A GOOD NIGHT FOR AN EVENING

It was without a doubt a very smooth landing for Oxfam Canada’s Music4Change charity nightclub event, recently held at Ottawa’s Mercury Lounge. An import inspired by Oxfam GB’s Music4Life series, the occasion successfully raised awareness and funds for campaigns against poverty and in support of trade justice and debt elimination.
Organizers were thrilled to discover the lineup outside the entrance and the ensuing standing room only crowd that elbowed their way into the venue for a chance to celebrate Oxfam’s development and relief work while simultaneously expanding their knowledge about the germane issues still challenging modern advocates.
In league with the Make Poverty History campaign, Oxfam Canada has been laboring intensively for dramatic change to positively affect the world’s poor in 2005, what may yet prove to be the banner year in which a seismic shift in governmental policies finally produced the positive results necessary to defeat destitution, crippling debt service, unfair trade rules and child poverty in Canada. The UK version of MPH also seeks to tackle the ongoing pandemic of HIV/AIDS.
With a certain prosperity now accomplished and credibility established, Music4Change organizers hope to continue merging fun with focus and keep the ball rolling for future events soon. Its legitimacy earned, the most immediate challenge facing Oxfam Canada’s all-volunteer Special Events Committee is the daunting prospect of outdoing previous achievements and raising the bar to attract ever increasing numbers of activists and proponents of social change willing to become involved in humanitarian and aid work at any and all levels.
The world is hungry for dramatic action, not warm words. Overcoming the unnatural phenomenon of poverty is not a gesture of charity, rather an urgent act of ethical justice.
Oxfam’s popular campaigning, alliance building and media work are designed to raise public awareness of the real solutions to global poverty, to enable and motivate people to play a proactive role in the movement for change, and to foster a sense of global citizenship. Oxfam Canada works largely in the area of development, education, public awareness, advocacy and in creating a growing constituency of active supporters for our various initiatives. Oxfam Canada carries out a number of campaigns that disseminate information about issues such as basic human rights, food security and fair trade. We ask the public to get involved through special events, fundraising, petition signing, and education programs.
An unprecedented movement of passion, energy and solidarity, Make Poverty History is part of The Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP), a worldwide alliance mobilizing 150 million people in 72 countries committed to making world leaders live up to their crucial promises, and to making a breakthrough on poverty in 2005.

You can be part of this international coalition by wearing the universal symbol of a simple white band in 2005.

We need your voice to add to our worldwide chorus.

SPREAD THE WORD.