Make Poverty History Wristband

To travel the world in support of efforts to relieve world poverty!

The money paid for this wristband went to the Make Poverty History campaign. It is a coalition of charities, religious groups, trade unions, grassroot people and celebrities mobilising to increase awareness and pressure governments into taking actions towards relieving world poverty.

Nearly half of the world’s population — more than 3 billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day, which is the definition of absolute poverty. Out of these, more than 1.3 billion live on less than $1.25 a day which is classified as extreme poverty. More than 1 billion people lack adequate access to clean drinking water and an estimated 400 million of these are children. Because unclean water yields illness, preventable diseases like diarrhea and pneumonia take the lives of 2 million children a year. Moreover, 870 million people worldwide do not have enough food to eat. In 2011, 165 million children under the age of 5 were stunted (reduced rate of growth and development) due to chronic malnutrition.

The Make Poverty History campaign was launched in 2005 in connection with the G-8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, to encourage activism and debate within G-8 member countries and to put political pressure on their leaders. The three demands of the campaign were: "Trade Justice", Drop the debt, and More and "better" aid. The campaign quickly received global attention, and also partial success: G-8 leaders promised an additional $40 to $55 billion in debt cancellations and further funding to the World Bank, the IMF, and the African Development Bank on these issues. While it started in the United Kingdom, the campaign soon spread to further countries such as Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Romania, South Africa, Ireland, the United Arab Emirates and USA.

However, many years later the world is still far, far away from reaching the UN's goal of halving the proportion of people living in poverty by the year 2015. So it seems that much further work is needed!