Make Poverty History

Make Poverty History is the name of organizations in a number of countries, which focus on issues relating to 8th Millennium Development Goal such as aid, trade and justice. They generally form a coalition of aid and development agencies which work together to raise awareness of global poverty and achieve policy change by governments. The movement exists or has existed in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Romania, South Africa, Ireland, the United Arab Emirates, the United States of America, and the United Kingdom. The various national campaigns are part of the international Global Call to Action Against Poverty campaign.

The Make Poverty History campaign in Great Britain and Ireland is a 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. Usually on the band the words would be written in black, with the "Poverty" word a lighter shade. A "virtual" white band was also available to be displayed on websites.

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".

The three demands of the campaign were:

None of these aims were new (there were many attempts over the preceding decades to promote them), but the scale of the 2005 campaign dwarfed previous efforts.

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.

On January 23, 2013, the Enough Food For Everyone IF campaign was launched, by a group of over 100 aid organisations and religious groups. Sometimes called Make Poverty History 2, or simply the IF campaign, the new undertaking is the biggest of its kind since the original make poverty history campaign of 2005. It coincides with Britain once again assuming presidency of the G8. The central theme of the campaign concerns ending hunger, with four strands aimed at tackling the root causes:

...
Wikipedia