Bantubonke Biko once said, "it is better to die for an idea that will live than to live for an idea that will die.” In the noughties/zeroes/post-nineties  I believe the Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP) is that idea. It is what the Anti-Apartheid Movement was to the eighties. While no-one is calling on anyone to die (since enough people are dying because of poverty anyway), the Call is certainly an idea that should bring all global citizens, across the economic barriers, to action. While there is no doubt that GCAP is a brilliant idea, there definitely have been some questions on whether GCAP as a campaign should continue.
 
Like all great revolutions in recent memory, GCAP is an idea that was articulated by the middle class. Using the very minimalist Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), GCAP activists have pushed so that the upper classes, as personified by the global political and economic leaders, can make the end of poverty a reality. However, GCAP is in danger of becoming just another cool thing for the middle class symbolized by the very cool-looking white band unless and until we get the lower classes and the people affected on a day to day basis by poverty involved. The poor people, do, after all, constitute the majority of the world’s population.
 
It is true that coalitions in countries such as Bangladesh and Kenya have managed to take the MDGs to the people but much more needs to be done globally. Again to give comparison to the Anti-Apartheid Movement, being an anti-apartheid activist at that time meant death, jail time, or constant watch by the Special Branch and therefore a sacrifice of one’s self or freedom if one was in South Africa. To those that were elsewhere it meant being in constant danger of receiving a parcel bomb and boycotting the very tasteful South African wine (and other South African goods)  in order to bring the South African economy to heel. It was the combined actions in South Africa and abroad together that managed to bring about the end of apartheid. Somehow I do not see the same sacrifices being made by GCAP activists and yet I feel that, if GCAP is to be successful and to continue, we need to do the same. It is true that many of us have participated in marches globally but when one marches and places their feet in a  foot spa at the end of the march, they cannot really relate to a woman who has to walk ten miles back and forth to fetch water daily and feed her family. 
 
Granted we live in a different world than the one that existed two decades ago yet it seems that much more was done then and more needs to be done now. We need to sensitise ourselves to poverty through working with the poor and thereafter we can better appreciate this very noble cause that we claim to be working for. For instance my comrades in the north can volunteer an hour at the soup kitchens or be a mentor to some child in a children’s home while we in the south can take time to volunteer with the ground organisations in the tents of Manila, the favelas of Sao Paolo, or the mkhukhus of South Africa. That way, when we tell Bretton Woods institutes to cancel the debt, when we tell them that 1.2 billion people are living on less than a dollar a day, we will be saying it with conviction because we would have walked the talk. An additional bonus is that we will no longer be talking for the poor people. They will be able to talk for themselves when they have been politicized to their poverty. As it is, while we sleep in five-star hotels and ask for an increase in aid on their behalf – they have absolutely no idea what the MDGs are and probably could not care because nobody has cared to communicate with them and show them their importance to the cause.
 
It is up to us, we who are living in these times to become that great generation that is revolutionary enough to ensure that the Global Call to Action against Poverty becomes, “an idea that will live." Together, across the economic barriers, we can!