NEW YORK – The April 18 One World: Together at Home two-hour TV special and six-hour pre-show live stream events featured top artists performing from home to applaud the efforts of health care workers and everyone else fighting Covid-19. While conceived as a way to simply raise spirits with an outpouring of music, the broadcast and live stream also managed to raised $150 million, according to reports a day after the event.
Spearheaded by the worldwide poverty-fighting group Global Citizen and Lady Gaga, the event featured a wide spectrum of top artists that included Gaga herself, Elton John, Stevie Wonder, Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, Lizzo, Keith Urban, Jennifer Lopez, Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish and Finneas, among many others. And along with a wide array of musical performances, there were, of course, varying levels of TV production pizazz.
The six-hour pre-show live stream hosted by YouTube included close to 70 songs, with some artists and acts performing more than once. The two-hour TV special, which aired on NBC, ABC and CBS along with Univision and a variety of cable and international broadcast networks, included 20 performances in all.
The donations will go to the Covid-19 Solidarity Response Fund supporting the World Health Organization’s (WHO) efforts to contain the pandemic, which is supported by the UN Foundation. Other organizations receiving support include the vaccine development alliance Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and UNICEF, and Global Citizen, which has hosted the annual Global Citizen Festival in New York’s Central Park since 2012, also supports more than a hundred other charities that include Education Cannot Wait, Direct Care, Feeding America and United Way.
Since it began, the Global Citizen Festival, which offers tickets to volunteers supporting aligned charities, has expanded from New York to overseas locations, and the 2020 event, still set for Sept. 26, is slated to take place in New York, Lagos, Seoul, Dubai, Europe and Latin America. The core of the group’s mission is to fight extreme poverty around the world.
For more information, visit www.globalcitizen.org
