Flickr: C.C. Chapman

Working with our partners One Campaign and Results, Global Poverty Project campaigned to ensure that Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance is fully replenished.

What’s the issue?

At Global Citizen, as part of our vision of a world without extreme poverty by 2030, we know we need to work together to achieve a world where no child’s potential is unmet - or worse, leads to untimely death - for lack of access to routine vaccines and immunizations. We’ve been campaigning to see the end of polio for the past two years and with the support of global citizens we’re seeing real progress.

We’ve also been busy working with partners like Save the Children and Results for over a year, to ensure that Gavi, the vaccines alliance to achieve its replenishment goal, with over a year of campaigning. Within this story, the past week has been critical as Gavi held its spring pledging conference in Berlin with dignitaries present including world leaders, corporations, charitable foundations and some of the world’s most ultra rich philanthropists.

How did global citizens respond?

Global citizens responded by taking actions directly asking world leaders to pledge the resources needed to Gavi. This included:

- 46,000 global citizens signing a petition in partnership with our friends at the ONE Campaign and RESULTS and was handed to USAID Administrator Raj Shah;

- Thousands of tweets being sent to UK Secretary of State for International Development, Justine Greening, and world leaders like Prime Minister Erna Solberg of Norway;

- Working with champion countries like Great Britain as well as celebrities like No Doubt to identify and encourage other governments to increase their commitments; and,

- Prime Minister Solberg, President Paul Kagame of Rwanda and Nelson Mandela’s grandsons coming together at the 2014 Global Citizen Festival and issuing a resounding call to the international community to go above and beyond in its support for gavi.

What’s the impact?

On January 27th 2015, global citizens saw the global community come together in Berlin and make good. Pledges from around the world came in which exceeded Gavi’s fundraising goal of $7.5 billion. With these funds in place, gavi is set to affect the lives of 300 million children by 2020 with vaccines. Gavi’s scientists predict that by vaccinating this many children, between 5 and 6 million lives will be saved. Not to mention, overcoming missed education through sick days, unnecessary medical costs and drains to medical infrastructures in developing countries.

Thanks to the efforts of global citizens, we want to celebrate the impact of the following commitments:

UK: Together with our partners ONE, RESULTS UK and Save the Children, global citizens’ campaigning efforts secured a commitment of £1 billion from the UK Government.

US: We partnered with ONE, RESULTS and the United Nations Foundations which saw global citizens’ campaigning leverage a pledge of $1 billion over four years from the United States government. This is unique - as annual budget setting procedures in the US makes multi-year commitments very difficult to achieve.

Canada: partnered with ONE and RESULTS canada, global citizen’s campaigning resulted in a $500 million commitment over four years.

Global citizens from Australia, Norway, Germany, The Netherlands, Sweden and France called on their governments to make their own contributions, resulting in:

- A pledge from Australia of AU $250,000, a small increase on expectations

- A commitment from Norway of $1 billion

- A promise of $720 million from Germany

- A donation of $308 million from the Netherlands

Together with our partners, global citizens efforts influenced around 50% of the total commitments worth more than $7.5 billion, making January 27th a truly important day in Berlin for children in developing countries.

What happens next?

Global citizens know that vaccines represent some of the most effective and cost efficient weapons in the armoury against extreme poverty. 2015 is a particularly big year for child health. For example, we’re waiting to receive confirmation from the WHO later this year that polio has at last been eradicated from Africa - leaving the big end game in Pakistan. We’ll also be working towards securing a central place for health in the new Sustainable Development Goals that will be announced later this year, like a goal to halve the number of child deaths by 2030. Next up. we’ll be advocating for Maternal Newborn and Child Health and strengthening domestic health systems in developing countries at the G7 meeting.