What a Day

This week, we’re looking back at one of the biggest charity events of the 21st century.
Twenty years after the charity concert Live Aid, another concert took place in order to highlight the problem of global poverty and to help people affected by it. Live 8 coincided with the 20th Anniversary of Live Aid and took place on the 2nd July 2005. People were able to attend ten simultaneous concerts in different cities around the world, including London, Paris and Johannesburg. It took place days before the G8 summit, an annual meeting between the leaders from the world’s most powerful countries.
More than 1,000 musicians performed at the concerts which were broadcast on 182 television networks around the world, and it reached a global audience of 30 billion people. It featured many of the major music stars of the time, from U2, Madonna and Coldplay in for the London event, to Jay-Z, Steve Wonder and Bon Jovi in the USA. It was such a huge success because it had got support from so many people around the world.
According to the Live 8 organiser Bob Geldof, the events raised more than $5 million through the text message lottery system for tickets. Tickets for the London event were free, just a fee of £1.50 was charged to send a text. Live 8 wasn’t so much a fundraising event, as an attempt to raise political awareness about the issues facing people suffering from poverty in Africa. And it did that. In July that year, the G8 leaders pledged to double the previous year’s levels of aid to poor nations from $25 billion to $50 billion and half of the money was to go to Africa.