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...is exactly what the 1,000 Make Poverty History ambassadors were today!
By 7:01am the 60 girls sleeping in our Scout Hall were up and preparing for a big day. After 2 days of campaigning 19,800 people had signed our Act to End Poverty.
At 8:15 three busloads left to speak to the students at Damascus College, Trinity College and Ballarat Secondary about what it means to be born into extreme poverty.
By 10:00am the whole crew were on the streets of Ballarat, speaking to businesses about the role they can play in the movement to end extreme poverty. We received amazing support from the Ballarat community - with a huge number of businesses promoting the campaign, and helping us raise awareness of the fact that we have halved extreme poverty in 20 years.
Businesses - both big and small - have a crucial role to play in ending extreme poverty - and it was great to see the Ballarat community taking leadership in this area. I was particularly touched by two stories I heard during our travels yesterday.
One comes from a local business owner who supports a school in Malawi. He is really passionate about giving girls the opportunity to complete primary school, and has been working to fund a specific school in Malawi. Although he’s already working in one area, he still wanted to know what else he could do to help support the Make Poverty History movement.
Now he is also going to use his contacts with local community groups to organise presentations of 1.4 Billion Reasons around Ballarat. He will use his business to promote the event - and thus raise greater awareness about the role we can all play in ending extreme poverty.
Another local business owner has been using their bookshop to provide books and raise money for another school. They have been doing this for many years. A few years ago they discovered that some of the money they had been donating for the schools had to be used to bribe bus drivers and officials to let the money through. I was really inspired by the fact that when this gentleman found this out, he wasn’t deterred - instead, he took action to make sure it didn’t happen again. Corruption is a big issue, and it can be frustrating. I was inspired by our Ballarat friend’s response. It really highlighted to me the onus on us to help prevent corruption, and not let it prevent us from reaching our goals.
And all this before lunch!
We fueled up at a local cafe (making sure we supported the local businesses that were supporting us) then we hit the streets of Bridge Street Mall - literally. Roadtrip Ambassadors did a flashmob in the central business district, freezing and then falling down one by one to represent the number of children who die as a result of extreme poverty every minute. We got newspaper and television coverage - proving that we all have the power to create a paparazzi for poverty.
Finally we hit the after-school hotspots and got several hundred additional signatures, before heading off for dinner and planning for our next day, campaigning in Bendigo.
Our final total for the day was 31,661 signatures!! A massive increase for just one day. Only four days into our 7 day Roadtrip we have less than 9,000 signatures left to reach our 40,000 goal.
We are clearly demonstrating that our government have the public support to make extreme poverty a priority in our budget spending. I’m so excited about the potential of tomorrow. See you in Bendigo. |
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