The Global Citizens Festival in Central Park is a day dedicated to ending global poverty by raising awareness of different contributing issues, including women's empowerment, world hunger and climate change. In addition to an incredible group of headlining artists, Beyonce, Ed Sheeran, Coldplay and Pear Jam, so many influential figures spoke about what it means to be a global citizen and the changes we can make to end poverty in our global society. I had the awesome opportunity to attend the festival and am sharing some of the highlights that you need to know about!
1. Malala Yousafai’s Speech
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For me, the most moving part of the entire festival was hearing the incredible Malala Yousafai speak. For those of you who don’t know her, it’s about time you looked her up. At the age of 18, she is one of the most brave (she was shot by the Taliban for standing up for her right to an education), accomplished (she’s the youngest Nobel Prize Laureate and author of her autobiography, I Am Malala), and inspiring women on this Earth! At the festival she spoke in English, urging the crowd and television viewers to understand, “It is a book and a pen that can change the life of a child—it is not a gun. It was a gun that hit me on the left side of my forehead, it was a gun that hit my two friends, it was not a pen. But it was a pen that really helped us go forward in our lives.” This speech is incredibly relevant, especially in light of this week’s horrific and violent events.
2. Surprise Appearance From Michelle Obama
It’s an incredible feeling to be in the presence of the First Lady, and the Global Citizens Festival set up the crowd for an awesome surprise. Earlier in the festival, Michelle Obama was introduced and the crowd went wild, only to find out that there was a pre-recorded video of her speaking on the screen. However, later in the night, she was introduced again and came onto the stage to announce her new campaign, #62MillionGirls, which advocates for the right for all girls everywhere to have an education. It is an incredibly inspiring campaign, and you can check it out here! The First Lady also asked us all to take a selfie and share it with her, tagging the campaign in the photo. I’ll wait while you do that now…
3.Leonardo Dicaprio's Empowering Speech On Climate Change
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You can probably imagine my excitement when I walked onto the Great Lawn of Central Park and saw that Leo was at the podium giving an impassioned speech about climate change [*swoons*]. As an environmental activist and the United Nations “messenger for peace,” Leo stressed to the crowd, “Right now Europe is paralyzed trying to absorb the influx of over a million Syrian refugees. But more than a billion people, most of them in Asia, currently live in low-lying coastal regions. What will happen when they become sea-level refugees? We need to take the steps to address this all-too-human disaster together. We are running out of time.”
4. Beyonce and Ed Sheeran’s “Drunk In Love” Duet
We could have heard this cover all night! Nothing could have sounded sweeter than this acoustic version of “Drunk In Love” by Ed Sheeran and Queen Bey herself. This was just one of the unexpected mash-ups that occurred throughout the Festival. Earlier in the night Sting played with rapper, Common and Ariana Grande sang with Coldplay.
5. Coldplay Debuted New Song, “Amazing Day”
To many people’s dismay, Coldplay’s piano broke during rehearsal just before they were about to go on at the festival. As they were the first act, they had to revamp quickly and ended up taking a few piano-focused songs off their set. They totally made up for it by singing “Just A Little Bit of Your Heart” with Ariana Grande and releasing this beautiful new song. “Amazing Day” seems to be a great sampling of what their new album, tentatively called “A Head Full of Dreams” will include. Coldplay’s lead singer, Chris Martin, is also going to be the festival’s curator for the next 15 years; Global Citizen co-founder Ryan Gall explained to Rolling Stone that Martin “wants to sink his teeth into it and really do some meaningful work."
