The Make Extreme Wealth History video has been invited to screen at the BeyondTV Festival in Swansea, Wales on Saturday 22 November. Check out the festival’s trailer, which features my video three times!
This Thursday, the members of the UN will be gathering in New York to discuss the Millennium Development Goals. The UN ambitiously hopes to end poverty by 2015. This week’s summit marks the halfway point and an opportunity to evaluate their progress.
In the last few years, celebrities have joined the campaign to raise awareness about poverty, attempting to convince us that global poverty can be eradicated by pressuring the G8. However, the celebrity campaign ironically represents the flawed approach of this approach. The poor of this world are the victims of an unfair distribution of wealth that is flaunted by obscenely overpaid celebrities like Bono, Bob Geldof, Tom Hanks, Sean “Diddy” Combs, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Cameron Diaz, 50 Cent, George Clooney, Madonna, etc.
The real problem with their campaign is the way it distracts people from real solutions and avoids the fact that we need to make fundamental changes to the distribution of wealth in order to make a lasting impact on poverty.
Please read more and video with your friends and family.
Care International is campaigning for significant changes to the way the international aid community tries to tackle poverty.
The world’s poorest are paying a high price for the international aid system’s failure to address factors keeping them in chronic poverty.
With food price rises adding to the problem many people just don’t have enough to eat.
Most of them live on the edge because we keep them there. Money raised to respond to emergencies often leaves them worse off than they were before.
CARE is demanding that we put a stop to this by calling for a dramatic overhaul of the system which is keeping them trapped.
Our report calls on the international community to give higher priority to recovery and prevention programmes like seed distribution and improved veterinary services so that families can pull themselves back from the edge and be in a stronger position to fight off the next emergency themselves.
Have a look at their video or read more about the report.
On August 31st, Andrew Berends was arrested in Port Harcourt, Nigeria with his translator Samuel George, while shooting his documentary film Delta Boys. Later, the Nigerian police arrested Andrew’s friend, Joe Bussio, for no other reason than Joe had given Andrew a place to stay.
Andrew has since been sent back to the States by the Nigerian government, Joe has been cleared, but Samuel’s case is still pending, as the State Security Services continue to ask him to return to their offices sporadically.
Samuel and Joe have incurred $10,000 in legal fees in the course of this ordeal, and we are calling out for donations to help them pay these expenses.
It is important that translators and local journalists around the world know that they can do their jobs without fear for their lives, their families, or the expenses they will incur on our behalf.
To chip in, visit the Joe Bussio and Samuel George ChipIn page.
Barbara Crossette writes in The Nation: As the UN meets to assess its ambitious plan to heal a suffering world, the voices of billions of women who still lack fundamental rights must be heard. Read on
The Indian edition of Vogue Magazine recently published a series of photos using impoverished villagers as models for expensive luxury goods. Almost 500 million people in India live on less than $1.25 per day. Still, India’s fast-growing economy is becoming a huge marketplace for luxury goods. Vogue’s campaign highlights the unsettling wealth gap in an incredibly distasteful way.
The photographs feature people in tattered clothes holding luxury items that sell for hundreds of dollars. The models are unidentified, with the captions only indicating the brands.
Read more in The New York Times or watch the Channel 4 coverage
