Adianto P. Simamora and Irawati Wardany, Jakarta – Local organizers said Wednesday's Stand Up and Speak Out events against global poverty drew a record number of people.

Speaking Thursday, they said 618,061 people took part in events at 78 locations in 23 provinces.

That is less than the one million people organizers had hoped would take part in Stand Up events in support of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), but a large increase over the 50,000 people who took part in events in 2005.

United Nations Millennium Development Goals representatives for Asia and the Pacific, Erna Witoelar, hailed the results, saying it showed more Indonesians were aware of and concerned by poverty issues.

"The issue of poverty is no longer the concern of activists only. We hope people continue to remind the government to meet the MDGs target," she said.

At each event Wednesday, people stood up and pledged solidarity with the poorest people and demanded the government take immediate action to end poverty.

In West Nusa Tenggara, one of the country's poorest provinces, some 100,000 people attended the event. About 110,000 people, including President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, took part in an event at Ancol Dreamland in North Jakarta, the country's largest recreational park.

People in nearly 90 countries stood up in public spaces, schools, places of work or worship and at sports and cultural events to voice frustration at the lack of real progress in rooting out global poverty.

Last year, 23.5 million people in more than 80 countries set a Guinness World Record for Stand Up events. Stand Up events are part of the UN's campaign to increase public awareness of global poverty and to pressure governments to meet the MDGs by 2015.

The development goals include halving the number of people suffering from extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, eliminating gender disparities, reducing the child mortality rate by two-thirds and the maternal mortality by three-fourths, halting and reversing the incidence HIV/AIDS, malaria and other major diseases, and halving the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water.

According to data from the Central Statistic Agency, in 2007 there were more than 37 million Indonesians living below the poverty line, or 16 percent of the country's population of 220 million.