and $1.9 billion worth of commitments and announcements are set to reach 199 million people.
The hosts this year, Chelsea Handler and Hugh Jackman were joined by many other famous faces, including Hugh Evans, Jada Pinkett Smith, Selma Hayek, and Priyanka Chopra. Performances included Kendrick Lamar, Rihanna, Demi Lovato, Eddie Vedder, and the festival’s Creative Director, Chris Martin from Coldplay, to name a few. If you have a few hours to kill, you can check out some of the best performances of the night on the Global Citizen’s YouTube page here.