Celebrity Music Artists Play at Global Festival to Fight Poverty

The Global Poverty Project has announced the Global Festival 2012, a multifaceted event culminating with a free ticketed concert on the Great Lawn of New York’s iconic Central Park on Sept. 29. Neil Young with Crazy Horse, Foo Fighters and The Black Keys will headline, supported by Band of Horses and K’Naan.

The Global Festival, which celebrates achievements made toward eradicating extreme poverty, has been timed to create awareness around the U.N. General Assembly in New York, when world leaders will convene to debate the Millennium Development Goals and make commitments to end extreme poverty.

Tickets to the concert can be earned through the new online platform, Global Citizen. Global Citizen will offer a wide cross-section of content and actions about international health and development issues, ranging from videos to in-depth white papers. It will also showcase nonprofit partners and social entrepreneurs that are working in each of these areas, as well as academics, writers, celebrity spokespeople and music artists who are involved in these particular issues. Each fan can simply choose from a variety of cause-related actions to complete on the website, become a global citizen and qualify for free tickets to the concert.

While progress has been made to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, an estimated 1.3 billion people still live in extreme poverty, on less than the equivalent of $1.50 per day. Among the issues the Global Festival and Global Citizen platform will seek to impact is the global effort to end polio, cases of which have been reduced by more than 99 percent since 1988. By bringing together thousands of people to take action, this generation can make history and finally eradicate the disease.

“By giving every child a chance to thrive, our generation can end extreme poverty” said Hugh Evans, CEO, The Global Poverty Project. Tremendous strides have been made to improve the lives of children, including the effort to provide every child with the vaccines they require, but there is much to be done and the need for action is urgent.

Neil Young stated, “With at least 1.3 billion people living in extreme poverty on earth today, there has never been a better time to become a Global Citizen and do whatever you can to make a difference for your fellow man.”

The Global Poverty Project aims to motivate a generation to take 100,000 actions by September and take a stand against poverty. The free concert will serve as the culmination to the Global Festival, with the event in Central Park celebrating actions taken toward ending extreme poverty in our generation. Global Citizen will serve as a permanent platform by providing on-going information and announcements for action that can lead to lasting change.

Foo Fighters issued the following statement on their commitment to Global Festival 2012: “We are very proud to be lending a hand to such a creative, important event and are looking forward to adding to the noise in the big park and helping the effort toward reducing the global shame of deep poverty.”

Hugh Jackman, a member of the advisory board of Global Poverty Project, sent the following message of support for the festival: “This festival will energize and inspire a generation to work together to end extreme poverty. I am looking forward to being at this iconic event and to being part of this amazing Global Poverty Project initiative.”

The event is being produced by Goldenvoice, and is supported by the Sumner M. Redstone Foundation and the Pratt Foundation. Art and other creative elements of the festival will be produced by Milk and the HOPE Campaign.

Supporting nonprofit partners include: The Earth Institute, World Food Program USA, Pencils of Promise, The Global Partnership for Education, Half the Sky, Rotary International, World Vision, Malaria No More, Rainforest Foundation and U.S. Fund for UNICEF.

People everywhere are invited to sign up and begin participating in actions to be entered in the ticket lottery. More information about the bands, artists, schedules and event can be found at globalfestival.com. A small number of VIP tickets are available for purchase and all net proceeds go to the charity.