I spent last week at the Clinton Global Initiative and the UN General Assembly meetings in New York. There was much talking about issues of international development, about the rights of children to an education, about saving children dying from preventable things like pneumonia, about making sure that the world is free from hunger. But with all this talking maybe there was simply not enough of one thing – not enough shouting. We need louder voices to make changes on what really needs to be done for poor children and families around the world. Perhaps simply put, we need more people to care and speak out about the issues we talked about there.

Leaders from many countries, CEO’s from big companies, and NGO leaders like me converge on New York every September for these events. We have endless meetings on international development issues, we make commitments to change the world, we go to long dinners honoring those who have done good works around the world. But does the rest of the world pay much attention to what we discuss endlessly among ourselves? I don’t think so and perhaps the most important thing for me coming out of the week is the realization that it will take something different to make real change. It will take regular people caring about what the desperate reality is for poor people around the world and wanting to change it.

Making that happen is a much harder task than attending the whirlwind of CGI and UNGA week, as they are affectionately called. We need to interrupt people’s lives and get them to pay attention to how the poorest people on earth live their lives – lives without health, lives without education, lives without the basic dignity of a means to support themselves and their families. Most importantly, we need people to not only pay attention but to do something once they do.

One way Save the Children is trying to get people to take notice is to interrupt their normal lives in the places they spend them. You can now download a new song called “Feel Again” on I-Tunes and make a difference for children dying of preventable causes. You can sign a petition on-line to stop the atrocities happening to children in Syria. And you can donate to the famine in Sahel while you play on-line games. Will all this be enough to get people to really understand how different our lives are from the millions of poor people who survive every day on less than $2? I’m not sure but I do know that if I can’t get the world to pay more attention, we’ll never make the headway we need to for the millions of children who won’t survive and thrive unless things change.