As an Ambassador of Oxfam and Patron of David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, Kristin Davis Takes A Stand In Hopes To Gain A Following Of This Generation
By Brooke Rudisill
Above: Kristin Davis meets with students at Lynn University. Photo Credit/P. Baños.
"That's cool, now I can relax," says Kristin Davis as the photographer walks away.
There's a sense of relief that Davis immediately exhales as she falls into the cushions of the couch comfortably, when the cameras leave the room. Her energy is beaming - she is wearing a stunning dress by Dolce & Gabbana, accessorized with this beautiful charm of a tiny elephant dangling from her neck. Better known for her role as Charlotte York Goldenblatt, in "Sex and the City," Davis' bubbly personality instantly draws you in, as she is extremely down to earth, with an incredible sense of humor.
"It's such a beautiful campus," she says about Lynn University, located in Boca Raton, FL, who hosted the 2014 Millennium Campus Conference. It was at this conference she was presented with a Global Generations Award for all of the initiatives that she is making toward eradicating global issues.
Davis has always had a love for traveling and exploring the world. It opens her eyes and informs her on not only the good, but also the heartbreaking issues that go unknown day by day that are left unheard.
In 2001, Davis found herself traveling to Kenya and Tanzania for her first time, and absolutely fell in love with the area. "But, I definitely had this sense that there was a whole story that I wasn't hearing as a safari person. Because they kind of make you feel like 'oh, we want to give you this beautiful safari and show you the animals and the beautiful land, and we don't want to tell you what might be going on that's not so great.' Which I totally understand, but I felt frustrated," she says.
On her travels back to LA, she couldn't stop thinking about ways that she could potentially get involved. Davis soon found herself at one of George Clooney's hollywood-esque type parties that he was throwing to benefit Oxfam, an international confederation working toward solutions for extreme poverty and injustice. This event is where Davis met Claire Lewis, an integral person who has worked for Oxfam for more than 20 years.
Even after the meeting with Lewis, Davis had been involved in an eye opening experience when deciding to travel with Oxfam for the first time to a "really remote part of Mozambique right on the border of Zimbabwe," she says. "I think they were living on a dollar for two months. I mean we're talking about extreme poverty." This area happened to be where the government and aid groups all stopped funding because they thought that the aid was going over the mountains and into Zimbabwe.
Above: Davis speaking onstage after receiving her Global Generation Award. Photo Credit/K. Studer.
Along being an Ambassador of Oxfam, she is also a Patron of the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust. Back in 2009, while traveling on a trip to Kenya with a friend, Davis came across a baby orphan elephant. "We took her to the only woman in the planet who learned how to take care of, and raise an orphan baby elephant to live in the wild again, Dame Daphne Sheldrick," says Davis. "And since then, the poaching crisis has grown in this really frightening, horrifying way, where every 15 minutes an elephant is killed for the illegal ivory trade."
Recently, Davis has been promoting the upcoming documentary that she produced, "Gardeners of Eden," which is shot on the grounds of Kenya where the elephant population has decreased drastically over the past few years. With poaching being the number one reason of elephants on the rise of extinction, "we're [soon] going to have to explain to our children why we only have pictures of elephants in books," she says. "It's because of poverty in some of these countries that organized crime can reach out to the people who might live on edge in little villages... The crime bosses who run international syndicates, who can move the ivory around, make the money and buy weapons, fund terrorist organizations, literally from that money, but the guy on the ground is prone to their offers because of extreme poverty."
Pain instantly streams into her eyes as the shocking words of, "in 10 years there will be no more elephants in the wild," when it comes out of her mouth.
These are all few of the many extreme issues that a large majority of the population isn't even fully aware of. The passion and proactive drive is evident in Davis as she makes it a mission to "get [this information] out to as many eyeballs as possible, in the most powerful way," she says.
"I have a child, and I think about the world that she's going to get, and we have to fight really hard to make sure the world is going to keep the good things. They can't win," says Davis.
With hope that this generation is one that can make a difference in this world, Davis wholeheartedly believes that change will only occur once people start taking a stand and fight for eradicating global issues.
Above: Kristin Davis with the Global Generation Awards at Lynn University. Photo Credit/K. Studer.