ActionAid at Reading Festival

For the sixth year running Actionaid will be turning up at Reading Festival, which takes place at Richfield Avenue, Reading from Friday 24th to Sunday 26th August.

The charity organisation will be inviting festival goers down to their 'Bollocks to Poverty on Tour’ tent, and encouraging them to sign up to the HungerFREE campaign. The tent will also be playing host to ‘disco shed’ creators DJs Peepshow Paddy and Count Skylarkin as well as resident Reading DJ, Del Gazebo.

It will offer a place for revellers to chill-out from 3pm to 3am, Thursday to Sunday. During the day they'll be able to enjoy comfy sofas, giant jenga and connect four, fussball and ping pong. In the evenings they can get on down on the grass dance floor to the musical delights of the disco shed.

ActionAid’s ‘Bollocks to Poverty’ crew are hoping that these gigs will entice revellers to their tent to join thousands of music fans around the world to demand justice for the 850 million people that go hungry every day.

In 2000 the world’s governments made a commitment to halve hunger by 2015 as part of the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals. Yet halfway towards this intended date the number of people living in hunger is actually increasing. 24 people die from hunger every minute despite there being enough food to feed everyone on the planet twice over.

At ActionAid’s tent punters can sign a campaign plate, take a snap of themselves with it and send a photo message to the United Nations, demanding action on hunger.

ActionAid will dish out the plates to world leaders when they meet at the next UN General Assembly in New York in September.

Festival goers across the world will be targeted at venues ranging from folk-rock concerts in Kathamdu to reggae gigs in Nairobi.

Anella Wickenden, ActionAid’s Youth Campaigns Manager said: “When a person gets to the point of having nothing to eat, it is because everything else has been denied – access to land, jobs, living wages and their human rights.

“But by joining thousands of people around the world festival goers can make a noise about the scandal of global poverty and hunger and demand change through their passion for music.

“The crowds at Reading festival have always been hugely supportive of Bollocks to Poverty On Tour in the past and with the amazing disco shed I’m sure this year will be no exception!”

Visit actionaidspace.org for more information.

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