Canadian PM Justin Trudeau??? is a call away. Former Australian PM Julia Gillard and Rihanna??? went with him to Malawi to highlight the need to educate young women in a political pop philanthropy menage a trois.
Kevin Rudd, another former PM, was his mentor, and the Bondi Hipster Nick Boshier??? is his mate.
Let's not even get into how 34-year-old Australian Hugh Evans also got Beyonce???, Pearl Jam, Ed Sheeran and Michelle Obama on stage at New York city's annual "do-good" celebration of music in 2015.
These stars and politicians are Evans' allies in the Global Citizen army marching to end extreme world poverty - the estimated 702 million people who survive on less than $2.50 per day.
The army is already 8.6 million strong, and his aim is to recruit 100 million members whose voices can't be ignored by governments and international organisations.
Evans - a former young Australian of the Year - says Global Citizen has "gamified" philanthropy by merging pop music culture with public policy.
It rewards every action, each tweet, and every signature on a petition demanding an end to extreme global poverty with points that may earn a ticket to see an artist like Justin Bieber??? perform.
Over lunch at Bill's restaurant in Sydney's Surry Hills, his enthusiasm encourages me to join up although as a baby boomer I am far removed from his target audience of millennials. Within minutes I had earned four points:
- One for joining - yay!
- Another for calling on Canadian PM Trudeau and his Australian counterpart Malcolm Turnbull to pledge more funds to end polio "once and for all". Although polio - one of Global Poverty's earliest campaigns - now exists in only three countries, the Australian government is expected to cut spending to $3 million in the budget as part of cuts to foreign aid.
- Two for sharing a story about a Ghanian woman called Bechibela who goes from house to house with sachets of water sanitiser that transform dirty water to clean.
"You can use these points to redeem awards at every show in the Earth," Evans says.
Taking action was addictive - driving me to the next level, and tempting me to call President Trump (five points because it is so difficult) to protest his planned cuts in foreign aid.
Critics claim this kind of ''clicktivism" doesn't result in real change or engagement, something which Evans disputes.
Global Citizen isn't only about isolated actions, he says. "We run campaigns driving actions year round, all around the world - in-person, letter writing, phone calls to elected officials. The Festival and the power of music is an entry point for some but our data shows that an overwhelming percentage of our members stay engaged all year round."
A display of the organisation's real-time map lights up with red dots as members take action. "At any moment there will be a global citizen taking action, so if we direct that funnel, it can be intensely powerful," he says.
Membership is strong in the USA, Canada and Germany, but Australia's lights are dim with only 60,000 members. That's partly why he was in Australia, where Global Citizen was founded.
He was also visiting Canberra the next day to see Opposition Leader Bill Shorten and Foreign Minister Julie Bishop to lobby to lift foreign aid from its current eight-year low - and we talk too of whether he could roll down the grass on top of Parliament House.
Evans' approach to philanthropy owes little to old-fashioned fundraising or charity, other than Proverbs' promise in the Old Testament that givers will be rewarded.
It's a secular organisation, although Evans describes himself as a "man of faith" with a "calling" to end poverty and inequity.
"I wouldn't say we are a traditional charity at all," he says. Although Global Citizen is a non-profit, it is run like a tech company, with a board that includes the former editor of the Huffington Post, Arianna Huffington, and the CEO of Ted talks Chris Anderson.
The concerts are staged to create a noise that policy makers cannot avoid - the next big one is in Germany on July 6 ahead of the G20 while the annual NYC festival is on September 23, coinciding with the United Nation's 72nd general assembly.
Chief marketing officer Richard Wolffe??? is also attracting potential citizens to the site with content similar to Vox or Buzzfeed to highlight each of its key causes.
It's working. Last year Justin Trudeau asked Global Citizen for help raising funds to fight HIV and AIDS. "I put (Trudeau) on the phone with (the band) Usher & the Roots, who agreed to perform for free," Evans recalls.
Then Trudeau suggested that anyone who supported him should call the Canadian parliament. Pop singer Rihanna urged her "army" of Twitter followers to call the Canadian PM.
"They had to hire a new switchboard to answer the phone calls," he says. "All of a sudden, 30,000 global citizens mobilised in Canada on this issue, which meant (Trudeau) was able to secure $12.9 billion from other heads of state before the general assembly."
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Evans arrives for lunch in looking well-pressed, handsome and everything good and sparkly about being 34.
He started impressing people at 12, and hasn't stopped. His entry in the syllabus on civics and citizenry starts: "Hugh Evans is a young man who devotes himself to improving the lives of the underprivileged."
He described himself as a "why" kid, always asking why things happened.
"I thought I could change the world, and it was impossible to convince me otherwise."
As a year 7 student, his team at Melbourne's Carey Baptist Grammar raised one of the largest sums ever for the 40-Hour Famine.
Soon afterwards he visited the Philippines, where he spent a life-changing night in Manila's slums:
"That night with Sonny Boy and his family changed my life forever, because when it came time to go to sleep, we simply laid down on this concrete slab the size of half my bedroom with myself, Sonny Boy, and the rest of his family, seven of us in this long line, with the smell of rubbish all around us and cockroaches crawling all around.
"And I didn't sleep a wink, but I lay awake thinking to myself, 'Why should anyone have to live like this when I have so much?'"
Around the same time, his home life was turned upside down. His parents split and his mother married his best friend's father. The friend killed himself in a very public way a few years later. It's something he rarely discusses because his parents are "lovely" and he loved his stepfather, who died last year; he doesn't want to hurt any feelings.
"It was a rough time," he says, but it was then he found his faith and a sense of wonder.
"I was genuinely passionate about creating a better world. After I went to the Philippines, that was (when I decided that's what I) should focus my life. I am religious. To the extent that there are callings, it probably is."
His heroes are Nelson Mandela and the abolitionist Wilbur Wilberforce.
In his teens and early 20s, Evans and Nicolas Mackay founded the Oak Tree Foundation for young people who wanted to end global poverty. He went on to co-chair the Make Poverty History project that culminated in concerts in Melbourne and the Sydney Opera House.
PM Rudd appeared during the concert and pledged to double the aid budget from 0.28 per cent rate to 0.5 per cent in his first term.
It was the culmination of a beautiful friendship: Rudd described Evans as one of the most outstanding Australians of his generation. The feeling appears to be mutual: In his late teens, Evans asked Rudd to mentor him. Rudd recalled in a speech that when he met young Evans: "He didn't just want to talk about the weather, or show me his new medal as Young Australian of the Year. Instead, Hugh wanted to talk about poverty. He wanted to talk about injustice. And, most impressive of all, Hugh didn't just want to talk about it, he wanted to explain to me how he was going to fix all of this."
Earlier this year, Evans went with Gillard - who is chair of Global Citizen's partner Global Partnership for Education - and Rihanna to Malawi to highlight the need to educate young girls. It was pop meets policy. Gillard said she felt the power of globalisation as the girls in a Malawi secondary school recognised Rihanna and began to "scream and squeal with excitement because she was with them".
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It is about this time that we eat, and the talk of poverty curbs decadence.
He has a burger with cheddar that he demolishes, and some English breakfast tea. I have a brown rice and tuna poke, something that looks like it is designed for an ascetic yoga retreat or two people discussing poverty.
Evans says traditional non-profits cannot raise the funds or make the changes needed to eradicate global poverty:
"Extreme poverty is at least a $260 billion challenge: Traditional philanthropy ... equates to less than $60 billion per annum and ODA (overseas development and aid) is about $100 billion annually, so you are at least $100 billion short."
"When I talk about extreme poverty I am talking about food, education for girls (getting 120 million children into school).
"I am talking about water and sanitation: the fact that 60 per cent of people in India defecate in the open and still struggle with access to basic latrines and clean drinking water.
"I am talking about health care and immunisation to keep children alive beyond the age of five years old. I am talking about malaria, diphtheria, pertussis ... all of the killers of kids under five - and gender equality and the empowerment of women."
The lesson he learned from the Make Poverty History campaign was that his movement had to make structural change.
Yes, they got Bono???, the Edge and Pearl Jam to perform.
Yes, the Australian government agreed to double investment into global health and development.
It felt like an enormous validation, he said in his Ted talk "What does it mean to be a citizen of the world".
"By rallying citizens together, we helped persuade our government to do the unthinkable, and act to fix a problem miles outside of our borders."
Yet it didn't last, and was to vulnerable to changes in government.
"If you want to eradicate extreme poverty and see it gone by 2030, the UN's global goals for Sustainable Development, the only way is financing for international developments.
"That's why our approach is: how many global citizens would you need in a particular market, say Australia or USA, before you have enough political salience that their collective actions can move the hand of government to create positive change?"
