The quest to end extreme poverty

Today, The Global Poverty Project, in proud partnership with Cotton On Foundation, announced that Alice Albright, CEO of Global Partnership for Education; Seth Berkley, CEO of GAVI Alliance; U.S. Congressman Earl Blumenauer; U.S. Congressman Charlie Dent; Mark Dybul, Executive Director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria; U.S. Congresswoman Kay Granger; United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon; Csaba Korosi, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Hungary to the United Nations; H.R.H. Crown Princess Mary of Denmark; Joseph Munyambanza, Education First Initiative; Dr. Fatoumata Nafo-Traore, Executive Director of the Roll Back Malaria Partnership; Dr. Maryan Qasim, Education, Health & Social Development Minister in Somalia; Najib Razak, Prime Minister of Malaysia; USAID Administrator Dr. Rajiv Shah; Michel Sidibe, Executive Director of UNAIDS; and President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia will take the stage at next week's 2013 Global Citizen Festival to voice their commitments in the movement to end extreme poverty.

These world leaders will join a chorus of music legends, celebrities such as Katie Holmes and Gerard Butler, and 60,000 Global Citizens on September 28, 2013 on the Great Lawn of New York's iconic Central Park. The free-ticketed concert, headlined by Stevie Wonder, Kings of Leon, Alicia Keys and John Mayer, is part of the worldwide movement to end extreme poverty. The concert will celebrate the progress of anti-poverty efforts to date and call for accelerated progress around education, women's equality, global health and global partnerships. As part of the event, U2 lead singer and activist Bono will appear to present President Sirleaf with a Global Citizen Movement Award in recognition of her work on the issue of women and girls' equality.

Timed to coincide with the United Nations General Assembly, the Global Citizen Festival aims to focus the attention of world leaders toward the goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced his attendance at a press conference on Tuesday at the UN Headquarters saying, "I look forward to joining Stevie Wonder and thousands of other good friends of the United Nations at the Global Citizen Festival in Central Park. I hope you will all join that event. We will raise our voices for action against poverty – the number one struggle of our time." 

Hugh Evans, founder and CEO of The Global Poverty Project, the organization that will present the concert, said, "The Global Citizen Festival is designed to help build a civil society movement to push for the end of extreme poverty by 2030, a goal that is very much based on the Millennium Development Goals. The announcement of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's appearance at the Festival is an incredible show of the power of the Global Citizen movement to get the attention of world leaders on the issue of ending extreme poverty."