The Serious Stuff
Live AID was about raising funds for Africa. Live 8 was about raising awareness of the plight of poverty in Africa. Was it successful? One would have to say yes to the hundreds of thousands of people in attendance at all of the concerts worldwide (including the 35,000 in Barrie). One would have to say yes to the record setting 10 million plus Canadian viewers that tuned into CTV’s broadcast, and one would definitely have to say yes to the estimated 3 billion people worldwide that watched Live 8!
So did Live 8 and the collection of signatures for the G8 Summit leaders work? We can only wait and see.
It appears that our Prime Minister has committed to double Canada’s relief funds. This amounts to a total of 0.52 percent of our GNP not quite the 0.7 percent that the Live 8 effort was looking for.
The goal was to reach 0.7 percent by the year 2015. Would this be such a hard target to commit to? By not committing to this number could the Prime Minister be playing yet another move to shorten his career, only time will tell. Canada is considered one of the best countries in the world for our Peace Keeping efforts, and our humanitarian aid, it would only seem natural that we would have jumped at the opportunity to commit to the 0.7 percent figure.
This is only my humble opinion, I do not know what effort it would take to raise our commitment. One also has to look at our country, what about our poor, our healthcare system, our infrastructure.
If the overall goal was to raise awareness worldwide and to people of all ages, then Live 8 was a great success. Live 8 might not get all of the G8 countries to commit to the 0.7 percent level now, but perhaps the seed has been planted in the youth that someday will be running the G8 countries, and perhaps in the future, those that have, will help those that do not, until poverty is a thing of the past. This might seem a bit idealistic but wouldn’t it be nice
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