Visionaries in Action–Dan Carter’s journey from rugby legend to humanitarian champion

Jean Sung: Welcome to another episode of our Visionaries in Action series, where we explore the transformative work of leaders making a profound impact in their fields. I am Jean Sung, Head of the Philanthropy Centre for Asia at J.P. Morgan. Today, I am thrilled to have with us Dan Carter from UNICEF. Dan’s work is pivotal in shaping the future for children around the world, and we will be discussing the incredible initiatives UNICEF is spearheading to address some of the most pressing challenges facing children today.

Dan Carter: Giving back is something I've always been very passionate about, but I think it really got elevated when I had children myself, to understand that the people that I love and care about the most are very lucky to be able to have a good education, have access to nutritional food, to have a nice house to live under. And a lot of that is because of my job being a professional sports person that's been able to provide this life for them. But I also knew that it wasn't the same for every child around the world.

Dan Carter: Becoming a UNICEF ambassador, I wanted to explore the work that they did, even more the way that they support underprivileged children all around the world. I was fascinated to learn more and be a part of and to try and help and support them through the profile that I had of being a professional sports person. But it wasn't until I actually went on my first field trip, a UNICEF field trip, which was a Syrian refugee camp, just outside of Jordan. And I went there with my UNICEF hat on to try and to learn about these refugees and these children and learn about the work that UNICEF was doing to provide things like clean water, educating the children, giving them shelters to live in, and food to eat. But when I went there, I was blown away by these children and just how they had the biggest smiles on their faces. They were laughing. They wanted to play. So I took some rugby balls there. I was teaching them rugby skills and I left that refugee camp feeling like they'd given me more than what I'd given them. And it was really a moment that hit home for me about, ok, I need to do more. I'm driven to do more. So at that stage, I was a UNICEF ambassador and through my plane schedule, I couldn't really do more. It's not like I could go to a lot more of these refugee camps or have more of a focus on making an impact to these children's lives. But, that was my aha moment. I need to do more and I want to do more. And it helps support these children, these children in need.

Jean Sung: That's a wonderful way of reflecting on children in need. The children's faces, their smiles give us a lot more joy than what we think we can give them. But how do you think that we could advocate or someone like yourself who's a world icon, to be able to inspire public sector or other private institutions to make that change, to feel the same values that you have and to be inspired by what you're doing?

Dan Carter: I think that's the challenge just because that's what I felt when I went to that refugee camp for the first time, and I'm very passionate about it. I want other people to feel the same as I do. So I think it's really important in telling some of these stories and how inspirational these children that have nothing, don’t have a lot, you know, just their mindset and their generosity, their happiness. It’s really important that someone in my position really shares these stories. And as I said, from that first refugee camp that I went on, I always wanted to do more. But because of my rugby schedule, I couldn't. Because we were playing 11 months of the year, but I retired from professional sport four years ago, and that was my time where I wanted to do more. And now with some more time on my hands, I could do more. So I've been a UNICEF ambassador since 2016. So I had a really clear purpose for the DC10 Fund, and that was to ensure the world's most vulnerable children get more opportunities to live a life of freedom and fun, similar to my upbringing, and similar to my children's lives that they're going through. So, really simple purposea and I knew that UNICEF could support me on this journey. So, the DC10 Fund partnered with UNICEF and I really wanted to touch UNICEF projects that were really close to my heart.

Dan Carter: As a UNICEF ambassador, we're often advocating for lots of different things that are going on around the world that UNICEF are involved in, but I felt like to make a bigger impact, I needed to be really targeted on what impact I wanted to have on these children. And so that was back in 2022. We launched this partnership and the first project that we decided to advocate and raise money for was a UNICEF WASH project. So that’s a water hygiene and sanitation project for children in the Pacific Islands.

Dan Carter: So going back to my purpose. I learned that one of the leading causes of death for children under five years of age was through disease because of the lack of access to clean and safe water, whether that's to drink, to wash their hands, to brush their teeth, something that we take for granted in New Zealand. So, I thought providing clean water for children in the Pacific was a great way to start the project. Since then, we've raised over $2.5 million to help support those children. And I've been able to share the impact that the DC10 Fund in partnership with UNICEF having on these children with so many people all around the world. The fact that I've had thousands of people donating to the fund goes to show that. I'm slowly getting my message out there to help these children in need. So it's been an exciting two years since we've launched it but you know, to see the impact that it's having on these children is mind blowing.

Jean Sung: Absolutely. Thank you for that. Let me just refer to what you said just now about your own upbringing and your family. How do you see that since you've been doing it that you have inspired perhaps your family, your children or even your team, your number 10. What do they think?

Dan Carter: With my children, I've seen it, I've got four young children. So I probably haven't been able to inspire the three and five year old just yet, but the nine and 11 year old are very inspired. I was running a fundraising program throughout New Zealand, just recently. And through that time, the project was running during their birthdays. And typically, here in New Zealand, if the grandparents can't think of anything to buy the grandchildren for birthday, they give them some money to then go and buy a present. Both of my children used the money that they got for their birthday present to donate to the DC10 Fund and partnership with UNICEF because they had learned about the impact and how much I cared about supporting these children in the Pacific Islands that didn't have access to clean water. So they donated their money, their birthday money to charity, which showed a lot for me for a nine and 11 year old. To be thinking in that way goes to show that something is ingrained in them to want to give and help people in need in the future. So it becomes a generational thing. It's not something that I do and it's kind of left at that. It's inspiring people all around the world from all ages, I would love, you know, pretty passionate about children, and I love it when children really get behind these fundraising campaigns. We've just recently had a rugby related fundraising campaign that children all over New Zealand were challenging me in a kicking contest and raising money and getting sponsors to try and challenge me or to help provide clean water for children in the Pacific. As hard as it is sometimes spending a lot of time on philanthropic work, it is so rewarding when you feel like you are making an impact and you are getting other people to buy into your vision and purpose of what you're wanting to try and achieve with the charity work that you're doing.

Jean Sung: Wonderful.

Jean Sung: You are a philanthropist and I think philanthropists in the world today are all trying to do something that will narrow the gap whether or not they do it on their own and or like yourself, what you do can inspire others to join you, to donate with you and to go into similar program like your WASH. What would be a couple of things or one main thing that by setting up DC10, by being a UNICEF ambassador that you'd like to see in the next three to five years to transform or transfer your values. What would be one or two things that you'd like to see accomplished?

Dan Carter: That's a good question. I love the big part of the reason that I set up the DC10 Fund was because I was following the success of David Beckham and the DB7 Fund and the work that he was doing with UNICEF. So he inspired me to be brave enough to set up my own fund and partner with UNICEF. I think far too often in today's world, we can sit in a little box that we're comfortable in and we're not, we're not courageous enough to try things that we really care about. So thanks to him and I was lucky enough to connect with him and get a lot of his learnings that he got from setting up his DB7 Fund to help me with the DC10 Fund. So now that we're two years into it and have seen the impact that we're having on these underprivileged children in the Pacific Islands and only two years of being active. Obviously, UNICEF has been involved in the Pacific Islands for a long year, but to really sort of elevate the work that they're doing and being able to show it in case it to people that may not have been as aware to the work that UNICEF was doing in the Pacific. Hopefully, I've inspired other people that look at the work that I'm doing and look at the impact that I'm having on these children and encourages them to be brave and show support and things that they really care about. You know, in the All Blacks, we had this mantra was the jersey, the all black jersey that you play in. It's not yours. You're just a custodian of that jersey. There's an incredible history that's gone before you. So when you're an All Black, it's not your jersey, you're a custodian and your sole purpose while you're an All Black is to enhance that legacy and leave the jersey in a better place than it was before you became an All Black. So that's what's driving you to be a great All Black. So when you do finish playing, you pass on the jersey in a better place. And what I'm telling that story is because I think it's, it's relevant for, for people and the life that they live, we're custodians of this planet that we live in and I think our purpose is to leave this planet in a better place than it was before us. So unfortunately, there are people in parts of the world that, you know, have a lot of difficulty and certain challenges in their life. So to be in a position where you can help shape the future in a little way by philanthropy and, and making impact in people's lives, I think is, is really important. And if I can inspire other people in a similar position to me, to do the same, then just the way that David Beckham inspired me, then, hopefully there's more people that can go out there and, and work and do things that they really care about to help make this world a better place.

Jean Sung: I think you're very humble. I think your role model and what you just said is with the example of All Blacks Jersey, the planet is not ours. Neither is the water and the sanitation is not. Ours is how we decide to share and to be able to collaborate with the public sector, somebody like UNICEF or with the public sector of how do we protect and conserve water for the future generations shape the future, all those are wonderful attributes. Would you say that since you started WASH and DC10 Fund that your hope in changing, in creating positive change for the future of how not only in the Pacific Islands, how do you see or do you have hope since what you're doing that you feel that we can change for the better?

Dan Carter: Yes, it's hard work and it's challenging, but it's worthwhile. It's worth the effort, the hours to strive to make change. I wanted to start really small and isolated to make a real impact. So that's why I started in the Pacific and to see the impact that we're having on the children there. So to provide clean water hygiene, sanitation facilities into medical centers and schools in the Pacific Islands. What I love the most about this is it's not a whole lot of UNICEF people coming to deliver it and run these programs. So when I went to a small little school in a village in Pentecost Island in Vanuatu, I arrived at the school and there was half a dozen students with this little badge on their chest, and it had wash across it. Now, these senior pupils at the school were making sure that all the students at the school were washing their hands when they arrived at school, making sure they had a drink bottle of clean drinking water to have for the day. They would all brush their teeth with this clean water. And these wash pupils are almost like prefects of the school was so looked up to by the younger students at that school. All they wanted to do was be a WASH member one day, like they were role model to the younger children at that school. So all of a sudden I started to realize, ok, this is a generational thing. This is not just people coming in and saying, hey, you have to wash your hands, you have to do this and the fact that you're getting buy in by the local people and educating them on the importance of using clean water, proper hygiene and sanitation facilities. Then you know, you're going to be making an impact and lower those rates of disease and to younger children. So I absolutely love that. But as I said, I wanted to start small and local. I have hope that I can expand to other continents that have the same problems around clean water hygiene and sanitation as, as the Pacific Island do. And obviously with what's happening with climate change and things and the challenges that's providing a lot of parts of the world, now is the time that the people like myself and yourself and that really care about this planet that we live on to work now. So the more that we can advocate, support, educate other people about the importance of what's happening around the world, the better we can. But my hope is that I can expand into other parts of the world for sure.

Jean Sung: Thank you, Dan, for sharing your insights and the critical work UNICEF is doing to improve the lives of children globally. Our dedication and vision are truly inspiring, and it’s clear that the impact of your work is felt around the world. We look forward to seeing how these initiatives continue to evolve and make a difference. Thank you again for joining us in this important conversation.

Dan Carter: Thanks guys.