The coming of the world together to stand up is a collective reminder to governments to keep their promises to help achieve the MDG to lend a hand to billions living in severe scarcity. Launched by the United Nations Millennium Campaign, Stand Up is a global advocacy initiative to set an official Guinness World Record for the greatest number of people ever to stand up against poverty.
Why do we have to stand up? The figures are telling: Every day 24,000 people die from hunger, more than 100 million children are denied the chance to go to school, 1.1 billion people have to drink polluted water, 8,200 people die due to HIV/AIDS.
Stand Up is an offshoot of the 2000 Millennium Summit where a major breakthrough was reached when 189 world leaders from rich and poor countries (including the Philippines) alike assembled together at the UN and pledged to make a better planet earth for all. They agreed to do this by achieving eight MDGs by 2015. These goals aim to:
1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger by reducing by half the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day, and the proportion of people who suffer from hunger;
2. Achieve universal primary education by ensuring that children complete a full course of primary education;
3. Promote gender equality and empower women by eliminating gender disparity in primary and secondary education, and at all levels by 2015;
4. Reduce child mortality rate by two thirds, particularly those five years old and below;
5. Improve maternal health by trimming down the maternal death ratio by three quarters;
6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases by halting and reversing the incidence of major diseases;
7. Ensure environmental sustainability by integrating the principles of continuing development into country policies and programs, turning around the loss of environmental resources, slashing by 50 percent the proportion of people without enduring access to safe drinking water, and gaining significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by 2020;
8. Develop a global partnership for growth by developing open trading and financial system, addressing the least-developed countries’ special needs, dealing comprehensively with debt problems, providing decent and productive work for the youth, expanding access to affordable essential drugs, and making available the benefits of new technologies.
Here in the Philippines, Campaigns Social Response (CSR), the social marketing unit of Campaigns & Grey, is helping out the UN and another group called Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP), part of an international group that mounts white-band days, which did those Bono & Co. "click" ads in last year’s Live8, to create positive noise for Stand Up. CSR, in partnership with Production Village, also helped put together a TV spot, pro bono, to drum up heightened interest in the cause. The spot, which features TV host and model Angel Aquino, ran on ANC and MTV.
In our own office, a cameraman will be going around today to film everyone standing up to demonstrate our own prop-up to this noble call. We will be sending our coverage to the global Stand Up site to add to the growing number of groups who are one in the call to end poverty. It’s not too late to display your own solidarity to the cause. You can still participate today by doing any of the following things: Dress in white, wear a white band or go to the Quezon Memorial Circle Event.
If you’d like to go more extreme, try the 36-peso challenge. Try living on 36 pesos a day for one day and write about your experience. GCAP will be publishing these accounts in media and on their global website. Thirty-six pesos or less is the amount people living on the poverty line live on each day. Better yet, write letters to editors, e-mail your congressmen or call the attention of the national leadership to its penned promise to help alleviate the conditions of our disadvantaged brethren. Stand Up and make government deliver!
The forum will be held at 4 p.m. to precede the Awards cocktails at 6 p.m. at the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC). The awards ceremonies will follow at 7 p.m., and a formal dinner will cap the proceedings.
The CEO EXCEL Awards, the most prestigious recognition given to Philippine-based CEOs, presidents or top-level executives of 12 industry categories, is the Philippine version of the world IABC Excel Awards held yearly in the US or Canada. Nominators must comply strictly with the rules set forth in official nomination forms issued by the IABC Secretariat, which may be reached through tel. nos. 750-5667, 751-3205 and 750-1481.