CHEVY:

One sixth of the world lives under the weight of crushing poverty, subsisting on less than a dollar per day. Trying to not just survive the present but also plan for an uncertain, unfriendly future. That’s 1.2 billion people, on less than a dollar a day. Sound daunting? Sound like such a big, imposing number that you don’t even know where to begin? It should.

One. Point. Two. Billion. People. Just to put that in perspective, there are 300 million people, total, in America. So that’s the entire population of America, times four, who live on less than a dollar a day. And I wish that weren’t the case. I know you all wish that weren’t case. Everyone in the world wishes that weren’t the case. And yet somehow, despite all our wishing, the crisis gets worse, not better. Which means one of two things:

One: We’re just not wishing hard enough. Maybe if we all really wished, I mean really concentrated on how sorry we felt and how sad the situation was, maybe that would work. Maybe if we just felt guilty enough, something would happen.

Or. Two: Maybe it’s time to do something besides wishing. Like what? Anything. But what can we do that will really help? Anything. Like what? Give up my job, uproot my family and go build houses in the Sudan? Sure! That’d be great. But also, how about: Sponsor a tree planting in Niger? Educate yourself about water conservation? Donate a dollar. A dollar? Yeah. A single dollar. Do something. Do anything. But do it.

Anything. You don’t need to solve world hunger in a day. The difference between food and starvation, between medicine and sickness, between nailing shut the twin doors of ignorance and poverty, or forcing them open just enough to let in the cleansing light of education and opportunity– is the difference between action and wishing. 

Because those are really our two choices: Do something, or wish harder and hope someone else comes along and fixes the problem. And I’m not saying stop hoping. I’m saying that we’ve been wishing for a long time and it doesn’t seem to be working on its own. So it’s time to try something else. What? Something. Anything. 

The real enemy is that we doubt our own power. We think that the problem is so imposing that it would take a lifetime of dedication to make an impact. 

If I can get one message through to you tonight it’s this: The simplest thing you do is infinitely more helpful than the most amazing, brilliant thing you almost do. The half hour you spend today does immeasurably more good than the full week you’re going to spend once you just figure out how to carve out the time.

Let me put it another way. Let’s say you were selling, I don’t know, CutCo knives. Now everyone knows that CutCo makes far-and-away the best American-made knives on the market, and that even at $350 for the full set – which is a bargain, ask anyone who knows knives, these things are worth twice that –the hardest thing about selling CutCo knives is knowing that there are so many Americans to whom you can’t sell these knives. You just don’t have enough time to go to every single American’s house and hip them to the opportunity to buy these – they’re not even utensils, they’re works of art.

[MATT WALSH INTERRUPTS]

WALSH: Hey Chevy? This is about ending world hunger. You promised you weren’t going to try and sell your stupid knives.

CHEVY: Relax. I know what I’m doing. 

WALSH: Because you specifically asked if you could use this event to sell knives and we specifically said no.

CHEVY: I’m going somewhere with this, I promise.

[WALSH GRUDGINGLY SITS DOWN]

CHEVY (CONT): Anyway, there are 300 million people in America. And most of them have dull, terrible steak knives that make cooking a chore, do nothing but frustrate them and make them resent their families. Now, full disclosure—and this is what I think Matt was reacting to—my main charity is in fact as a distributor for CutCo Knives. It’s not really a charity per se, but it’s like a charity in that a lot of people work for me and I’m really improving people’s lives. One of the orphans I take care of—I don’t know if you know this, but I take care of… employ, I guess is the word…a lot of orphans—asked me the other day, his eyes full of concern, “How you do stay hopeful, Señor Chase, when even though these incredible knives are made with high-carbon stainless steel—the same materials doctors use in the emergency room, because it is antibacterial on a molecular level...”

[HORATIO SANS INTERRUPTS]

HORATIO: Come on, man.

[A SCRAGGLY ORPHAN STANDS UP AND ADDRESSES HORATIO]

ORPHAN: No, is true. These knives are amazing. Señor Chase is a good man.

[HORATIO, DUBIOUS, SITS BACK DOWN]

CHEVY: Anyway, so this orphan, Hektor, says: “There are hundreds of millions of Americans who don’t have good knives, who never will. Whole generations bludgeoning their steaks and carving their jack-o-lanterns by punching them with their fists. How can one man, even a great man, make a difference?”

I know what you’re thinking: “What an idiot that kid is! It’s obvious how you make a difference. I mean, these are CutCo knives we’re talking about here.” Because you know that with CutCo Knives, you’re not just getting clients, you’re getting associates. The people who buy knives from you turn around and sell other knives to other people, funneling up a share of the profit in a sort of reverse pyramid.

[WALSH AND HORATIO HAVE HAD ENOUGH, AND START MOVING TOWARDS THE PODIUM TO REMOVE HIM] 

CHEVY (CONT): …which is the same principle behind The Action Center to End World Hunger. The Action Center is predicated on the idea that people are the best agents of their own resurgence, recovery and development. Mercy Corps is about working with communities, not just for communities, to help them—as Gandhi said—be the change that they envision. That we all envision. In other words, we’re not just giving people metaphorical knives to slice through the tin can of hunger. We’re empowering them to sell their own knives. Their own anti-hunger, anti-poverty knives.

[WALSH AND HORATIO, MOLLIFIED BUT STILL SUSPICIOUS, SIT BACK DOWN]

CHEVY (CONT): Again, the hard part is figuring out what to do since the problem is so vast that anything you might do sounds trivial. None of it is. And the Action Center To End World Hunger was designed to help you break through that wall of inaction, and do something concrete to help whether you have a minute, an hour, a day, a week, or a lifetime.

No matter how busy you are, how full your schedule, the whole point of the Action Center is that you don’t need to radically alter your lifestyle to help a struggling family radically alter theirs. There are all kinds of things you can do to carve out even a few extra minutes.

And here’s something everyone can do. You know how after you make love you spend the next 30 lonely minutes crying silently and pretending to be asleep? And the average person has sex, what, eight times a day? That’s four hours of crying and swearing that you can use to sponsor a micro-loan for an Afghani businesswoman.

One of the best things about Mercy Corps is that 90% of the money they raise goes directly to the people who need it the most. With most NGOs it’s much lower than that. Practically what that means is that if you donate $100 to MercyCorps, that money buys a family of goats for an Indonesian flood victim. You give that same hundred bucks to most charities, you get a chicken and a shovel. Tops. God forbid you give anything to UNICEF, because we all know where that goes: Cocaine and Turkish pornography.

That means with just $200 you can sponsor a villager to buy a fine set of CutCo knives. Now I know what you’re saying: “Bullshit, Chevy Chase. CutCo knives aren’t cheap.” To which I say: They’re not cheap. They’re a bargain. 

[WALSH INTERRUPTS AND TRIES TO HUSTLE HIM OFF STAGE]

CHEVY (CONT): Look, I get it. This is a charity event and it’s somehow unseemly to speak admiringly of a quality product. But this isn’t about these stainless steel knives, Matt. This is about taking action to end world hunger. Let me ask you a question: How much time do you spend every week sharpening knives?

WALSH: I dunno. None?

CHEVY: Twelve Hours. The average person spends twelve hours a week sharpening knives. That’s twelve hours you could spend working with the UN Online Volunteering Service, sharing your specific skills with NGOs in need. Can I finish? You’re probably saying, “No way a villager could get a fine set of CutCo knives for under $200. Those normally retail at $650.” Which is true, but a product enthusiast in good standing such as myself gets the opportunity to buy in bulk. And remember, these villagers spend most of their time slicing tin cans – and that will dull most ordinary blades, making subsistence tin-slicing tougher than ever. But with CutCo knives, they have enough time left over to become educated, and pull themselves out of poverty.

As our world becomes more and more interdependent, the fate of the poor is increasingly shaped by forces—trade policies, foreign aid budgets, consumer tastes—thousands of miles from their homes. Any of these global forces can offer people a hand up – or a hard shove down. But one thing I learned in jail: hands aren’t so quick to shove when they know you’ve got a quality knife somewhere on your person.