World leaders need to hear us
My name is Maé and I have been working for the NGO ONE in France for almost 3 years now. I’ve witnessed poverty in developing countries at very early age, from the poor neighbourhoods of Nouakchott to, just this year, the refugee camps in Lebanon. When you’re a kid, the existence of inequalities does not make any sense to you: why would some people live in dire and dreadful conditions while you have everything you need, if not more? My passion for the SDGs stems directly from these feelings: I believe in justice and equality. We should all be equal, because it is a question of justice. This is what we are passionately working towards at ONE.
The remaining question, however, is the most important one: how do we build a just world by achieving equality? How do we make sure that everyone, no matter where they are born — from Paris to Dakar — has the same access to basic services, such as health, education, food, or drinkable water? What I learned from the few experiences that I had is that long-term and meaningful change only happen through an impact on norms and structures. If the current system does not work towards ending poverty, it simply will not happen. Everything is politics. Which means that we, activists, should try to influence and have an impact on the way society and local, national and global communities are built, because it is where inequalities thrive in the first place. If a person in a country - not matter their race, sex or origin - is not given the right to work, they will not be able to lift themselves out of poverty.
Too often, solutions exist, they are not expensive nor complicated to implement, and yet decision makers do not act on it. At ONE, we are trying to present to these influencers the scale and the importance of it all. I personally believe that, among the SDGs, education is key, as it gives you greater chances in life to build and decide the future to which you aspire and therefore increases your feeling of belonging and being able to make a difference in this world. However, 130 million girls are currently out of school globally. What we do at ONE is knock on leaders and decision makers’ door to tell them that 130 million is the size of France and the UK’s population put together, which would make it the 10th largest nation in the world. We also come with solutions and research: addressing the gender gap in education could yield between $112 and $152 billion a year to developing countries. We continue tirelessly to reach out to world leaders and decision makers, from North America, Europe and Africa, until we convince them to change the world around them.
Because, in the end, everyone will benefit from a more equal and sustainable world. Justice and equality are in everyone’s interest, and it is the only way to make humanity stronger. At ONE, we combine the most impactful tools at our disposal to reach our decision-makers: media, citizens mobilisation and advocacy. All three combined give us a legitimacy that cannot be ignored. We speak for our 8 million members, we broadcast what they want in the media and we go to decision makers with proofs and arguments that the right decision to make is to help support achieving the SDGs by 2030.
Yet, we are never too many to work to that ending, and this is where UNLEASH becomes an incredible and unique opportunity. What I want to achieve in Denmark this year is to connect and converse with other activists from all around the world working on different solutions and proposals for a better world and make our movement grow even bigger. We are always stronger together, and the UNLEASH lab 2017 will create these lasting connections. I also want to learn and discover concrete proposals of what can be done to reach the SDGs by 2030, because again, proposing and promoting solutions are the absolute key to having a long-term impact on international and national norms. What makes ONE unique is that we have a broad mandate: the eradication of extreme poverty. Consequently, we are not tackling one SDG in particular, but rather all of them at the same time, our goal being to show that ending poverty means addressing undernutrition, making sure that gender equality is reached, building strong and reliable institutions and developing global partnerships at the international level. We continue to connect with experts and solution-providers to understand, build a campaign and broadcast what they have to say.
ONE’s mission is to unite people to act together, our name being inspired by the belief that one voice reuniting all the people on the planet, whether they are politicians, artists, business leaders, students or activists can change the world for the better.
To that end, UNLEASH is an extraordinary opportunity to make ourselves heard.
