AT TED2013, Bono recently spoke about the progress being made against extreme poverty in the world. His full speech, in which he praises our progress and warns us against complacency, is now available to watch in its entirety.
Bono urges us to become what he calls “factivists,” people who share the facts of progress and help to campaign for more progress by joining groups like ONE, a global advocacy and campaigning organization backed by more than 3 million people dedicated to fighting extreme poverty and preventable disease.
In his stirring speech he shared the new facts about fighting global poverty saying: “Forget the rock opera, forget the bombast, my usual tricks. The only thing singing today will be the facts.” And those facts spoke for themselves, stating that since the year 2000, the child mortality rate of kids under 5 is down by 2.65 millions deaths a year and extreme poverty has declined from 43% in 1990 to 33% in 2000 to 21% by 2010, One.org reports.
Bono explained how global extreme poverty has already been cut in half over the past 20 years and, could be virtually eliminated by 2030, a point he calls ‘Zero Zone.’ Reaching this 'Zero Zone' means that less than 5% of the world’s population will live in extreme poverty. Afraid that this good work could be reversed, he exhorted his audience to fight corruption, inequality, apathy and inertia in the pursuit of empowering the world’s poorest people.
Watch Bono’s full speech below at TED 2013: Eradicating extreme poverty doesn’t have to be a dream:
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