At Number 10: Luca de Fraia. Luca is my friend who runs Action Aid in Italy and a stalwart of the Jubilee 2000 and Make Poverty History campaigns. Luca told me he was in a meeting with various government representatives and other campaign leaders at the UN when the government minister sitting next to him (whose identity and nationality will have to remain undisclosed) turned on him and said “you are a disgrace.

You have no credibility here whatsover.”  Evidently this minister thought our Luca was working for Silvio Berlucsconi’s government, best known around here for its miserable record of broken promises on aid to the poorest countries.  Hats off to poor Luca, who certainly took one for the team (and it wasn’t even his team).  And an honorary mention to that unnamed minister whose intentions, at least, were good.

At Number 9: Ian Wright. No, not the cheeky-chappie footballer-turned-TV-pundit — Ian Wright the New-York based artist.  Ian is the genius who created our installation that was on display in Grand Central station and was visited by Claire Danes and countless other big-hearted New Yorkers on Monday.

The artwork was made up of thumbprints from some of the three million people who have taken action worldwide as part of our EVERY ONE campaign.  I must admit to being slightly taken aback when I met Ian.  I had in my mind a particular idea of what a New York based artist would be like, and Ian certainly looked the part.  But when he opened his mouth to speak I realised that he in fact comes from London, and if I closed my eyes I could have been talking to — well, the cheeky-chappie footballer-turned-TV-pundit, I guess…

At Number 8: Dr Abhay Bang.  Dr Bang’s story of achieving a dramatic reduction in the deaths of children and mothers in his home district of Gadchiroli in rural India captivated audiences here all week.  It all comes down to trained and equipped health workers in every village.  It’s not rocket science, it’s common sense, and if we can do it there, we must do it everywhere.  Thank you Dr B — Save the Children was proud to bring you to New York and proud to be associated with you and your brilliant work.

At number 7, its a joint effort: First up,  Michael Klosson, the former US ambassador and now Save the Children’s policy chief in Washington DC.  Late on Wednesday afternoon, the team were in the office trying to agree on the thing that we could do the following day that would capture a bit of interest on the last day of the summit and help us get our message across.

We knew what we wanted to say — that the progress so far towards the Millennium Development Goals was too slow and that they needed to pick up the pace in the months ahead if they are to have a chance of reaching the goals and saving millions of women’s and children’s lives.  What could we give to the leaders, and to the media and others, that would help get this point across?

For a while we were stuck on sweatbands — but they were too expensive, and just didn’t feel right.  Too Flashdance.  Then we thought about bottles of water or Powerade or something — but realised that trying to get large quantities of liquids past UN security might just set off the odd alarm.

And just as our enthusiasm began to wane, Michael — who had hitherto been apparently totally immersed in his laptop and some in-depth briefing on US government nutrition policy, looked up over his spectacles and said only two words: “Energy bars.”  Genius.  The team swung into action and within a few hours, 500 Hersheys bars had been suitably re-designed and were being placed in the hands of the British Deputy Prime Minister and influential figures across the United Nations complex. Hooray for the policy guy — and for policy guys everywhere.  We love you all.

And joining him at number 7 – as a surprise entry really: the mysterious masked man who raced across New York City as dawn broke on Thursday.  Helping Save the Children get across that message that world leaders need to give themselves a burst of political energy, and armed only with the strange substance that is American chocolate, our tall, black-clad hero sprinted (OK, sort of shuffled quickly, with a slightly wobbly gait) past the city’s famous landmarks and delivered our specially-adapted high-energy bar right to the very heart of power.

It looked like something out of a movie.  So, we made one.  Sir, whoever you were, wherever you are now, we salute you.  And special thanks to the brilliant Liz “Orson Wells” Scarff, who made the film.

Right. I need to hurry up a bit.  At Number 6: Peter Singer.  The author of The Life You Can Save spoke on a Save the Children platform on Wednesday and moved hearts and minds with his passionate call for each of us to do what we can.  If you ever needed help getting over the doubts that get in the way of generosity to the world’s most vulnerable kids, watch his amazing video at www.thelifeyoucansave.com. It made me cry – and it doesn’t even have any pictures in it.

Into the top 5, and at 5 – it’s @mummytips, aka my video blog partner Sian To.  Sian and the British mummybloggers went to Bangladesh a couple of weeks ago and then she came here to tell her story.  Well done Sian for getting in front of just about everyone who mattered — and for making our videoblogging so much fun.  It wasn’t quite the One Show, more the No Show… but it was fun. Thanks Sian for joining our team.  And while I’m on it: the Save the Children team from many countries who made this week happen are all complete heroes, too often unsung.  So thank you (deep breath) Fiona, Margaret, Patrick, David, Hadiza, Francesco, Anna, Ben, Cicely, Tanya, Andrew, Wendy, Liz, Steve, Ceri, Sue, Tul, Tricia, Tara, Candace, Michael, Desmond, Gorel, and especially Rachel who did the late shifts back in London and missed all the chocolate.

At Number 4, a surprise entry – it’s Justin Bieber.  The pre-teen heart-throb pop star has been with me all week — although I left him in my hotel room most of the time.  It all began when I passed a street stall selling life-size autographed celebrity pictures on the first evening.  My nine-year-old daughter had told me that if I saw Justin Bieber I should get his autograph. I didn’t think twice — and I am now sitting in Departures at Newark airport with Justin, too large to fit in my case, staring plaintively across the terminal.  And yes, people are definitely staring back.

Getting serious now: Number 3 is Nthabiseng Tshabalala.  12-year-old Nthabiseng is a schoolgirl from Soweto and an ambassador for the 1GOAL Education for All campaign.  I met her when I was there during the World Cup.  She flew from South Africa to tell world leaders they have to do a lot more to give every child the chance to go to school like her.  She is brave, clever and funny and every time she spoke here, the room would get to its feet.  Nthabiseng, you’re a star.

At Number 2, credit where credit’s due: it’s UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. He didn’t have to do this.  He decided there should be a special UN session on the Millennium Development Goals and personally led a specific initiative on women’s and children’s health.  The result of that was a Global Strategy mapping out a direction for the next five years.

It isn’t perfect — some governments were pretty shocking in their failure to contribute - and the test of it is in how much actually gets delivered — but it is a whole lot better than nothing (which is what we would have got, if Mr Ban hadn’t been bothered).

And finally, at Number 1: there can only be one winner. Well, actually, there are three million winners.  Yes, it’s YOU – and all the rest of the 3,029,659 who’ve taken action in more than 50 countries for the EVERY ONE campaign to save children’s lives.  People have marched, run, knitted, donated, petitioned, thumbprinted, shouted, danced, all to help the campaign achieve it’s goal — to get the world on track to achieving its promise to save 15 million lives by 2015.

Together we told leaders we wanted them to focus on that challenge at this summit and agree a strategy for meeting it.  They have come, focused, and produced a strategy.  Now there can be no excuse for failure.  We KNOW this goal is achievable — but we also know the hard work starts here.  Each one of those leaders who came here this week must now hear our voices loud and clear, and many more too.

Let’s make saving the lives of children and their mothers the world’s great shared mission of the next few years — bringing together governments, international institutions, organisations like Save the Children (we’ve made our own commitments to save many more lives, so hold us to that), faith groups, business, health professionals, celebrities, schools and individual citizens around the world. We had a tough job in New York this week, but we just about made it. And you know what they say in New York: if we can make it there… It’s up to you…

They must keep their promises when they discuss world poverty at the UN Millennium Goals Summit. Adrian Lovett and Sian To discuss why Save the Children are in New York pressing world leaders for change.

Not added yours yet? There is still time

Arriving at JFK I find America is changing.  Not only has Delaware suddenly become a hotbed of electoral turmoil, but now I find the little green immigration form you had to complete on arrival has gone.  Disappeared, with nothing in its place.  After 20 years of coming here and fretting about not getting each letter within the lines on the form, I feel like I’m in a different country.

However, some things don’t change – and if it’s New York and it’s mid-September, it must be UN time.  This year the UN has a special session on the Millennium Development Goals – the targets it set for overcoming poverty, hunger and disease by 2015.  On the plane I read a dozen briefings and reports about the MDGs and the prospects for their success.  I plough through the acronyms (the development world LOVES acronyms).  There is the Lufwanyama Integrated Newborn and Child Health Project In Zambia (that’s LINCHPIN – well, just about).  And the ONE campaign have developed their TRACK principles for good aid – that’s “Transparent, Results-oriented, clear about the degree of Additionality and Conditionality, and audited by an independent mechanism to ensure promises are (here comes the K) Kept”.

Everyone basically says the same thing: there has been some startling progress made towads some of the MDGs by some countries, but not nearly enough of them and we’re not currently on track.  The Center for Global Development points to examples of success like Ghana, which reduced the number of undernourished people from more than 1 in 3 to less than 1 in ten, in the space of 14 years.  Or Malawi, which cut the risk of a child dying before five years old from 1 in 5 to 1 in 10, in 18 years.

If the stories of success are so clear, why is the overall picture not brighter?  Principally because many of the biggest countries – India, Nigeria, DR Congo and so on – are not making the progress they need (in fact Nigeria is making no progress at all). Until the big ones move further and faster, we will never get there.

Still, this is not the time for a glass half-empty.  World leaders are arriving here in force tomorrow – more than 150 of them.  They could choose to develop a clear strategy for keeping their promises and saving childrens’ lives, and then implement it.  Or they could turn away.    Watch this space.

On Tuesday 6 July I got changed into my suit at a petrol station near the airport and headed straight into meetings with President Zuma’s office.  Tuesday 6 July

On Thursday I got the chance to go to Winnie Ngwekazi Primary School in Soweto and had a kickabout with Shaka Hislop, John Barnes and a group of 9-year-olds (this is work, honest). Thursday 8 July

On Sunday we finally got to the big education summit… here’s how it went: Final Day 

And if you want to see all of 12-year-old Nthabiseng Tshabalala’s challenge to world leaders at the summit, here it is: Nthabiseng’s speech

The campaign goes on, with lots to do before the UN Millennium Development Goals summit in September.  Keep up to date here.

In the studio, the presenters are all wearing 1GOAL t-shirts. It’s amazing. The SABC is Africa’s biggest broadcasting organisation and it has thrown its weight behind the campaign, asking its viewers to add their names in support. The other day I flicked through three SABC channels and 1GOAL was being featured on all of them at once.

Then we’re off to Soweto for one last visit to the Winnie Ngwekazi Primary School, which has been a hub for the campaign over the last six weeks. This time we’re meeting the British Development Secretary, Andrew Mitchell, who is here for a brief visit on his way to the summit. The arrangements for the summit have been (how do I put this…?) unpredictable, and it hasn’t been easy for leaders who were not already planning on being in South Africa to actually get here. Credit is due to him – he told us before the election he would take this campaign seriously and he has.

The 40 children in the school today have also put themselves out — it’s Sunday, and many have come straight from church. They give Andrew Mitchell a rendition of their 1GOAL poem (the only poem I know to include the line ‘1GOAL is an initiative’). He talks about how he was in a school back home in Birmingham a few days earlier where the children presented him with a giant football scarf made up of 1GOAL messages to the world’s leaders. From Selly Oak to Soweto, the message is the same.

Before I leave an older man shakes my hand and says knowingly, “Adrian Lovett!” Yes, I say, desperately trying to think where we might have met before. Turns out he is the husband of the school principal and he has just seen me on TV. “You,” he tells me in grand, Mandela-like tones, as if conferring on me a great honour, “have just been speaking to the entire nation!” He has made my day.

Then we’re in the minibus and off to Pretoria for the summit itself. Our extra special passenger is Nthabiseng Tshabalala, our 12-year-old ambassador from the school. We stop for McDonalds drive-thru and hit the motorway, the bus buzzing with the team making final arrangements, phoning ahead to our colleagues who are already there checking out the venue. One of them sends back a photo on his mobile of the top table with namecards already laid out and we have confirmation for the first time of some of the leaders who will be there.

Jacob Zuma, President of South Africa, of course. Mwai Kibaki, the President of Kenya. The Dutch Prime Minister. The German President. The Chair of the African Union. FIFA’s Sepp Blatter. The head of UNESCO. There is some relief on the bus that it wasn’t all a figment of our own imagination. We really do have a summit. Meanwhile, Nthabiseng sits quietly, looking out the window.

We arrive to see the welcome sight of our 1GOAL school bus and the huge 1GOAL white letters, which in the last 24 hours have been turned from white to yellow. Our team have plastered them with some of the thousands of yellow cards — our warning to world leaders — that have been sent in over the last few weeks. They look fantastic as they are placed on the side of the road just at the entrance gate to the President’s Guest House, where the summit is to take place.

I go into the grounds to do a live interview on Al Jazeera and then on into the building. Some participants have begun to arrive. Suddenly Desmond Tutu is there, and the goodness seems to fill the room so much it bursts through the windows. Nthabiseng knows who he is so we go over and say hello. I shake his hand and mumble something about being ‘such an inspiration’. He must hear that a hundred times a day. Then he smiles for the camera and Nthabiseng lights up too.

Nthabiseng and Desmond Tutu

As the main leaders arrive we notice a face among them whose name card was not on the table earlier, but it is now. It is Robert Mugabe, President of Zimbabwe. How did that happen?

Then we are underway. This is not quite a summit in the G8/UN sense, where leaders sit around a table facing each other and talk to one another. Here they are on a platform and each delivers a contribution to the audience. But some of the remarks are pretty substantial — they address the unequal access to education children have, depending on their gender, ethnic group and so on, the effect of the global financial crisis on education, the need for the UN summit in September and the G20 in November to address the issue.

South African football captain Aaron Mokoena gives a strong address on behalf of 1GOAL. He speaks really well. I am trying to do four things at once: listen and take notes, tweet updates, film the best bits on my flipcam and keep an eye on Nthabiseng. Toward the end, as the summit declaration they have all signed up to is being read out, one of Zuma’s aides goes over to her and asks her if she wants to read out the letter she has written to world leaders.

She hadn’t been expecting to speak and I am anxious to check she’s not feeling pressured, but she doesn’t hesitate. She walks up to the podium and delivers her speech, word perfect. My only contribution is to spot that she needs something to stand on so that she can be seen over the top of the lectern. I grab a flight case from the startled sound man at the back and thrust it on stage just in time. The rostrum of Prime Ministers and Presidents seem remarkably relaxed in the face of a guy coming at them at speed with a large metal box.

Nthabiseng making her speech

Minutes later, Nthabiseng and Aaron hand over the big yellow card, representing the 14 million people who have added their support to 1GOAL in recent weeks, and the summit is over. The declaration doesn’t say all we’d like it to, but it is a strong call to action for the international community, urging them to prioritise education in the coming months. We give it a cautious welcome.

As the leaders file out, the president of the Global Campaign for Education, Kailash Satyarthi, pulls off a coup. One member of our team calls it the greatest blag of all time. Kailash gets on the bus marked for Heads of State (he is a president after all) which is whisked off to the super-VIP zone at the World Cup Final. So Kailash has the following six hours or so with a captive audience of some of the most powerful politicians in Africa and beyond, engaging them in deep discussion about Education for All and how they plan to get every child into school. Amazing. And happily (at least until the 116th minute) no entertaining football to distract them either.

On the subject of which… perhaps it was inevitable that after 64 games, 32 teams, penalty dramas, seven-goal wipeouts, African heartache, goal-line controversy… that in the end, thanks to Andres Iniesta, the 2010 World Cup really was won by… 1GOAL. Thank you South Africa. Maybe the football fell a little short, but the welcome and the spirit could not have been better… and maybe the legacy really will change the world. (And I’m not talking about goal-line technology).

300 miles away the scene was similar in London’s Hyde Park. There the biggest of the Live 8 concerts was about to take place, scheduled to have maximum impact on the G8. Bands were sound checking, catering trucks rolled into place.

Nearby in Whitehall, the G8 leaders’ senior negotiators — the sherpas — were locked in a final meeting trying to reach agreement on a draft communiqué for the leaders to consider at the summit itself. By all accounts, the room was hot and the atmosphere frequently bad-tempered. When the windows were thrown open to lower the temperature, the sounds of the Live 8 rehearsals drifted across the park. Those sherpas, used to quiet obscurity, were suddenly aware that the world was watching and waiting on them.

Back in Edinburgh, I chatted to the city council’s head of events. The council had been fantastic over the months of planning and had become quite proud that the Make Poverty History campaign’s big moment was happening on their patch. I asked him if he thought we would have more people in Edinburgh than Live 8 in London at the same time, where the turnout was already being predicted at 220,000. “Oh yes”, he said, “I think we can do a little better than that, don’t you?” (The Scottish authorities had become a little wound up by Bob Geldof in the preceding weeks and I felt this was a matter of Scots honour).

Five hours later, I was stood on stage in the Meadows looking at a sea of colour and humanity. The clouds had gone and the people had come. I was handed a note with the official police estimate of the attendance and I proudly yelled it out: “as many as a quarter of a million” people. (Subtext: Edinburgh 1. London 0.)

The rest of the afternoon is pretty hazy in my memory. I introduced the live link up to London — the first and only time I am likely to have the chance to stand on stage and say “let’s welcome U2 and Paul McCartney”… All of the angst between Live 8 and Make Poverty History was forgotten as Bono tore into Beautiful Day and Edinburgh danced and sang just like they did in London. I ran into old friends. I talked to journalists. I saw politicians of all parties with their families, marching along with everyone else. I heard Billy Bragg sing Redemption Song with a choir of thousands. And towards the end, when the crowd were fading a little with the sun, I went back on stage and tried to warm them up again. I think I said something like: “Whatever those leaders decide this week, however they choose to respond to the biggest demonstration against global poverty the world has ever seen, whatever you do in your life after today, wherever you go, you will always, always, be able to say three words: I… WAS…” and before I could say it, tens of thousands of voices got there before me and the noise rolled back like a tidal wave: “THERE!” My God, I thought.

The next few days were full of media interviews and stunts, last-minute lobbying of G8 delegations, meetings with campaign partners as we waited for the leaders themselves to arrive. On Wednesday they did, one helicopter after another descending on the Gleneagles Hotel. Early on Thursday morning, 7 July, as the serious talks were due to begin, I drove with colleagues to Gleneagles, picked up my accreditation and walked into the official media centre. The endless banks of desks and phones were a familiar sight from previous G8s, as were the TV monitors positioned at intervals around the room.

But the monitors were not showing the usual summit fare: the pooled footage of leaders arriving, shaking hands, assembling for the group photo and so on. The screens had been switched to rolling news channels and the pictures were of shocked and injured people emerging from tube stations, ambulances, a mangled London bus… I suddenly realised the Gleneagles media centre was silent, and lifeless. It was like every breath of air had been sucked out of that summit in an instant and the world’s attention was instead focused on the work of four suicide bombers and the dozens of lives they claimed in London that morning.

Like everyone else I was horrified. Like many others, I was worried about those closest to me — I knew my wife had been due to take a class of schoolchildren into London on the tube that morning. Thankfully I found out pretty quickly that they were fine — they’d managed to turn back when they heard the news.

And then I thought: what does this mean for the campaign? What are the chances that this awful act will destroy not only the lives of its victims beneath the streets of London, but also the prospects for an agreement that could save the lives of millions of people around the world? How easy will it be for these leaders to switch to an emergency agenda of anti-terrorism measures and for the months of negotiations and campaigning to be worth nothing?

Remarkably, they did not. Tony Blair flew to London to deal with the attacks, and then flew back again. By the end of the day the G8 signed an accord that promised an extra $50 billion in aid for the poorest countries and committed leaders to most of the other recommendations of the Commission for Africa which had reported a few weeks earlier. (Have they delivered it all? That’s another story.)

The next day, the summit came to an end and it was time for campaigners to issue their verdict. This was the moment, late afternoon on Friday 8 July, that I had feared right from the start of the year might be the time when Make Poverty History’s broad coalition would fracture. Keeping everyone on board had never been easy and was always going to be hardest in the hours after an agreement by the G8, under the gaze of a media with the instinct to look for division and highlight it.

I chaired the press conference where campaigners gave their responses to the G8. Kumi Naidoo spoke for the Global Call to Action Against Poverty and said “The people have roared: the G8 have whispered”. NO! Too hard. I turned it over to Bob Geldof who said: “Ten out of ten on debt… Eight out of ten on aid…” NO! Too soft. It was left to Kirsty McNeill of the UK Make Poverty History coalition to get the balance right, and for Bono to add the poetry, talking about the mountain that has just been climbed, only to reveal the higher peaks ahead. It held most of us together, just.

That night, back in Edinburgh, there was exhaustion but weary satisfaction that over the previous week, we had done our best. I joined a few of those involved in the Live 8 side of things for dinner, and then went to find my Make Poverty History coalition friends for a drink. I felt at home in both crowds and was sad that it was only me that was making the journey between the two that night. If the biggest mobilisation against global poverty was two big circles in a great Venn diagram, it was sometimes lonely being part of the little intersection in the middle.

Read more of Adrian’s blogs on the G8

“At first, I was disappointed.  I was on a national TV show when the ‘Muskoka Initiative’ announcement came – the G8 countries would be giving $5 billion for maternal and child health, and other countries and foundations would be giving $2.3 billion more – and it was hard, I suspect, not to let my disappointment show.

Now, you’d think I should be pleased at hearing this, but at first I wasn’t.  Canada had made a serious investment in maternal and child health, but it looked like the other governments were not going to follow.  We had been hoping that G8 governments would commit something in range of $10 to $15 billion for the world’s poorest mothers and children – and I had thought there was a good chance we would hit that target.  Maybe I had made the mistake of believing our own press releases.

But I do believe our press releases.  I believe that a serious and substantial investment in child and maternal health would save lives, and start a virtuous circle of family health that would help local economies and spare families from the heartbreak of dying children.

We know that a simple basket of medical care can help.  A birthing kit, soap, vitamin and nutritional supplements – these are lifesaving tools when placed in the hands of a local, trained community health worker.  Why couldn’t we get all the world leaders to commit all the money needed to make this summit a game-changer for the world’s poorest women and children?

On the day after the announcement I was on another TV panel.  When the host asked if the Muskoka Initiative was a failure one of the other panelists leapt in and said, “Of course not – how can we say it is a failure when there is $7 billion new dollars for child and maternal health!”

That made me think again – because something special has happened at this summit.  Six months ago, no one in power was talking about maternal and child health.  There is no way that national and international media would have been discussing how best to help children, or would have cared what Save the Children thought about the issue.  World leaders wouldn’t be talking about the issue, and then putting some money – not enough yet, but some – where their mouths were to do something about it.

Less than a year ago a group of Canadian NGOs came together to talk with government officials to try and put child and maternal health on our government’s G8 radar.  It was a long shot, we felt, but we had to try it.   Nobody was really talking about the issue then – and now billions of dollars have been committed to this cause.  I know it’s not enough.  I know we need to keep raising the issue, make sure the UN MDG Summit in September is a success, keep pressing with the G20 in South Korea next fall.

Two years ago nobody was talking about child and maternal health.  Two years ago most people thought that all those deaths were all but inevitable.  Now we know better.  People can no longer claim ignorance.  And our work – from the hungriest parts of the world to the corridors of power, and with concerned citizens around the world, has just begun.”

David Morley | President and CEO | Save the Children Canada

This morning I met a man who was 13 years old in 1976 and was one of those who faced the bullets with little more than dustbin lids that day. 

Here’s my vidblog for today about Chris Jiyane (and a last word on the vuvuzelas).

Sign up for 1GOAL: Education for all