NEW YORK (AP) — Inspiring the next generation of advocates and identifying unlikely funding partners has grown more important for humanitarians amid USAID’s dismantling and wealthy nations’ declining support.
They might then welcome that Global Citizen is going, well, even more global.
As foreign aid cuts upend international cooperation, the anti-poverty organization is taking its flagship summit to new populations worldwide and leveraging a recent FIFA partnership to raise more money for education. The expanded footprint and soccer’s high-powered governing body are key to meeting Global Citizen’s goal of mobilizing 50 million people by 2029.
Global Citizen Founder Hugh Evans acknowledged Wednesday that people feel hopeless. But he said there’s “amazing cause for optimism” in “this consensus that we should put service above self.”
“That’s why, over the next 18 months, we’re going to five continents with Global Citizen,” Evans told The Associated Press Wednesday at Global Citizen NOW. “Because we need to activate youth all around the world right now at this critical, important time to uphold that basic social contract.”
The annual New York City conference kicked off the nonprofit’s momentous year by leaning on a tried-and-true strategy honed since its 2008 founding: rallying entertainers, politicians and business leaders around common solutions to urgent world problems. The one-day summit featured performances from English singer James Blake, Haitian rapper Wyclef Jean and Brazilian musician Seu Jorge as well as appeals from actors Hugh Grant, Laverne Cox and Rachel Brosnahan.
But much has changed since last spring’s two-day event. The Trump administration has cut most U.S. aid and development work abroad, reduced funding to several United Nations agencies assisting vulnerable communities and slashed emergency programs helping keep millions alive in impoverished countries.
The tumultuous global development landscape didn’t dampen speakers’ insistence that the public, private and philanthropic sectors can still work together. To further that point, Global Citizen is bringing summits to Detroit, Belém, Seville and Johannesburg.
“International cooperation — the global town hall, support for our global village — is being challenged on very deep principles and values,” U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed told Bill Nye onstage. “We need to stand up and say, ‘This doesn’t work.’ We need to lean into that and not lean back.”
Gargee Ghosh, the president of global policy and advocacy at the Gates Foundation, said the world is experiencing challenges to international cooperation never before seen in the charity’s 25-year history. It’s therefore important, she argued, to fund the most impactful interventions — such as the global vaccine alliance Gavi.
“We’ve only ever lived in a world of increasing cooperation, increasing focus on solidarity and shared prosperity. And that has led us to do amazing things,” Ghosh said. “This is money well spent.”
The withdrawal of some major donor countries — the United States, Germany and France, among others — may just require that more private partners to step up, according to some panelists.
Global Citizen’s latest partnership exemplified the creative coalition building they want to foster. FIFA President Gianni Infantino announced the launch of the FIFA Global Citizen Education Fund, which will raise $100 million for grassroots organizations improving access to education and advancing life skills through soccer.
Sierra Leone Chief Minister David Moinina Sengeh, 39, pointed to the fund as proof that Global Citizen spurs more than “just talk.”
“When FIFA engages with a minister of planning and myself and other actors to say, ‘How do we launch a global education fund driven by sports?’ — that’s very much what the world is about,” he said.
The fund will receive a dollar from every ticket sold for this summer’s Club World Cup, a 32-team international soccer tournament hosted across 11 American cities. Proceeds from The Weeknd’s 2025 stadium tour will also be donated, as will point-of-sale contributions from ecommerce platform Shift4’s network of more than 200,000 merchants.
The move builds on last September’s partnership in which Global Citizen supporters get tickets to matches by taking action on humanitarian issues. Evans said Global Citizen wanted to take advantage of one of the world’s biggest stages through this summer’s matches and the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
“We knew that over the next two years we’re going to have the biggest platforms on the planet,” he said. “They’re going to reach more people than the Olympics, more people than the Super Bowl. So how do you channel that platform for good?”
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