How Hugh Evans Raised $49B by Turning Activism into a Global Business Model

[0:00]  One day I was in the library studying and Bono from YouTube called me and he said in his in his thick Irish accent he said, "Hey boys, I'm coming through Melbourne. I want to perform at your concert. Is that all right?" And I'm like, "Yeah, right. This is a prank call." I didn't believe it was true. And then he said, "And I want to perform with Pearl Jam. Is that okay?" And sure enough, they came on first on our on our bill and they sang Rocking in the Free World by Neil Young. And that night, a million Australians signed on to our campaign. And we only have 20 million people in Australia in those days. And so like we had, you know, 120th of the entire population of Australia behind our campaign. And so a few months later, we projected the words make poverty history onto the sales of the Sydney Opera House. And Kevin Rudd, who was about to become our next prime minister,

[0:49]  came up on stage and he announced the largest ever foreign aid increase ever. He we we secured $6.2 2 billion in new foreign aid and and that's really what led to the birth of global citizen. I got a call the next day from the United Nations in New York who said that they'd seen what we'd done in Australia and they wanted to help us take this movement all around the world.

[1:28]  Some people see a problem and talk about it. Others, like our guest today, dedicate their entire lives to solving it. Imagine just being a teenager. You're traveling across the world and you're just realizing that in one night, your purpose is to fight extreme poverty. That's exactly what happened to today's guest. And since then, he's helped move 49 billion in impact, changing 1.3 billion lives. That's a flex that I ever heard one. So, let's get to it. Hugh Evans, welcome to the Hard Hustle podcast, man. How you doing?

[1:57]  Thank you so much, Ephraine. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. You love my introduction, man. I had to make sure it was a really good introduction for you. Um because as I sat here and listened to you or listened to more about you on a past call with one of your um team members, it was just I was in awe, man.

[2:12]  I was just so excited to really have this virtual conversation. And maybe, who knows, maybe one day we're actually in person talking about it. But I want you to take it back before that $49 billion that were impacted before Global Citizen Festival. There was a 13-year-old Hugh taking part in a fundraiser. What was it about the experience that really changed everything for you? Yeah. So, um, I grew up in in Melbourne, Australia, as you can probably hear with my voice and an accent. And um in my first year of high school, this lady from one of the local charities came and spoke about doing this thing called the 40-hour famine, where you'd go without food for 40 hours to raise money to support children. You were living in extreme poverty around the world. And you know,

[3:00]  when you're in your first year of high school, you put up your hand and you're like, "Okay, I'll participate." And I set myself a goal of trying to raise as much money as I could. I I um knocked on every single door on every single house in every single street in my neighborhood. I asked anyone that I possibly could and I ended up raising the most amount of money of any kid in Australia. And so I was given the opportunity to go to the Philippines when I was 14 to see uh and learn more about issues of global development. And there was one night in the Philippines that changed my life forever where we were taken onto a slum in the center of Manila called Smoky Mountain. It's a community that's built on top of a rubbish dump. And so the community revolves around scavenging. So the kids run after the garbage trucks,

[3:47]  try to get bits of scrap metal, piece of food and things that they can recycle. And that night I was placed in the care of a kid my own age. His name is Sunny Boy, you know, but where I'd come from, you know, just middle class Melbourne and Australia, he had tattoos on his forearm at the age of 14 because he was about to become his gang leader. And that was his form of initiation. And that night, he took me to his house and we cooked this meal together with some food that I brought with me. And and when it came came time to go to sleep, you know, naturally you think you're going to go to a bedroom or a bed, but instead we just lay down on this concrete slab, myself, Sunny Boy, and the rest of his family, seven of us in this long line with this smell of rubbish all around us cuz we're lying on top of a garbage dump and cockroaches crawling all over us that night. And I

[4:36]  didn't I didn't sleep a wink. I I remember just laying awake thinking to myself that it's pure chance that I was born where I was born and he was born where he was born. You know, as Warren Buffett called it, it's the ovarian lottery. We don't deserve where we're born. It's pure chance. And so that that hit me that night and I decided I want to commit my life to the eradication of poverty. And I didn't know what that meant at the age of 14.

[5:02]  Like I I just all my only reference point was doing the 40-hour famine. I had no other reference point about how do you change systems that keep people poor at that stage. It was just a passion and a belief within me that I didn't deserve where I was born. He didn't deserve where he was born. And so here by the grace of God go all of us.

[5:22]  And so we should do everything we can to help those that haven't had the same opportunities that we all take for granted. And that's where the global citizen was born. Is that correct? Well, actually at that stage that was many many years before global citizen. That was when I um got back from the end of that time and I said to my mom, I want to learn more about issues of extreme poverty and how to end it. And I asked her would she allow me to go to India um to to to work with Mother Teresa's orphanage. And mom was not at all excited about that idea. She was like, "No, no, there's no chance." She's like, "Hell no." And uh and I I I made a deal with her. I said, "Okay, fair enough." I said, "But if I

[6:10]  get a full scholarship, because my parents, you know, weren't wealthy or anything, I said, if if I get a full scholarship so that you know, no one's out of pocket, would you let me go?" And she she agreed. And so I I applied for this scholarship in the Himalayan mountains of India at a school called Woodstock School in Utakand in northern India. And I got I got the scholarship and so at the age of 15 I went off to India by myself and it was honestly in hindsight more scary than I realized cuz I you know I I'll never forget when I said goodbye to all my friends and family at at Melbourne airport and jumped on the plane to Singapore and then onto onto Delhi. I'll never forget I sat next to this big

[6:57]  businessman and I was like a 15-year-old kid and I looked him up and he was a complete stranger. I started crying. I was so scared. I was like, I have no idea what I'm getting myself into. And I and I arrived into India during the monsoon season. The rain was pouring down every night. I was staying at a boarding school in the Himalayan mountains. Like it was so unlike anything I'd ever experienced in my life. Like I remember I got there on day one and all of the kids all the other kids arrived and in my dorm was a kid two kids from India a kid from Bhutan a kid from from Nepal Bangladesh and me you know it couldn't have been more eclectic if you tried and and and and that was a year that totally changed my perspective on life like I

[7:44]  went to India as a self-conscious 15year-old kid and I came back with the realization that twothirds of the world live in extreme poverty in those days that twothirds of the world live on less than US $125 per day. You know there were 700 million people in India homeless or slum dwellers and it struck me that no amount of charity will ever be sufficient to solve that challenge.

[8:10]  You're never going to solve what is effectively a $350 billion a year challenge through black tigala dinners and charity. that it's just that you've got a massive scale deficit. And so I said, okay, I can't think about this as a charitable challenge. I have to think about it as how do you change the systems that keep people poor? And fast forward a few years later, the G20 was coming through my hometown of Melbourne. And me and my mate Dan, we had this idea to run this small concert um to convince the Australian government to increase foreign aid levels. We called it the Make Poverty History concert because we were inspired by what we'd seen happen in the UK with the Make Poverty History campaign. And we thought it was going to be a relatively small

[8:59]  concert cuz we were just we were university students. And one day I was in the library studying and Bono from U2 called me and he said in his in his thick Irish accent, he said, "Hey boys, I'm coming through Melbourne. I want to perform at your concert. Is that all right?" And I'm like, "Yeah, right. This is a prank call. I didn't believe it was true. And then he said, "And I want to perform with Pearl Jam. Is that okay?"

[9:23]  And sure enough, they came on first on our on our bill and they sang Rocking in the Free World by Neil Young. And that night, a million Australians signed on to our campaign. And we only have 20 million people in Australia in those days. And so like we had, you know, oneth of the entire population of Australia behind our campaign. And so a few months later, we projected the words make poverty history onto the sales of the Sydney Opera House. And Kevin Rudd, who was about to become our next prime minister, came up on stage and he announced the largest ever foreign aid increase ever. He we we secured $6.2 billion in new foreign aid. And and that's really what led to the birth of Global Citizen. I got a call the next day from the United Nations in New York who said that they'd seen what we'd done

[10:12]  in Australia and they wanted to help us take this movement all around the world. And that's that was was the origin. Yeah. I mean it and it isn't really just a movement. It's truly a force. We're talking about mobilizing 49 billion and transforming 1.3 billion lives. That's truly insane. How do you even begin to wrap your head around that kind of impact? Well, I always think our our impact I I never like to think of it in terms of those big numbers because for most people it's not super helpful. The way I like to think about it is in specific campaigns that we've won over the years like how do what are the campaigns that have have really made a difference for people. I I remember in our very early days of Global Citizen, we ran this campaign. Hugh Jackman and I were invited on to Steven Colbear's show

[11:00]  and at that time um education globally like for kids around the world wasn't getting much attention. Everyone was funding global health like all the money was going to HIV, AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, and other preventable diseases, but no one was focusing on on education, which is, you know, doesn't make much sense because Mandela said that education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world. And so we're like, well, well, how do we get governments to step up? And so we knew we had to get the Scandinavian countries to step up first because then we could create a real movement. So we we jokingly on Colbear's show launched this thing called the Twitter invasion on Norway where we asked everyone around the world to send the Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Soulberg a tweet all at once. Um

[11:49]  and we got 500,000 global citizens that night around the world all doing it. And I got a call the next day from Oslo and she said please can you come immediately to Oslo? The prime minister wants to meet with you. And so I went straight to Oslo the next day. I sat down opposite Prime Minister Erna Soulberg and she said, she said, "Will you please stop the tweets? We're getting so many tweets from global citizens and I'm in the middle of elections and I can't see any tweets from the Norwegian people. What will it take to turn them off?" And I said, "Well, we would humbly like to ask if if if Norway would step up in support of education." She said, well, she said she would love to. and she actually made a $200 million announcement a few months later as one of the lead donors ever to back global education in this

[12:36]  organization that we were working with called the global partnership for education and as a result they raised billions of dollars and we saw how that happened and and talk about full circle moment because Prime Minister Soulberg decided to join the board of global citizen after that she was so moved by wow she she joined our board and has now been our our partner partner in this effort for the last 5 years. So, it's been amazing. If the Heart and Hustle podcast has ever sparked any idea or made you think dig differently, do us a favor. Make sure to guys share this, post it on LinkedIn, or even text that nonprofit friend that you just have.

[13:13]  Whatever works. This is what keeps the conversation going and allows us to just grow this community together. Seriously, we appreciate you. you man I just to just think about when you go and think about the young you and how he just grew up to to be here and still quite young man for those that don't understand first of all kudos for what you've been able to do but for those that really don't understand the model can you break it down for us like how does global citizen turn activism into actual dollars and change for the world so the way it works is it all starts with the global citizen app you download I'm going to show it to you now you download the global citizen app on your phone.

[13:54]  And this is all about gamified action taking. Like any app, you have your own user profile. So up here it says it says this is my user profile, says my account and it says how like what my level is, how many actions I've taken. And then it gives you a range of actions. So if I want to right now it talks about the UK government and how they're cutting foreign aid and it says tag Kristama who's the prime minister of Britain tell him to stop cutting foreign aid because everyone knows about US cutting foreign but they don't know about the UK. So the app educates you about the fact that this is a global challenge and it says did you know you take closer look and then you can actually literally comment on Kier Stmer's post on Instagram telling him to stop cutting foreign aid.

[14:40]  So, it gives you an action and you earn points for those actions. So, it shows you how many points I've got and then you can use those points. So, right now you want to see Shakira in Las Vegas, you can right now or you want to um see Coleplay or Mary J Blige or all of or Charlie XCX, all your favorite artists donate tickets to Global Citizen year round. So, your actions are your currency. You don't buy a ticket to Global Citizen. Your actions are your currency. And that's what's the power of the movement in that it's gified action taking to tackle the world's biggest challenges. Because I think that for so often we've been taught by folks like Sally Strs, if you just give a dollar a day, that will change a child's life.

[15:24]  But the reality is that when you're talking about a $350 billion a year challenge, charity is necessary, but it's not sufficient. It's important and it's useful and it's helpful for communities, but it is never going to by itself solve the challenge of extreme poverty. We need a movement of citizens to raise billions of dollars and also frankly to to make systems more fair.

[15:50]  Like you we also have to combat corruption in emerging markets. We have to um do some of the things that aren't as sexy. You know, like everyone loves focusing on global health or and I mentioned education, but sometimes it's some it's as simple as making sure that tax systems work better for the world's poor. No one likes talking about it, but frankly, it's actually more valuable if you want to strengthen the middle class, you want to help people lift themselves out of poverty because the best way to lift people out of poverty is to create jobs because people if they can work and they have a good education, then it's it's super powerful. This is so good.

[16:25]  This is so good. Did you have any of those powerful moments that you've experienced where you saw direct impact for those that are are are watching or or listening? Do you recall those moments that just still to this day resonate with you? Yeah, let me give you one example that's super practical. Um, for the longest time when say a country like Barbados was struck with a natural disaster, they would for a time being, you know, have to spend all their money on the recovery for their population, food, security, shelter, everything that was destroyed by the hurricane that happens all the time in the Caribbean, right? And for for that same period of time, they were having to pay back the

[17:12]  World Bank and other big institutions in interest on loans that ironically they were given in the first place to help their development. So if you think about how how bizarre that is like World Bank gives the prime minister of Barbados Mia Mly money and says this is for your development. Then you're struck by a natural disaster and you have to pay interest on that loan that's meant to go to development. And we were like this makes no sense. So we at Global Citizen campaigned for the World Bank to issue what are called debt pause clauses because we said we don't want you to we don't expect you to write off that debt, but we do expect you to pause it when the hurricane hits because why on earth would you penalize a country when you're trying to help them like that makes zero sense and it was just a common sense

[17:59]  policy but it never happened. And that's a perfect example. There's so many common sense policies around the world that just never happen. And so we campaigned R.J. Banger he became the new president of the World Bank and Global Citizen launched this massive campaign to call for debt pause cancellation. We asked Billy Isish and Phineas and and Lenny Kravitz to perform in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. And we got thousands of global citizens part of this campaign and we managed to convince the first ever public appearance, the new president of the World Bank. He came on our stage AJ Banger and he announced debt pause clauses which is over $40 billion in debt being paused for countries like Barbados. But it's not just Barbados because we're all struck

[18:45]  by natural disasters. This happens all around the world. I was in, you know, I was in in uh in Africa just last week and Malawi has been struck by natural disasters all the time. Cyclone Freddy, you know, this happens all the time. So why on earth would you penalize a country when you give a loan designed to help them in the first place? It made zero sense. But that's an example, Ephran, of something that happens all the time. Often the the policies that make the most sense to alleviate poverty aren't the ones that exist. And that's our job at Global Citizen to try to change that.

[19:16]  Such a good leader, man. I mean, since a young kid, these leadership skills, I don't know where you got them, who instilled these leadership skills in you, but but you got to thank them because to know that your hustle is just like beyond, right? You've convinced world leaders, billionaires, A-listers to truly support your mission. Do you have a story where you were very you kind of gave me a little bit earlier um but that one person that you just was very surprised until this day um you're just in awe that they've provided maybe a million dollar check to the organization. I actually actually do remember it.

[19:52]  Um see it was it was really hard when when when we first started Global Citizen we were a true startup right like um we didn't have major backers or anything. We moved I moved to New York straight out of college and we just had this big dream. In fact, we were working out of a office at an ad agency that they'd given us. It had no windows.

[20:18]  It was like literally a broom closet. And we were trying to pull off the first ever concert on the great lawn of Central Park. And everyone used to say to us at the time, "No one, you know, you're never going to get a permit for Central Park." They're like, "The great lawn hasn't been used on a Saturday since Simon and Garuncle back in 1981. You know, there's no chance." And that was before I was born. And so they were like, "No chance." And then we sat down with Mayor Bloomberg and he and his colleagues believed in us and they said, "Okay, we'll grant you a permit."

[20:54]  And we had this innovative ticketing idea where everyone had to earn their way in. You don't buy tickets, you earn it. And he he was into that. And so obviously because we weren't going to sell any tickets, we had to get sponsors to believe in us. And we had all these we had all we had um the Foo Fighters committed and we had the Black Keys committed, but they didn't want a headline. And I'll never forget this amazing few days cuz we were already in August and the festival is every year at the end of September. So we were super close and we hadn't even launched yet because we were still a million and a half dollars short and we had no headliner. And I was like, "Okay, I remember I I met with my team. We we had a quick retreat here in New York and we're like, I think the

[21:42]  dream might be over." like we I was ready to pack my bags and go back to Australia and I was like I don't know if we're going to pull this off, guys. Like I I really don't like we were a million and a half shy. And and then and then we we're invited out to LA and this amazing set of meetings happened. I sat down with Sar Redstone who who since passed away from Viacom and I was at his house in Los Angeles and he said, "Please share with me what you're working on. I've heard a bit about it, but I don't understand, you know, what you're trying to do. And I sat down with him for an hour and shared with him our vision. At the end of it, he wrote a check on the spot for $1.5 million. And then an hour later, I got a call from Neil Young's manager in Hawaii. And he's like, "Come to the

[22:30]  other side of LA because Neil Young's on the phone. He wants to talk to you about your dream of Central Park." And sure enough, Neil Young that day signed on to be our headliner. And then a month later, 60,000 global citizens came to the great lawn of Central Park. Wow. The first ever global citizen festival and we secured a billion dollars in new commitments for the world's poor that day. And we were so absolutely exhausted. I I thought it was going to be the end. Like I was so tired. I thought that's that's great. We did it.

[23:04]  I'm going to now I can go home. And then the next day, Stevie Wonders uh team and Stevie called and and he's and they're like, you know, who's who's headlining year two? And I said I said, with all respect, Mr. Wonder, there there is no year two. And he said, well, there is now. And then and that that's when he agreed to sign and headline year two.

[23:25]  Wow, man. Yeah. Yeah. This is crazy. What a I mean, this is a story that people probably like there's there's no damn way. Like right like it you you really had to stay persistent in a space where people was saying no. It's impossible way more than they were actually saying yes. But that grit, the resilience allowed you to never give up.

[23:45]  And even when you thought it was over, it would just show up out of nowhere. Man, it is crazy. And then, you know, I was having a conversation a little um couple of weeks ago before we got on this call. And then even to to know that in your early days in New York, you weren't obviously rolling in in dough or money. You were literally crashing on someone else's couch. Yeah. Talk to me a little bit about that, man. Well, h I had to because like I was a you know recently graduated college student had no money and I mean it was it was hustle like it was the early days and uh you know it as I look back and now global citizens grown to be the largest advocacy organization one of the largest advocacy organizations on the planet I I feel

[24:34]  very fortunate for the journey but those early days It was super tough. Um, but you know, nothing nothing that I wasn't thankful for. And I would do it all over again. You know, I it was funny because in that in what happened was a few years earlier I um because of our work in Africa, the Australian government gave me this award called Young Australian of the Year and where they acknowledged our work up in Parliament House and the Prime Minister hosted a summit and at that summit he asked Hugh Jackman to host it and I was probably I think I was 21 at the time and Jackman was there and he mistook me for a waiter um because I was

[25:23]  wearing a white shirt and he asked me for a drink and I um I obliged. I got him a drink and uh and then I think he felt a bit bad because he cuz he thought I was a waiter and and uh we ended up talking for hours about the movement to end extreme poverty and he invited me the next day to onto the set of Wolverine and um he was I think it was like the second the second Wolverine he was I think it was part of the X-Men series and he and he um he he said I want to help you get this vision off the Um, and so when I when I finally graduated from university, I I I messaged him and I said, "I'm going to try to pull it off in the United States and he said, "Okay, you can sleep on my couch for a couple

[26:12]  weeks." And uh, so I did. And um, and and then I'll never forget those early days because we had this this event at his house. And when I look back, it's actually hilarious how many of those original people are still involved today. Like Gail King was at that first ever event. And there was like so many great um we invited a few leading economists who helped us, you know, develop our strategy around our policy work in the early days. You know, there was people like Anna Winter and others were there.

[26:45]  And I didn't know who these people were because I'm not I wasn't so ofay with um with their influence. I just was talking about our our mission to end extreme poverty, but Gail laughs now 12 years later when she looks back and she sees how Global Citizens's grown and she's been on stage at Global Citizens so many times now because I I was so clueless in those days I knew nothing.

[27:10]  I don't know, man. I beg to differ. I'm ready. I'm ready for this movie actually that this whole thing that you're telling me, it's something that is made up in a movie, you know? It it is just really an awe on what you seen at such a young age and today it doesn't even seem like work for you. You can just tell the smiles on your face, how happy the things that you're doing, the people you're meeting, the getting the water like you didn't you didn't care water. Yeah. You know, it don't matter who you were and and who was asking. I'm going to get you water, right? Even if it wasn't him, I can only imagine you'll still do that. I really, as I know, we're here on time, but I've got a couple of questions, man. What are the biggest factors keeping people trapped in poverty? uh or one of the biggest factors is actually poverty um is is health care access, right? That's really what's keeping people in that in that space. What role does a global

[27:57]  citizen actually play play in tackling um that healthcare access for those that are in poverty? Yeah, you're right. I mean, so the way to think about poverty, you know, when we think about it in the United States, we often think about it as homelessness, but it's not. It's not that. It's multifaceted. It's food security. It's water and sanitation.

[28:17]  global health as you mentioned, education and job creation. These are the key factors and and the global health piece is critical. We since in fact the very first campaign global citizen ever launched many many years ago was called the end of polio campaign and we launched it um because we knew that there was a strong link between polio eradication and poverty because people who were subject to getting polio in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, northern Nigeria were not able to be lift out of poverty because they were um contracting polio and it was a crippling disease.

[28:55]  And so we asked um at that stage, this was when I was still living in the UK studying. We asked um the Queen of England who was hosting the Commonwealth heads of government meeting if she would put polio on the agenda of the Commonwealth meeting that she was hosting in Perth, Australia. And she said, "Well, I will if if if the Prime Minister Gillard agrees to this." So we met with Prime Minister Gillard and she's like, "Why polio? It's so obscure.

[29:21]  No one knows about polio anymore." or she said, "You got to show that young people actually care about this." So, I asked John Legend if he would come all the way to Perth, Australia with me. And he agreed. He was actually the first artist that ever supported us at Global Citizen. And uh he flew with his band to Australia. It was so good of him. It was full circle moment last week because he was in Africa with us last week for Move Africa um in Kaggali in Rwanda as well as Lagos, Nigeria. But that that day in in Perth, we managed to convince a whole bunch of heads of state to come on stage at this concert that John Legend hosted.

[29:55]  We got Gileani of Pakistan, Good Luck Jonathan of Nigeria, Steven Harper, who used to be the prime minister of Canada. Um we had David Cameron who used to be the prime minister of Britain and Gillard of Australia. And they committed $118 million for polio eradication. And then Bill Gates heard about this so he agreed to match it. And so since those early days, we've consistently lent into the role of combating um of supporting public health initiatives to help also combat poverty. Right now, Global Citizen in the next few months is co-hosting um and supporting and campaigning for Garvey, the vaccine alliance. We're trying to raise $6.2 two billion dollars um to help children below the age of 5 years old have access to life-saving

[30:41]  vaccines and immunizations because if you you know aren't subject to things like tetanus patassus dtheria some of these easy killers of kids below the age of five then you actually have the chance to to thrive now we don't have to care about those diseases as much in the United States or where I'm from in Australia but in emerging markets they can be killers and sometimes they're the biggest killers and we want to ultimately give children the chance to stay alive and thrive because how on earth can you alleviate poverty if you don't you know if you don't have a chance to live a healthy life and so that's why we do what we do and um we're super passionate about it. I love it man and mid-March is big for you guys.

[31:22]  You're actually launching the next global citizen um now summit. What can we expect from it this year? So Hugh Jackman is going to be hosting global citizen now this year. It's going to be it's such an important if if you're in New York on April 30th, you should join us for global citizen now. It is our thought leadership summit where we bring together advocates together with private sector leaders, world leaders. You know how like often people criticize something like Daros because they say it's a bit unaccessible. We want global citizen to be the opposite. We want to be by the people for the people. We want everyone to be able to come together but also engage with leaders seuite executives with world leaders and actually use this as a forum to tackle the world's biggest challenges. So we want everyone to be part of global

[32:10]  citizen now and this year our theme is all focused on investing in the next generation of young people. We want to support more young entrepreneurs to start the future global citizen. you know, there should be more movements out there, more organizations that you can support and also social entrepreneurs that want to want to create products to create jobs. I've always believed that job creation is one of the most effective ways to alleviate poverty and that's why we want to use this forum to support young entrepreneurs all around the world. And we talk about geong innovation and really what's what we're working on today, right? The big thing uh technology wise and every leader is curious is about the AI space. Is that something that you guys are incorporating to make it easier for those donors, for those uh people that want to just know more about the organization, your volunteers? Is are

[32:57]  you into that space? Hugely into that space. Um I think a couple things when we first started the Global Citizen app, we knew that the first thing we need to do is build gamification into our product. As we think about the next iteration of Global Citizen, we have to build AI into it. And that's going to be about automating the way in which citizens can take action. Imagine if you could give a voice sample of your voice and then AI could call your member of Congress to show that you stand up for an issue if you're too shy or too nervous to make a phone call, but you want to be part you want your voice to be registered. So you're like, "Okay, I'll give a voice sample. I'll record it." And then AI can say, "Hey, here's a script that I've I've signed off on that could automate a phone call to an elected official." How powerful would that be? Imagine if you could automate all kind use technologies to automate

[33:45]  all kinds of citizen action taking. I think that citizen action taking and the role of civic participation can be powered by AI. Currently, we use it to translate, you know, global citizen um into multiple languages on through the global citizen.org website. But I think it's so much more than translation. I think it has to be about the power of automation and that's really where we want to take the next phase of the global citizen app. As we start to wrap up, man, is there any big battle global citizens is fighting right now? Yeah.

[34:20]  Well, right now, as you probably have seen around the world, many governments are cutting foreign aid. Um the US government announced to cut foreign aid and I think that that um you know, we saw Britain announced a decrease and that's obviously because many people are spending much more on military. I'm of the view that the more money you spend on military, the more likely you are to go to war. And so I think it's actually really important that at a time when um I think we need more peace and stability because the only way to alleviate poverty in the long term is through peace and stability. If countries don't go to war within one another, they're far more likely to be able to promote the economic development of their citizens and strengthen the middle class. And so I um I'm of the view that we should be promoting peace. And actually investment in foreign aid has the strongest ROI because if you help

[35:08]  people they don't need to immigrate to other countries. So you don't need to spend on immigration costs. If you help people then you don't need to spend as much on pandemic relief because diseases don't spread as far. If you help people you actually have this amazing ROI that is built into helping people. Why? And I and I think right now, you know, America shouldn't lose the battle to China in foreign aid.

[35:33]  When I was in Kaggali last week, every single hospital was funded by Chinese aid. Does US really want to lose that geopolitical battle? I think this is a time for everyone to sh step up and show soft power as well as hard power. It's not just about military might. Soft power matters as well. So good. I know we can keep going, man. Before I let you go, we do something fun here. Every guest on the heart and hustle answers a blind question. So, and it's usually from the last guest. So, this is the question. Every great leader has had to take a risk that made no sense on paper, but it felt right in their gut. What was yours?

[36:08]  Yeah. I mean, we have to take risk. I think um for me I know I know it's hard because you're taking a risk every day. What do you mean? I think for us I think for me probably the first Global Citizen Festival was that risk. It made no sense on paper. We had no money. We had no resources. We had no headliner. We had no we even didn't even have a venue like like like we no one thought we'd be granted the great lawn of Central Park in perpetuity. So I think that was the big risk for us and it's been a phenomenal journey since then. Hell yeah. Now it's it's your turn. We also allow the guests to ask the next question. So this is going to be to someone in the nonprofit or healthcare. These are leaders. These are CEOs and presidents. Um, what's your question to them? Can I ask a double

[36:55]  barrel question? Sure. What what's the most courageous decision you ever made? And secondly, what's one regret that you wish you could do over? I love it, man. He This has truly been incredible, man. Before we wrap up, where can people follow your work and support what you're doing at Global Citizen? Yeah, so Global Citizen is on Instagram. We're on Facebook. You can download the Global Citizen app. You can follow us and be part of the movement to end extreme poverty. We need everyone.

[37:29]  We've got 12 million global citizens around the world now. The festival was viewed by 1.2 billion people around the world last year. So, we need everyone to be part of this movement. So, please sign on and and be part of it. It would be an honor to work with anyone who wants to change the world. You Evans, I truly appreciate your time, man. This has been so insightful. If you guys are still watching, make sure that you guys do share, like, and subscribe, and continue to share the mission. So many leaders just want to get the word out there. They're fighting not for themselves, but people that are like us that don't have the ability to do what we do. So, I thank you so much, you Evans. My name is Era. This been the Heart and Hustle podcast. We'll catch you guys in the next