Make Poverty History engages over 230,000 Canadians. October 17, 2007 will be the next Global White Band Day of Action and that the theme will be “STAND UP and SPEAK OUT”. MPH Canada is active has over 50 local groups in communities across Canada and will be “standing up and speaking out” this October 17th.

MPH is making poverty personal…. and political. This broad based national campaign continues to awaken the compassion and reason within us all. It reminds me of an observation made by the author of The Story Factor, Annette Simmons,

“A good story helps you influence the interpretation people give to facts. Facts aren’t influential until they mean something to someone. A story delivers a context so that your facts slide into new slots in your listeners’ brains. If you don’t give them a new story, they will simply slide new facts into old slots.”

When 1 billion people are struggling living on one dollar a day… when governments make promises to increase aid and then renege … when cultures are being wiped out because they don’t have access to HIV medication … that’s when we need the galvanizing call of mass mobilization campaigns, like Make Poverty History Canada.

Standing up and speaking out… in your church, your riding, your professional association, your union, your neighbourhood, at your ballot box … we can not continue to slide the brutal facts of poverty into “old slots” any longer.