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How The Global Citizen Festival Smartly Stirs Social Media

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The Global Poverty Project has boldly broadcast its goal: to end extreme poverty by 2030.

As ambitious as that may sound--trying to raise the living quality for the planet's poorest billion people--Global Citizen, an innovative initiative to improve matters of poverty and inequality worldwide, has rapidly gained popularity and influence: in its fourth year, the Global Citizen Festival has generated enough clout to feature headlining acts Beyoncé, Coldplay, Ed Sheeran and Pearl Jam for the free concert in Central Park on Saturday, Sept. 26.; the festival will host 120 world leaders at a summit to agree to more goals; since 2014, its website has increased traffic by 470 percent; and among its recent victorious social media campaigns is a swarm of tweets so overwhelming that it clogged up the Swedish Minister of Foreign Affairs' account, rendering her unable to tweet back that she will meet the demands to improve sanitation in the country.

Global Citizen's success comes from its incentivized online campaigns. Admission to the star-studded festival, for instance, does not cost money, but to gain tickets attendees must set up a profile on the Global Citizen website, take part in an "Action Journey" (an act of activism, as modest as tweeting for a cause or proactive as calling the U.S. Department of State ) and earn enough points to qualify for a raffle (where 4,000 winners are drawn, each getting two tickets). The Action Journeys are a series of eight to nine different actions, with a new array released every three weeks, and in turn, a new chance to win tickets. The latest slate of actions was released earlier today.

It's a clever model: the more activism a user does, the more likely the user is to gain entry to the concert--and the more impact Global Citizen has as a catalyst for positive change.

"We hope to get to a place where Global Citizen is a hub for activism in their lives," Justine Lucas, the global director of programs, says of Global Citizen users and supporters. "We live in a culture where we’re very distracted. So the festival as a reward mechanism is effective because it grabs people’s attention."

Aside from the significant goal to end extreme poverty in 15 years, Global Citizen has drawn immediate attention to more easily approachable problems. In 2012, the first year of the festival, one of the actions was to sign a petition encouraging the United States to increase funding for polio eradication. Congress then funneled $50 million for the cause.

At last year's festival, Hugh Jackman introduced Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi on stage for a public discussion on the country's new commitment to provide universal sanitation by 2019. "There’s a massive taboo around that issue," Mick Sheldrick, the head of global advocacy, says of the effort to provide private toilets. "There are 1 billion people that defecate in the open. This is where the festival can serve an issue like that."

When Global Citizen released its first round of actions on July 9, seven of the eight required tweeting or signing online petitions--easy enough. But there was an significant response to the most involved action: to call the U.S. Department of State and leave a voicemail asking 50 percent of the foreign aid budget be devoted to the poorest countries. (Global Citizen even offers a script for what to say after the beep.)

Sheldrick says a White House representative wound up replying to Global Citizen on behalf of State Department: they got the message. Actually, they got more than 20,000 of them "in a period of a few days," Sheldrick says.

Global Citizen assumes responsibility for more than mere rally cries. Of the 18,000 tweets sent in 24 hours that jammed the account of Sweden's Minister of Foreign Affairs, pressuring her to improve public toilet conditions, Sheldrick explains, "We will monitor that and make sure they follow up with a commitment."

As the festival nears and more actions are released (a.k.a those final batches of tickets put up for grabs), Global Citizen will up the ante. Future Action Journeys will require hand-written letters to global leaders. There will be in-person events for activists, where they will check in to location, raise signs and volunteer to earn more points. There are hints of a possible flash mob. Lucas says that "30 Rock is looking promising," alluding to Rockefeller Center in New York City.

"For us, we’re not after your money," Sheldrick says of why Global Citizen does not overtly solicit donations. "We’re after your voice."