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POVERTY … the only thing money cannot buy

By Iris Nowell

Today’s poverty is commonly defined as a person surviving on less than a dollar a day, which applies to one-quarter of the world’s population, or roughly one billion people. This is beyond gravely concerning, it is inhumane. Some 20,000 people die every day because they are too hungry, too sick, and just too poor to live.

The United Nations Development Programme, which assists the developing world with issues that are impeding their social, economic and political growth, has identified through its Millennium Development Goal (MDG) twenty-one priorities that need to be addressed. Number one is to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. Eight of the twenty-one goals include the provision of universal primary education, gender equality, combating disease, the environment, among them, and all twenty-one are targeted for major improvements by 2015. Poverty is identified to be cut in half.

Most heartening is the fact that eradicating extreme poverty has met with a modicum of success, especially in China and India. In September 2008, a report presented to the UN on the progress of the MDGs noted that the number of people considered very poor has dropped from 1.9 billion in 1981 to 1.4 million.

It was also announced that the MDG had received some $16 billion in new funding from governments, foundations, philanthropists, business groups and various civic societies around the world.

Thirty-five years ago, rich countries pledged to set aside .07 percent of GDP for development aid. This was renewed in 2002 to support the MDG priorities of helping the developing world eliminate its crippling, widespread problems that precludes many countries from competing fairly in the global market economy. Yet numerous governments have not met their monetary pledges, including Canada. A call for leadership is required to achieve the MDG targets. To address this shortfall, an interim meeting is planned for 2010 to hold governments accountable.

Meanwhile, savvy, charismatic individuals rush in where governments fail to tread.

One of them, Jeffrey Sachs, past director of the Millennium Project and special advisor to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, remains a strong advocate of the MDG and its objectives. Futurist, economist and author, most recently in 2005 with his publication of The End of Poverty, Sachs has inspired millions of individuals to join in the universal goal of ending poverty.

When political leadership falters and as one country’s crisis has a widespread, exponential effect, increasingly its cause is taken up by super-stars. Whether economists or rock stars, they are able to attract adherents to causes as powerful as their personas.

There is much evidence to support the notion that a new world order has been championed, in large measure, by rock stars.

When ex-Beatle George Harrison learned from India’s acclaimed musician Ravi Shankar about the poverty facing people in Bangladesh, Harrison felt deep sympathy for them, lacking life’s essentials of food and shelter. In 1971, he produced two rock concerts in Madison Square Garden in New York with guest stars Eric Clapton and Bob Dylan. The concerts raised more than $10 million in aid for Bangladesh. (Worth $122.5 million in 2007, using relative share of GDP.)*

Harrison inspired others, such as the Bee Gees, who donated all proceeds of their rendition of the Beatles’ music “Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Band” to UNICEF. This raised $10 million for hunger programs.

Then in 1985, when Bob Geldof organized his “Live Aid” concert for feminine relief in Ethiopia, the $100 million that poured in astounded even the most optimistic observer. Geldof still fights the battle of hunger with music.

Poverty and its dire consequences of hunger, infectious diseases, illiteracy, joblessness, substandard wages, uninhabitable shelter, unsafe water, polluted air, environmental degradation —the breeding ground for abject despair and, many claim, political upheaval that incites terrorism—are attracting passionate celebrities to these issues.

There would be far less recognition of and significantly less research in the funding for HIV/AIDS without personal initiatives powered by a handful of celebrities who helped de-stigmatize AIDS and raise funds for finding a cure. Notable among them are U2’s Bono, Elizabeth Taylor, Elton John and Diana, Princess of Wales.

Currently in the philanthropic spotlight for their commitment to various social issues in developing countries are Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Richard Branson and many super-rich philanthropists who work quietly to support the world’s calamities.

A huge philanthropic donation rocked the not-for-profit sector in 2006 when Warren Buffet announced he was giving away 85% of his wealth to five foundations. The foremost recipient, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (with an endowment of $38.7 billion in 2007), received shares of Berkshire Hathaway in 2006 valued at about $30 billion. According to Forbes magazine, in 2008 Buffet dethroned Gates as the richest man in the world, by virtue of his $62-billion pile. Gates dropped to third, with a mere $52 billion.

The Gates Foundation donates some $500 million annually to the Global Health Initiative for AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria programs, a critical factor in worldwide poverty.

The signals are clear. If not arrested, the damage wreaked by poverty that is killing millions of people annually will continue to kill millions more, with the prospect of there becoming significantly increasing numbers of “us” of the haves, who will join “them” of the have-nots.

*www.measuringworth.com

A certain amount of material from the foregoing is adapted from my book, Generation Deluxe: Consumerism and Philanthropy of the New Super-rich, 2004, The Dundurn Group.

Iris Nowell is the author of five books. Writing her 1996 book, Women Who Give Away Millions, has given her a solid foundation of philanthropy, the not-for-profit sector, and the wealthy. She has also written a memoir of Canadian artist Harold Town, and a biography of artist, filmmaker, and impassioned feminist, Joyce Wieland.

© 2008 Defining Canada.