Global Festival 2012 will take place on September 29 in New York’s Central Park at the same time of the United Nations’ General Assembly in New York. The festival will be headlined by the Foo Fighters, The Black Keys,  Neil Young with Crazy Horse, Band of Horses, and K’NAAN, who will join around 54,000 attendees.

The charity festival is “a catalytic event to end extreme poverty,” as stated on the show’s Facebook page. It is part of the Global Poverty Project, and the spirit behind the organization of the show has been expressed by the organizers, who wrote: “The fight for justice has never been easy. But human history has always been shaped by courageous actions and a vision of a better world.  As Global Citizens, we’ve put our hands up to stand against the greatest injustice of our time: extreme poverty.”

No tickets will be sold; they have to be earned. This is the “action” part. People (18+) will be able to participate to a lottery for the chance to win tickets for the event by completing some steps as explained on the Global Citizen’s website. After taking actions such as signing petitions, promoting awareness via social networks, making donations and so on, people can earn points that will open them to the doors to the lottery.

For the organization of the event, The Global Poverty Project is assisted by promoters Goldenvoice/AEG. The festival will be financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Sumner Redstone Charity Foundation, with the participation of international groups such as UNICEF.

Organizer, Hugh Evans, said the goal of the event is to have fans take 100,000 actions by September. This will then be used as leverage when asking the world’s leaders, who will be in town during the event, to make monetary commitments for reaching development goals.

According to Huff Post, The Black Key’s Patrick Carney said about the event: “The scale of things that they’re trying do just felt really cool, and we’re trying to get the ball rolling. Especially with everything that’s been going on for the last three years, I suppose, after the stock market crashed. There’s attention on the amount of people living below the poverty line and the disparity between the rich and the poor and everything that’s going on now … . It just felt like the right time to do something.”

Foo Fighters released a statement which read “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.”

Image Courtesy of   s_bukley / Shutterstock.com

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About the author

Veronica Cinti
Italian native, extremely passionate about music in general. Although she appreciates a wide variety of music genres, her strongest field of expertise is Rock music, Grunge and Punk among its styles. Contact the author: veronica.cinti@toonarimedia.com; Follow Veronica on Twitter: @VeronicaCinti

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