Nearly 500 students attended the Global Poverty Project’s “1.4 Billion Reasons” presentation Tuesday to learn about what they can do to help end world poverty.

The presentation, held at the Natural History Building, was hosted by the UNICEF branch at the University and Cross-Cultural Solutions, a registered student organization.

GPP presenter Brittany Aubin began by discussing her experiences in the Peace Corps and how it taught her about problems people face around the world.

“I came here to raise awareness because, without awareness, there can be no action, and in our world today, we need more action,” Aubin said.

Aubin said the GPP defines extreme poverty as “people in the world who are living under $1.50 a day.” She said GPP’s challenge is to make the public aware of these conditions.

“We at GPP have a challenge called ‘Live Below the Line,’ where we challenge people to go five days living below $1.50 a day,” Aubin said. “Our presentation is called ‘1.4 Billion Reasons’ because 1.4 billion people live below $1.50 a day, and that is 1.4 billion reasons why we need to end world poverty.”

She said the goal of GPP is to bring the percentage of global poverty down to 0 percent. She added that GPP representatives believe that making people more aware of global poverty will help them achieve this goal.

Sagar Desai, co-president of CCS and senior in LAS, said GPP is touring around several universities in the U.S. to share this goal, as university students are one of its main focus group.

“I feel like when we look around campus and see people with iPhones, MacBooks, iPads, it’s hard for students to realize that not everyone in the world has what they have,” Desai said.

Guadalupe Garcia, senior in ACES, said she attended the event to learn how she could contribute to the cause.

“I came here to learn more about global poverty and see what resources I can use to help end poverty around the world,” Garcia said. “I believe global poverty is a big issue, and this presentation made me more aware (of) what I can do to help.”

Because UNICEF officials agree that this issue is prevalent for University students, Shivani Parekh, UNICEF secretary of the University’s branch and junior in Engineering, said they decided to bring the GPP presentation to the University after seeing it at a national UNICEF conference in Chicago last fall.

Desai said CCS also contacted GPP around the same time, so UNICEF and CCS decided to host the presentation together.

“We thought GPP would be good to bring to the campus because global poverty is a problem in our world, and I believe the presentation will make students become more aware and use the resources they have to help end poverty around the world,” he said.

Desai said CCS paid $500 to fund the presentation, while the University paid the remainder of the cost. Local businesses Panera Bread and Cravings also supported the event by donating food at the presentation.

Atoosa can be reached at [email protected].