MAKE POVERTY HISTORY

Make Poverty History is the name of a campaign that exists in a number of countries, including Australia, Canada, Denmark , Finland, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Romania, the United Arab Emirates, Great Britain and Ireland.

The Make Poverty History campaign is a Great Britain and Ireland coalition of charities, religion groups, trade unions, campaigning groups and celebrities who mobilise around the Britain's prominence in world politics, as of 2005, to increase awareness and pressure governments into taking actions towards relieving absolute poverty. The symbol of the campaign is a white "awareness bracelet" made of cotton or silicone.

The biggest ever anti-poverty movement came together under the banner of MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY in 2005 calling for urgent action for more and better aid, debt cancellation and trade justice.

Millions of people wore white bands, 444,000 people emailed the Prime Minister about poverty and 225,000 took to the streets of Edinburgh for the Make Poverty History march and rally.

The campaign ensured that global poverty was placed higher on the national and global agenda than ever before.

Television advertisements ran for many months, urging people to speak to their representatives about stopping poverty. However, the Office of Communications (Ofcom) banned the ads, deciding that the ads were "wholly or mainly political" in nature, since they aimed to "achieve important changes".

Make Poverty History won great steps forward, however there remains work to do and to hold governments to account for their promises.

On January 31, 2006, the majority of the members of the campaign passed a resolution to disband the organisation, arguing that the British coalition had only agreed to come together formally for a limited lifespan, to correspond with Britain holding the presidency of the EU and G8. Approximately forty groups argued against the dissolution.

Although Make Poverty History came to an end in 2006, the events of 2005 helped inspire various members to work together on further campaigns. These took place as the UK platform of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty.

The 2010 election campaign saw tens of thousands of people across the country contacting their candidates about global poverty.

That’s what I think,

MANU