Hugh Evans, CEO of Global Citizen | The Brave Ones

[Music] after all these years I've got to believe that the mission speaks for itself that actually every single human being has within them this great desire to end extreme poverty that no one wants that sort of suffering on this planet no one wants it so when we say that we're going to be building a movement that could achieve tangible real political results that will actually affect the lives of millions of people living in extreme poverty I'd say 90% of our population on this planet say yes I want to be part of that around 12,000 protestors greeted arriving heads of state with a message welcome to hell anti-capitalist protesters clashing with police in riot gear and smoke bombs pepper spray and water cannons all used to disperse the crowd we're able to take a global citizen on the eve of the g20 this year to Germany and Hamburg and that was with Shakira and Coldplay and Pharrell Williams atmosphere in Hamburg of that something was happening both in terms of the protests but also bigger than that was the opportunity that's created when all these world leaders come into one place really important for us to be there on the eve of the g20 to send a message to global leaders that you know these are critical times we're all facing right now everybody make some noise for mr. Hugh Evans that his dream called global citizen as challenging as that was because the security around the g20 was so tight that you know you had protesters outside you had you had world leaders planning to attend you had to make sure every single detail was thought through and I love the focus of our team because they were really really into bring it they brought it and they said you know what we'll do anything we can to make this a success and they did so [Music] at these concerts tons of people there that had to get there by taking action and that action then converts to policy and policy is where change happens in our world whether it's the global citizens that have earned the right to be there or the musicians who are donating their time to play there's just a real altruistic sense of you know doing good there's always a special kind of energy at global citizen it's filled with incredible people incredible leaders incredible musicians and I can't think of anywhere else I'd want to be right now for a long time they were known as the group that did that one big concert once a year and it was a moment but that moment has really transitioned into being a movement I spent most of the festival in Hamburg with Hugh and we were meeting with you know the President of Argentina we met with Justin Trudeau it's just really trying to continue to lobby for the issues that matter most to global citizens [Music] we must continue to put pressure on the g20 leaders so they hear our voices we are truly loud and together together is powerful and together we we will make our planet great again thank you it's tough to pinch myself sometimes about where the organization's come and where the movements grown like now the fact that you know 20 to 30 million people engage every single month with global citizen is beyond me he was never safe and he never wanted to do the same things as other kids wanted to do he's an initiator he believes in change I didn't really as a kid go with the flow so much I didn't really I guess care so much about what everyone else was doing I I was intrigued by it but didn't really I was comfortable in my own independence I think from a young age and generally I think that started probably around the age of 12 or 13 there always been this kind of kind of um gurgling in his belly that it said what's out there there's got to be something more you know we grew up in a middle-class part of Melbourne but everyone you know you know had privilege they all had good food on the table they all had great education so we want to rattle the cage a bit being his big brother and being protective of him you know I saw at times when he got laid into at school for fighting for this kind of stuff which wasn't popular it wasn't trendy this lady from World Vision came and spoke at our school about doing the 40-hour famine so you basically from Friday night through to Sunday night couldn't eat anything and I was one of those eager young kids and literally put up my hand and said I wanted to help organize it who has a kind of an intensity about him a this kind of manic charisma which means that people tend to follow him people tend to listen and do what he says he was the top raiser of money in Australia and so he got a trip to Manila looking back it wasn't a lot of money it was probably like ten or twelve thousand dollars but for us in those days that was like that was the equivalent of raising millions of dollars Manila wasn't a place I knew anything about I was slightly apprehensive but I knew that he could look after himself and I think that you need to expand yourself in this world I guess I didn't really feel scared until the night we went to Smoky Mountain I mean walking through the streets it was it was a whole you know incredible experience like I remember the slums of of Smoky Mountain were piled up what seemed like miles high you know shanty on top of shanty on top of shanty I was placed in the care of Sonny Boy and his family and we went out exploring around just me and Sonny Boy and with him by my side I guess I felt safe in some respects I think probably the fact that he would there was introduced to me as a gang leader made me feel a bit safer even though he was probably only 14 or 15 I actually want to know how old he is today but he couldn't have been much older than I was you know Sonny Boy he just wanted to share his life to to invite you into his family to share about his experiences and he did that with such an open heart I don't think either of them really knew that the impact impact that that would have when it came time to you know go to go to bed that night it started getting dark and we went back to Sonny boy's house and I brought some food with me so we started cooking on the ground in this small pot with Sonny Boy his family making some rice we had a bit to eat and and I remember Sonny Boy went out the front and and poured the water all over himself that was his shower that night and and we went back into their small shanty hut and we laid down with myself and Sonny Boy and his whole family seven of us in this long line I remember listening to all the noises of this slum that night like surrounded by thousands and thousands of noises every single creak rattle every single hearing the family sleeping next to me it was it was overwhelming in every sense of the word and you know seeing cockroaches that were crawling around like it was it was intense and and just lined it at night.i it struck me that was pure chance that I was born in Australia and sunny boy was born there we don't deserve or or we have no entitlement to the lottery of life that we have and so it struck me that that night that this was going to become much bigger and much more important for me that was a pivotal moment for Hugh being with sonny boy spending time with him in his community when I left the Philippines Sonny Boy gave me his address and said be in touch I put his address in my gene pop gene pocket and unfortunately my mum and I accidentally put that through the wash so I lost all trace of contact with him I don't think I could actually put into words what Manila and sunny boy did for hue sunny boy changed his life he's part of our family folklore out our story for the last several years it's been this this photo that I've held with me of the two of us together and nothing else like I didn't even know where his life had come to I knew nothing about where his life had evolved to it was this this kind of story that I told a million times about how it all started for me it's funny how like a moment a night can have such a huge impact on your life and for me that night in 1998 here in the Philippines here in Manila was undoubtedly one of the most important moments of my whole life and to be back here 20 years later and know that in just an hour or so I'm gonna see Sunny Boy for the first time in 20 years it's pretty overwhelming [Music] [Music] for me it's like connecting with someone that played such an important role in in my life even if just for a brief second was such a hugely important moment for my life and so I just want to ask him everything even though I like was going through high school I always had a part-time job on the side 14 years old actually got my first paper round then I worked at McDonald's then I worked at a juice bar then I worked at the local restaurant in in my town kind of my final year of high school I'd say it was very much heads down I said I really want to see if I can get into law and so I literally studied every waking hour I would wake up as early as I could study through till 11 or 12 and I which felt like is till I was exhausted her men would wake up and do it all over again and fortunately the end of that I got accepted to study law which I was really happy with and decided to defer my first year out to go and work and live in South Africa at an orphanage for about a hundred children orphaned by hiv/aids and violence in the region called God's got an acre he spent a whole year there he spent his you know he was brave and strong and ended through some really difficult things that happened it happened to you in South Africa but that year was just remarkable between working at the orphanage every single day I helped them set up a child sponsorship program from scratch and we actually took that program and pitched it to Oprah Winfrey and Oprah came back to the orphanage and win it on sponsoring a whole bunch of the kids herself my name is Hugh Evans and I'm the director of the oaktree Foundation and also the 2004 young Australian of the Year this idea for this this organization called the oak tree foundation came to my mind out of a stream that from a tiny acorn be that the potential of a young person could grow this massive oak tree that you know stood for as a Nelson Mandela said education is the most powerful weapon we can use to change the world so we want to stand for patien worldwide he talked me through this idea of oaktree and the experience that he'd had in South Africa and I thought you know what you're saying all these things that I felt about my volunteering experiences here in Australia that I wanted to do something about I was super impressed with what he was doing and we asked him would he become the volunteer coordinator for all of our volunteers at oaktree that was the start of 2004 and they've been working with each other ever since we were very much you know bootstrapping this organization it became now has become one of the largest youth organizations in Australia and it was entirely run by young people under the age of 25 I couldn't believe that an 18 year old could start an organization and that he incorporated it and I was in my 30s and I didn't even know what incorporation was oaktree start to really grow soon we were raising millions of dollars for education so we built schools teacher training projects in South Africa the Philippines East Timor Papua New Guinea Ghana we were seeing the power of Education to transform the world firsthand but at that same time that we start to think about this importance of systemic change that yes grassroots development matters but so too does thinking about how do we change the systems that keep people poor in the first place and so we started working earning in those days - we were spied by what bono and others had done with the Make Poverty History campaign in the UK and around the world and so we said could we bring Make Poverty History to Australia and I hadn't really put on a concert before and neither at hew but what we had done was put on plenty of dinners and events and we figured it couldn't be that hard and when we got back to Melbourne and we started talking to World Vision and Oxfam and the NGOs that we've all heard of instead of saying you crazy young people go away they said that's a really interesting idea and they started suggesting musicians they knew who we could get to play we were off to the races and we we didn't think it was gonna be bigger than a local event we thought it was going to be strictly local then one day I was in the I was at University study in a way and I got a phone call from Bono's team and it was Paul McGuinness and and his team calling with their thick Irish accent Bono u2's manager and they said hey boys were coming to Melbourne and Bondi wants to perform you make poverty history concert and we thought the whole thing was a prank call cuz we couldn't believe it it was beyond our wildest imagination in those days and he said and he wants to perform with Pearl Jam is that okay and we're like of course it's okay and he freaked out he didn't know how to how to deal with it and I remember standing in a circle and Bono arrived myself and Hugh and Dan and a couple of others and we shook hands with him and he took off his glasses and everyone because Bono is this guy who you know didn't take off his glasses and that sense of validation to have him turn around and say to us I want you to know that I'm not the important person here you guys are the important people here that I can only do what I do because thousands of people like you are standing behind me [Music] and all of a sudden the event got international attention is the BBC and CNN picked it up and a million Australian people a million Australian citizens bought our white armband and that was when the politics started to follow because when you had all these young people plus he had all these you know we call him soccer moms committed to this cause at the same time all of a sudden politicians start to take notice so to say that I was terrified was an understatement I was absolutely not only terrified and it's a very powerful motivator [Music] [Applause] so I met my life at Cambridge Daniella and I also to marry me after we'd been dating for about a year or so and I would I knew she was the one so to speak I just knew it she's absolutely amazing we literally finished our honeymoon and flew straight into New York we were in a tiny little apartment a sixth floor walk-up in so Hughes office at that time was literally a broom closet on Lafayette Street that someone had given him we knew that New York was the epicenter of social change given the United Nations is based here the proximity to Washington in the World Bank and Congress the the fact that this this city itself represents the very thoughts of being a global citizen first time I met Hugh Evans was in 2010 it was up at Columbia University he was speaking at a conference there I was there trying to kind of find a partner really to help me develop an idea I had for a festival in Central Park the initial idea was to try to do a revamp of Live Aid really and do something for the younger generation they saw what we did with Make Poverty History they said could we replicate that here in America could we do this enormous concert that was in the heart of New York City during the UN General Assembly meeting that brought together range of charities under one umbrella working together for something greater than all of us and he was with Ryan one day on the west coast and he met with a guy named John Silver he was the manager of Foo Fighters and a couple of others and they were pitching and they'd been pitching dozens of people about this this concert idea that we had we didn't have a name for it yet and John Silver said you know what this is a really great idea eirick and the guys that the Foo Fighters that do this and he said to Isis you know what guys David Rohl and he has a few things left on his bucket list and playing Central Park is one of them he said if you guys can get Central Park the food will play there hadn't been a concert on a Saturday on Central Park since Simon and Garfunkel back in 1981 and I think Bon Jovi a few years later I don't think people realize how quickly that happens and how likely failure was New York City is expensive you know and no doubt about it and trying to pull it off in the first year we didn't even know how we ended up doing it to be honest because we had to raise so much money what Hugh and the team at global citizens was trying to accomplish was nothing short of extraordinary it was rough they were definitely so there were definitely some sleepless nights so to say that I was terrified was an understatement I was absolutely and utterly terrified and it's a very powerful motivator July 2012 two and a half months out from when the event would be we still needed to raise more money we hadn't booked all the talent but we thought we had the Foo Fighters and we got a phone call for my responses and they said look we've just we've had this problem we know we said we were going to be in and we know we've ever drawn up a contract the contracts not signed I'm sorry we're gonna have to pull out it just felt like we'd reached this is this precipice where nothing was gonna happen from here we were down to the final days you know because we couldn't as an organization we couldn't take a risk and you know not having enough money in the bank to pull it off and I remember so vividly one night just praying I was like God just please bless us with this event and the next day we woke up and Sumner Redstone invited us to come to his house and Sumner Redstone who came through and in the final hours with with the commitment no kidding he wrote a check for 1.5 million dollars on the spot the bravest thing I've seen Hugh do was stare down eight to ten weeks out of the very first global citizen festival a sponsor who'd just fallen over an artist build that wasn't complete and have him say we can still do this because every reasonable and rational person around him said no you can't you don't have the money you don't have to tie you don't have the expertise and you don't have the performers to be able to pull off a sixty thousand person event in a city that you've only just moved to and he said yes I do we're able to rally sixty thousand young people to the Great Lawn and and the movement started to build from there when you saw the artists come on then you saw how the crowds reacted just turned back towards the audience from the stage and it's realized all these people came out together and they did actions online in support of the world's poor along the way we come up with this name this idea of global citizen we'd always talked about this idea of people taking action to get into the events we did so instead of just saying you have to register and then we pick you out of hat you actually have to take some action and then we can put you in a drawer to come to the show it's really a brilliant concept it's more than a concert it's education and these are kids that are 20 30 years old but they really have this vision and they have this energy and they are reaching sectors in ways that we never thought were imaginable my name is Hugh Evans from the Global Poverty Project and tonight we've seen over 1.3 billion dollars in new commitments in the world's poor and this is just the beginning so stay tuned because the movement to end extreme poverty is going to grow from here we never thought it was going to be become something we did ever again a few days later rub light who was Stevie Wonder's agent said Stevie Wanda wants to headline year two and we said there isn't a year to you know we couldn't we could barely do year one and he said now there is so every time you guys do something it gets bigger jay-z together with no doubt Carrie Underwood fun the roots of TS Terrell Jam Beyonce Ed Sheeran and Coldplay is Rihanna yes Kendrick Lamar together with Selena Gomez Major Lazer Metallica I want to set the stage for people you got involved in humanitarian work very early in life absolutely yeah it started for me at the age of 14 years old over all these years I've tried to reconnect with Sonny Boy sadly I've been unable to we met long before social media and his address has now been relocated by the authorities as often happens with slums he did his TED talk in Canada and it went extraordinarily well and just the publicity from that all around the world brought you know many many emails and correspondence from people a lady from the community in the Philippines that works for a great local NGO reached out to me and said you'll never believe this it's a small world but we think we know who Sonny Boy is and I was like beside myself I was like you've got to be joking to be back here 20 years later and know that in just an hour or so I'm gonna see Sonny Boy for the first time in 20 years is pretty overwhelming so my mind is scattered and a million million thoughts racing through it at the same time Sonia yeah happened it was so thankful to you because it's been so so a long time ago is still somebody remembered I've probably told about a hundred million people in the world about youth I've told everyone since since that age actually since I was fourteen I've told the story of meeting you probably about thousand times you know yesterday seen Sonny Boy for the first time in 20 years it was incredibly overwhelming and I went to bed last night just thinking to myself but often we like to you know we took we tell the story that in the last 30 years extreme poverty is halved but in some ways I think that masks the present reality of suffering for so many people still living in extreme poverty and Sonny Boy said himself that he doesn't have hope for his own future his hope is in his kids it's made me stop for a second and say you know what I've got to Double Down yes it's been 20 years but there's got to be another 20 years because this the only way we're gonna end this is through concerted concerted efforts encouraging government's like the government of Philippines encouraging the international community institutions like the World Bank encouraging major donor countries but also just getting our hands dirty and doing it [Music] you you

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Keywords: CNBC, global citizen, global citizen festival 2017, global citizen festival, global citizen 2017, global citizen interview, global citizen quotes, global citizen what is it, global citizen work, global citizen program, global citizen sustainability, global citizen global goals, global citizen group, global citizen hugh evans, global citizen concert, global citizen founder, hugh evans global citizen ted talk, hugh evans global citizen, the brave ones, the brave ones cnbc

Id: waaRvoZNBaA

Length: 26min 6sec (1566 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 22 2017