Young and ready to change world

HUGH Evans is winging his way to Cambridge to take up a Chevening Scholarship-funded masters in international relations, but neither the venerable university, nor Melbourne's Monash, from which he has just graduated with first class honours in law, will be enough to hold him.

HUGH Evans is winging his way to Cambridge to take up a Chevening Scholarship-funded masters in international relations, but neither the venerable university, nor Melbourne's Monash, from which he has just graduated with first class honours in law, will be enough to hold him.

The world is his stage, and, one suspects, his oyster: a good thing for the poverty-stricken and enslaved people he champions.

"I think what I will find in my masters degree will have a very practical application to the rest of my work," Evans says. This is not hubris, at 25, this Victorian has already had vast experience in trying to change the world.

He is best known for founding the philanthropic Oaktree Foundation in 2003, staffed by 15,000 youth volunteers and supporters. It funds community projects in the developing world as well as undertaking advocacy. It has raised more than $3 million and has branches in every state and in Britain.

Because of this initiative Evans was selected as the Young Australian of the Year in 2004 and he made news again this year when he co-chaired the 2020 Youth Summit.

As may be expected of someone with a high work rate, there are numerous projects in the pipeline, such as a book he is co-editing, The Future By Us, a collection of essays by young leaders including climate change activist Anna Rose and indigenous education advocate Tim Goodwin.

But what he really wants to get his teeth into is the Global Poverty Project. Al Gore's climate change presentation, An Inconvenient Truth is the template. "I believe there is a story to be told about the economics of global poverty so I'm writing at the moment a presentation that really clearly and deeply communicates the challenges of extreme poverty in our world."

The project, which he estimates will take about 18 months to complete, will be launched at a UN high-level meeting in New York later this month.

Evans's two-year masters will include global trade. He is particularly interested in the World Trade Organisation's Doha round of talks, which failed in July, and the stalled Paris Club process in which central banks are supposed to forgive developing nations' debt.

Recently, he has decided he will ultimately opt for politics. "I actually do believe that politicians, if they are good and concerned, can create great change," he says. "I am inspired by William Wilberforce, who abolished the slave trade and I'm of the belief that global poverty is the modern-day equivalent of the slavery challenge.

"Think of the UN. The challenge of the UN is that it always comes down to sovereign states and how they interact with the global system. In the end you have to be representing a state to make the biggest impact, and create the agenda."

Evans has shown an early aptitude for agenda-setting and working on a number of fronts simultaneously. He will return to Australia regularly, including to co-host a documentary with Hugh Jackman, in which viewers' ideas for improving the world will be implemented.