ONE, Global Citizen partner against extreme poverty
HAVING established itself as the largest sports media property in Asia, ONE Championship furthers its game, joining forces with international advocacy organization Global Citizen in the latter’s mission to end extreme poverty across the world in 10 years or so.
Officially unveiled during the press conference for ONE’s latest Manila live event — “Global Superheroes” — on Monday at the City of Dreams Manila, officials of both ONE and Global Citizen hailed the newly forged partnership, underscoring the commonalities they have as organizations and harnessing their core strengths for a noble and needed cause.
For ONE Chairman and CEO Chatri Sityodtong, the tie-up with Global Citizen was a natural progression, seeing themselves as more than just a mixed martial arts organization.
Part of their thrust in ONE, he said, is celebrating martial arts in its truest sense anchored on the six values of integrity, honor, courage, humility, respect and discipline, while creating “heroes” from their roster of athletes to be of inspiration to a greater number of people and an agent for positive change.
“It is with great excitement that I announce ONE Championship’s partnership with Global Citizen, a nongovernment organization with the goal of ending extreme poverty across the world by the year 2030. Just like Global Citizen, ONE Championship aims to inspire the people of the world to come together to solve some of the world’s biggest challenges. Our athletes embody the spirit of perseverance and many have risen through poverty by way of martial arts,” said Mr. Sityodtong, who was joined in the launch by ONE champions and stars and Global Citizen ambassadors Brandon Vera, Angela Lee and Eduard Folayang.
On the part of Global Citizen, which is headquartered in New York, the recently inked pact to fight poverty with ONE could not have come at a better time.
Noting the extensive reach of the MMA promotion both here in Asia and beyond, it is a great opportunity for Global Citizen to take their cause to more people.
“ONE Championship reaches millions of young people around the region and together we will engage them on issues that impact the entire world. Since we launched Global Citizen in 2012, over 13 million actions have been taken, and we are excited to drive more actions and increase our impact for the world’s most marginalized people through this partnership,” said Global Citizen cofounder Wei Soo, who also graced the partnership launch.
He went on to say that actions taken were in various forms, including e- mails, tweets, petition signatures and phone calls, and all geared towards creating awareness and measures to fight poverty globally.
As part of their partnership initially, Global Citizen and ONE are to collaborate across 24 live ONE events scheduled in 2018, including four here in Manila, and various outreach activations across Asia.
Through these activities, proponents said fans will get the chance to do their part in specific policy areas like education, food security, hunger and nutrition, global health, gender equality and empowerment.
ONE Championship’s Global Superheroes happens on Friday, Jan. 26, at the Mall of Asia Arena which will feature the rematch between flyweights Geje “Gravity” Eustaquio of the Philippines and former champion Kairat Akhmetov of Kazakhstan. —