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The Student News Site of University of Wisconsin-Madison

The Badger Herald

The Student News Site of University of Wisconsin-Madison

The Badger Herald

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UW System president pledges to fight poverty

A University of Wisconsin administrator has pledged a portion of his salary to poverty-fighting organizations after signing on with university faculty from around the country as part of a nation-wide administrator initiative. 

UW System President Kevin Reilly signed on to the Presidents’ Pledge Against Global Poverty, started by former president of Texas Lutheran University Rev. Ann Svennungsen. The initiative works to enlist the help of current and former university presidents, chancellors and presidents emeriti. 

The pledge requires participants to donate 5 percent or more of their salary to organizations fighting poverty on an international level. According to a statement from the organization, 28 higher education leaders have pledged their support. 

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Reilly was recruited for the initiative by Svennungsen and said he is happy his family has been lucky enough to be able to contribute. 

“[My grandparents] faced pretty extreme poverty, and I now have a family two or three generations beyond me,” Reilly said. “It’s knowing the contributions to those in poverty can make [someone] able to survive.” 

In the statement, Svennungsen said the initiative is just getting started. 

She added university presidents hold “a distinctive platform as moral leaders.” 

“Their commitment can help galvanize the collective will needed to address complex issues like extreme poverty. We look forward to growing momentum,” she said in the statement.

Svennungsen’s pledge letter said society now has the resources to end extreme world poverty for the first time in history. 

In his pledge letter to the initiative, Reilly said making the contribution to help fight extreme global poverty “is an extension of our role as educators.” Having adopted two of their three children from Columbia, Reilly said he and his wife were able to experience first-hand the effects extreme poverty has on people’s lives. 

According to Reilly, as part of their pledge, participants choose the organization or organizations to which their money is donated. He said he is currently working with his family to decide which organizations they will make contributions to.  

He added he has previously donated to Heifer International and Doctors Without Borders and plans to give pledge money to those organizations but will “expand it a little bit as well.” 

A statement released by the project organization said of the money donated to projects to fight poverty, half of the donation is guaranteed to be used in funding the chosen organization’s international anti-poverty initiatives. 

“[The goal is to] get their stomachs full and heads up off the ground long enough to see they have real potential,” Reilly said. “You do what you can and hope it has a positive effect for people.” 

According to the website for the pledge, the initiative is based on the Millennium Developmental Goals of the United Nations. 

The project’s objective is to cut the level of extreme global poverty in half by 2015.
In Svennungsen’s pledge letter, she said this goal cannot be met without “courageous and sacrificial leaders.” 

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