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Hugh Jackman's New Life

Making a difference, Hugh Jackman, WORLD VISION

For more information or to donate visit worldvision.com.au/seesolutions

Growing up in Sydney’s northern suburbs, Hugh Jackman had a social conscience — he sponsored a child and, on the advice of his accountant father, Chris, gave part of his pocket money to charity. He even bent a rule so he could take part in World Vision’s 40 Hour Famine to raise money for impoverished children. Says Jackman on the phone from his home in New York after a day on the set of boxing movie Real Steel, "There was an age you could start, 10 or something, and I was like, 'I want to do it now,' because my brothers and sisters were doing it. So I did it from 8."

It is fitting, then, that the compassionate child who became one of the world’s most in-demand movie stars is now working as a World Vision Australia ambassador, a role documented in Seeds of Hope (4 PM, Sun., Sept. 19, on the Nine Network).

In the show, Jackman, 41, and his actress wife and fellow World Vision ambassador, Deborra-lee Furness, visit Ethiopia to see first-hand a program they devised with a friend, the organisation’s CEO, Tim Costello. SEE Solutions provides needy people with the resources to start their own business and become self-sufficient. Says Jackman: “There’s no greater collateral than giving someone the chance to escape that cycle of poverty. People want to give a hand up, not a handout.”

In July 2009, the Wolverine star helped a local from the African nation, Dukale, 27—his wife was expecting their fifth child—on his sustainable coffee farm. The enterprise uses cow manure to fuel the methane-gas stove with which World Vision has replaced the traditional wood fires that cause respiratory problems and contribute to deforestation.

“Dukale’s story is so inspiring,” says Jackman. “When you see how much he is doing for himself, his family, community and environment with so little, it was a wake-up call. Roughly 30 per cent of the food brought into homes is thrown out in America, and in Ethiopia they don’t waste a thing. From then on, Deb and I have been vigilantes about using things up.”

“You can’t go to a place like Ethiopia without it completely changing your perspective,” says Hugh Jackman (with local coffee farmer Dukale in July 2009), WORLD VISION



For more information or to donate visit worldvision.com.au/seesolutions

Their new way of life has Jackman taking up some unorthodox habits. “I’ve started eating the apple core,” he says with a laugh. “Mind you, I got that from my dad, who was born in the Depression. We used to joke that he preferred the mouldy, bruised fruit.” It also forced Jackman to confront the guilt he feels as a privileged Westerner. “Dukale’s carbon footprint is zero, and I have a lot more opportunities to do things for the environment, yet I’m doing a much worse job. So Deb and
I looked at our house and we had someone come in and say, ‘If you do this and this, it can really change your carbon footprint.’"

And he had to face a much bigger challenge when he returned to New York: the opportunity to talk alongside former British PM Tony Blair and United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at Climate Week last September. “I was kind of terrified,” says Jackman, who in his student days enrolled to study economics and law, but graduated with a communications degree from Sydney’s University of Technology. “I was like, ‘Who am I? Why am I speaking?’ but I remembered my pledge to Dukale to encourage people to take note of what is going on in Ethiopia.”

The inspiration for SEE came during a trip to Cambodia in October 2008, when Jackman observed World Vision’s micro-financing, in which women were given loans to start their own silk-weaving businesses. “One lady got a loan of $500,” he says, “and had tears running down her cheeks because that was going to represent three meals a day for her family instead of one.”

Jackman and World Vision Australia CEO Tim Costello (in October 2008) met Cambodians benefitting from the organisation’s programs, including these women, who were given micro-loans to start silk weaving and farming businesses, WORLD VISION



For Jackman, adoption campaigner Furness is a perfect partner in compassion. “One time, I’d been doing night shoots in Vancouver and was very tired and Deb saw a homeless person, and I instinctively put my foot on the gas pedal because whenever we see someone homeless, Deb has to stop,” he says. “I was like, ‘I want to get a coffee.’ Three hours later, we went back and he’d moved and for an hour we drove around the streets, found him and Deb bought him a meal and all this stuff. She’s got a heart the size of Australia.”

Like their parents, Oscar, 10, and Ava, 5, have philanthropic natures: “When he was 4, Oscar would say, ‘I want to go to Africa, I want to take water, I’m going to build a garden for the kids in Africa,’ because he felt sorry that they didn’t have one. When we were in Cambodia we stopped at an orphanage; Oscar disappeared. We found him around the back digging holes and he said, “Remember, Dad? I told you I’m going to build a garden.’ He has it in spades.”

VIDEO: Hugh Jackman's Lipton Commercial