The UN appointed actor/director Antonio Banderas, star of films “Desperado”, “The Mask of Zorro”, and “Shrek, as a Goodwill Ambassador with a focus towards reducing world poverty on Thursday.
Banderas will be working to further the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) that the UN has developed to reduce the severity of poverty in third world nations.
“Poverty robs us of our potential as a people, preventing us from being all that we can be,” said Banderas at the UN Headquarters on Thursday.
The UN News Center at UN.org gave a full report detailing Banderas’s intended role with the UN.
The MDG project will center it’s efforts on unprivileged citizens in Africa and Latin America. The project was jump-started by a $700 million donation by Spain to push it forward.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon commented on the initiative in New York as well stating, “Despite hard economic times, despite lagging progress on many fronts, we can still achieve the Millennium Development Goals by our target date of 2015.”
MDG includes eight specific targets set forth and agreed upon by UN members around the world.
Tennis star Maria Sharapova will also be working on the project along with soccer star Zinedine Zidane.
