Asian Journal- The Filipino-American Community Newspaper

MANILA - If nothing else, Filipinos are standing tall and proud in the fight to end destitution.

Topping even India and its billion population, the Philippines has earned the world record for the largest group of people ever mobilized to “Stand Up and Take Action” against poverty, the United Nations announced Wednesday.

The United Nations, through its resident coordinator Vanessa Tobin, said 35.2 million Filipinos, or more than a third of the 88.6 million population, took part in antipoverty activities on Oct. 17-19.

“We were surprised, pleasantly surprised. Our target was only 15 million people,” Dulce Marie Saret, advocacy specialist on the National Millennium Development Goals Campaign, said in a news conference at Club Filipino in San Juan City.

“No other country can come close to the Philippines as far as mobilizing the largest number of participants is concerned,” Minar Pimple, UN Millennium Campaign deputy director for Asia, said in a statement.

Verified by Guinness

The Philippines’ total stood at 35,264,652, according to SGV & Co., the country’s largest auditing firm, which tabulated for two days all local antipoverty events registered by participating groups and individuals.

The figure was verified and officially confirmed by Guinness World Records.

India, the planet’s second most populous state next to China, was the runner-up with about 17 million people joining the program, Saret said.

On Tuesday night, Guinness also announced from its London headquarters a new record of 116,993,629 participants in the “Stand Up” campaign all over the planet, far exceeding last year’s global count of 43 million.

In a press statement, Salil Shetty, director of the UN Millennium Campaign, said people around the globe had assembled in numbers too large to ignore, demanding that world leaders deliver on the promises they made in the year 2000 to stamp out extreme poverty and achieve the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.