GRAMMAR COMMUNITYCOMMUNITY PROFILES
| Community Profiles
Daniel Adams (OM 2005) Makes Poverty History At only 18 years of age and with no previous experience, Daniel Adams organised Australia's inaugural Make Poverty History Concert at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl last November. As an added coup he arranged for U2's lead singer Bono and Eddy Vedder from Pearl Jam to perform. The day after finishing school Daniel decided he wanted to hold a Make Poverty History Concert in Melbourne, hoping for a couple of thousand people at Federation Square. He never dreamt 20,000 would participate in the concert at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl and live sites around Victoria, as well as the 20 million that watched via CNN and BBC worldwide. To organise the event Daniel started by cold calling every potential band, media partner and sponsor he could think of. After six months, with no acts or sponsors and on the verge of giving up, Australian band Evermore agreed to participate, creating the momentum for sponsors and other bands such as Jet, Eskimo Jo and Paul Kelly to come on board. Ironically he ended up having to turn bands away. "If you are passionate about something you find solutions to problems and you will get there. Whatever you do in life there will be problems, you have to be resilient enough to find a solution to every problem," said Daniel Adams demonstrating the determination that enabled him to put on this event. A trip staying with a local community in Papua New Guinea instilled a passion in Daniel to do something about poverty, but he didn't know what until Hugh Evans, the founder of the youth run aid and development agency Oaktree Foundation talked to students at Melbourne Grammar when Daniel was in Year 11. Meeting Hugh Evans made him realise, "I could do something; I didn't have to be a certain age or have a certain level of education before I could make a difference". Developing a golden staph infection in Samoa in January 2006 further enhanced his desire to support the Make Poverty History campaign when he realised that he would not have survived the infection had his financial circumstances been different. "For the first time in history, we actually have the financial capacity to end poverty, but we need a generation around the globe that will enact on it; we need to create a collective will to end poverty," he said For Daniel the highlights of the concert were 50,000 people signing up for the Make Poverty History campaign and talking to Bono in his dressing room about the campaign with fellow organiser Hugh Evans. Along with the song One being dedicated to the pair as official guests at U2's concert at Telstra Dome. Daniel is now in South Africa establishing an Oaktree Foundation initiative called the Schools for Schools program which involves linking schools in Australia with schools in the developing world. A pilot program is currently being setup in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Schools in Australia will support the work of the South African organisation GOLD (Generation of Leaders Discovered) which runs a peer to peer education program in issues of HIV AIDS, entrepreneurial skills and leadership, through fundraising, online interaction, partnership exchanges and workshops in Australian schools. After five months in South Africa Daniel intends to resume a degree in Aerospace Engineering at Monash University. "Often we set limitations for ourselves on what we can achieve, I am beginning to learn those limitations don't exist," said Daniel. If you would like to contact the Oaktree Foundation call 03 9889 5677 or to contact Daniel Adams email d.adams@theoaktree.org. |
 |
 
|
