HUMAN RACE DAY
Humanity Organized to End Poverty
By Brian Webster
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A new global citizen’s campaign focused on creating political will to abolish extreme global poverty and meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is organizing an annual Human Race Day of 5-kilometre walks and 10-kilometre running races simultaneously in over 100 cities worldwide starting in September 2007. The events will engage some 10,000 people per city and produce the largest annual mobilization of humanity in support of the most effective human development strategies.
Human Race Day is part of a growing coalition of commitment and understanding to end extreme global poverty —all that is needed is the will to do it. It might be compared to the AIDS Walk or large successful charity runs, but it will do more than just raise money for human development. It is designed to educate people about the solutions to extreme poverty and help them to speak out and exercise their political will. The campaign’s development stage will end in September 2006 and the production will begin with a press conference at the United Nations announcing the first Human Race Day in September 2007. It is a self-sustaining social enterprise that will engage civil society groups, businesses and government bodies that support the MDGs and will use a network-centric organizing strategy that will allow all levels of society to actively participate and contribute towards its success.
Human Race Day takes its inspiration from the historic achievement of Sport Aid, a one-time event held on 25 May 1986 focused on famine relief in Africa. Over 20 million people in 266 cities and 74 countries ran, walked and participated in 10-K races and other events, which raised $100 million, with $45 million brought in from a special two-hour television broadcast worldwide that reached 750 million people. Sport Aid holds the record as the world’s largest sporting event ever.
Political will is identified as a important requirement for ending extreme global poverty. Relative poverty may always exist, but the abolition of extreme poverty is a reality that is within our means to accomplish; it requires a shift in world-view of individuals and societies and their active exercise of political will. Human Race Day’s most visible activity will be organizing a million people to participate in annual races and sporting events worldwide, while its most important activity will be for these people to exercise their political will. The key strategy is to partner with effective global development organizations, create exponential growth in the numbers of people active in the global movement to end poverty and support creating the global political will to do it. This will transform Human Race Day from just another charity event into a powerful global tool for meeting the MDGs. Using this synergy and leverage strategy, the Day–supported civic action will help generate funds for international development programmes.
The 2005 LIVE 8 Global Concerts to Fight Poverty featured 100 leading pop stars performing to a live audience in ten cities on three continents. It was also webcast and broadcast by to over 2 billion people, a clear demonstration that there is a worldwide market receptive to a campaign focused on raising voices to end poverty. LIVE 8 also demonstrated that international brand companies would embrace sponsorship of events that advocate ending global poverty and influencing political leaders if the humanitarian message is broad-based and non-partisan. Twenty years after the Live Aid concerts, LIVE 8’s focus of “raising voices” rather than “raising money” succeeded in winning an important G-8 commitment of $50 billion in development funds for Africa.
Human Race Day is focused on creating an annual mobilization of humanity to “raise its voice” and showcase effective human development strategies, in partnership with non-governmental organizations and UN agencies. The launch of its public organizing campaign will be announced in September 2006, one year after the Millennium Summit +5, an appropriate time to evaluate what political leaders have done to keep their renewed commitments and announce the citizens’ plans to make sure that commitments to the MDGs are met. The MDG movement has demonstrated that it is ready to support global coordinated events, and that media companies and marketing professionals are eager for this goodwill opportunity. The United Nations also showed that it is ready by declaring 2005 as the International Year of Sport and Physical Education, and spearheading a sport for development and peace movement focused on the MDGs. Human Race Day will bring those elements together and execute its annual production with a strategy of synergy, leverage and focus.
The best way to change the world is to design a new tool that is accessible to everyone; this is our intention and hope—that if people are provided with this tool called Human Race Day, they will use it to exercise their civic voice to meet the MDGs and change the world. |
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Brian Webster, a social entrepreneur, marketing consultant and event producer, is the project manager of Human Race Day, which is based in San Francisco, California. (For more information visit www.humanraceday.org). |
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