you might have seen some of the (red) topics here

 

http://www.buzzjack.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=18132

 

 

so are you involved? are you interested? what can be done? will you be buying any of the products?

05.10.2006

Switch Your Cellphone, Fight AIDS

 

Americans can now fight AIDS in Africa by switching to a product RED cellphone or buying clothing that’s part of the RED line. Bill Gates and others on how products from Converse, Gap, Motorola and Armani can fight AIDS in the poorest countries.

 

(RED), the brand founded by Bono and Bobby Shriver to raise money for the UN Global Fund, is launching in the US and the New York Times explains how it works. Here’s some highlights from an excellent piece.

 

‘Products from Converse, Gap, Motorola and Armani will be sold under the Red brand. Promoters want the companies to make money. Those companies, along with Converse and American Express, created the new products, which bear the brand name Red and are to begin appearing in stores this month. The companies are committed to selling the products for at least five years, and plan to donate part of their profits to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

If the Red products sell the way the companies’ other products do, the fund stands to gain hundreds of millions of dollars annually — enough to provide AIDS medications to hundreds of thousands of Africans each year.

The campaign was created by the musician Bono and Bobby Shriver, a California politician and member of the Kennedy family. Both are leading advocates for the Global Fund. The fund, which will collect and distribute money from Red in Africa, says the hundreds of millions of dollars each year given by world governments is not enough to provide medications to all of the people who need them….’

 

“Red is one of the first major efforts to tap more Americans to contribute to fighting AIDS a continent away. And they can do so simply, just by switching their cellphone or buying some of the clothing that’s part of the Red line,†Bill Gates, the Microsoft chairman who has made fighting AIDS a center of his own philanthropy, said in an e-mail message Mr. Gates said he was at first skeptical that the group would be able to persuade large retailers to participate. “I wasn’t sure they would get enough companies on board to make Red a viable entity, and whether it could generate enough revenue for the global fund to make it worthwhile,†he said. “I was pleasantly surprised on both counts.â€

 

“Red products have been in stores in Britain since February, and the share of profits that has gone to the fund passed the $10 million mark last month, said Richard Feachem, the executive director of the Global Fund. That is twice what the fund received from companies and individuals from 2002 to 2006, he said. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been the largest nongovernmental donor to the fund, pledging $650 million.

“I could go with my begging bowl every year to a major corporation and say ‘give me some money,’ and they might give me a one-off contribution, but it wouldn’t be large and it wouldn’t be sustainable,†Dr. Feachem said. “Red is intrinsically sustainable because Red is good for the companies.â€

With the $10 million it has earned so far from Red, the fund is financing testing and treatment of HIV-positive women and children in Rwanda and is taking care of orphans in Swaziland whose parents died of AIDS, Dr. Feachem said….

 

(RED) was created to raise awareness and money for The Global Fund by teaming up with the world's most iconic brands to produce (PRODUCT) RED branded products. A percentage of each (PRODUCT) RED product sold is given to The Global Fund. The money helps women and children affected by HIV/AIDS in Africa.

 

 

from U2.com

 

13.10.2006

Bono Paints America (RED)

 

http://www.u2.com/news/images/thumbs/red_3506.jpg

 

Bono has been in the US this week preparing for today's launch of (RED).

 

Bono and Oprah stopped traffic in Chicago yesterday as they went shopping for (RED) goodies on Michigan Avenue. Along for the ride were (RED) supporters Kanye West, Penelope Cruz and Christy Turlington.

 

Before returning to New York for today's official (RED) launch, Bono and Christy bumped into none other than President Bush at Chicago's O'Hare airport. The pair were invited on board Air Force One for an impromptu meeting, where, according to DATA, Bono thanked the President for his work in the fight against AIDS and lobbied for an increase in U.S. funding to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria.

 

Today will see the official launch of (RED) in the US - with Apple adding its name to the list of companies already signed up. Check out Joinred.com for further updates.

 

 

 

BONO ON NBC NIGHTLY NEWS

November 02, 2007

 

Bono stopped by the set of NBC's Saturday Night Live earlier this week to meet with NBC Nightly News anchor (and SNL host this week) Brian Williams to discuss the 1-year anniversary of the (RED) launch and talk about the progress of the campaign. Bono also mentions that he's planning something for World AIDS day, and other than that, he's back in the rehearsal room with U2. He finishes the interview talking about how U2 is "taking it to the next level".

 

 

Watch the full 16 minute interview:

 

http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-US&...de-bacdaf2d3649

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

World Aids Day: the battle has only just begun

www.independent.co.uk2 December 2007

 

Last year, a special issue of The Independent, edited by Bono, introduced a new way of raising money to fight HIV/Aids. Since then, the (Red) initiative has raised more than $50m and helped more than one million people. In an exclusive interview, Bono tells Paul Vallely why people in rich nations can make a difference to the Aids disaster

Published: 01 December 2007

In a world of calibrated cynicism here's something unabashedly positive to celebrate today to mark what is the 20th occasion that people across the globe have commemorated – if that's the right word – World Aids Day. The words come from the man who is now as honoured as a campaigner against extreme poverty as he is as front man for the world's biggest-selling rock band.

 

"Three years ago," says Bono, the lead singer of U2, "there was virtually no one in Africa on antiretroviral drugs. Now you'll have two million by the end of this year."

 

Two million is, of course, only a fraction of those affected by the disease which has to date killed more than 25 million people – making it one of the most destructive epidemics in human history. Another estimated 40 million people are now living with HIV. But the international community is, for the first time, showing real signs of progress in combating the disease on a significant scale.

 

That fact is, in no small measure, down to the campaigning of the impassioned Irish vocalist, who has lobbied governments for action and corralled some of the world's biggest businesses into playing their part – which is why this newspaper, for the fourth time, turns itself (Red) today.

 

Since it was founded 20 months ago, (Red) has donated an extraordinary $50,005,410 (£24,324,379) to the Global Fund to fights Aids, TB and Malaria. "Do the maths," says Bono. "It costs about $5 a week to pay for the two pills a day it takes to keep someone with HIV alive."

 

Aids is no longer a death sentence. Antiretroviral medication will bring someone who is at death's door back to virtually full health. Doctors call itthe Lazarus effect.

 

More than 20 per cent of all funding to fight Aids now comes from the Global Fund. An extra $50m in its coffers means that a million people who would previously have died have are being kept alive, day in day out, seven days a week, 52 weeks of the year. That is in addition to the extra anti-Aids drugs being provided by governments under the Gleneagles promises. It is nearly double the numbers treated by the Global Fund the year before. "That's what readers of The Independent helped kick off and there's a lot more where that came from."

 

Bono continues to ride two horses in all this. Yesterday he was holed up in a studio in the south of France with the rest of his band working on the next U2 album.

 

"We're just beginning the processes. We did some recording in Morocco last year. All the band went to an amazing religious music festival in Fez with some incredible sufi singers. It was a real humbling thing for a punk rock shouter, listening to these people who just close their eyes for 40 minutes and sing the most sophisticated melodies.

 

"We got this little riad, a small hotel with a courtyard in the middle and set up the band there, with a square of sky over our head. The two great catalysts of U2's recording life, Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, joined us. We'd record during the day and then disappear into windy streets of the medina at night.It was an inspiring experience and a drummer's paradise."

 

Now, he says, they are trying to get their heads around what they recorded. "World music this is not," he says, though U2 fans will "feel the difference". Polyrhythmic is the word he chooses with a self-deprecating laugh. "U2 in dancefloor shock. Normally when you play a U2 tune, it clears the dancefloor. And that may not be true of this. There's some trance influences. But there's some very hardcore guitar coming out of The Edge. Real molten metal. It's not like anything we've ever done before, and we don't think it sounds like anything anyone else has done either."

 

Yet, for all that, campaigning for Africa has claimed a significant part of Bono's time over the past 12 months. He has travelled extensively to check on whether the promises of increased aid and debt cancellation made at Gleneagles after Live8 have been made good. "The most important thing to tell people is that, according to figures to be announced by the World Bank and OECD next week, an extra 26 million African children are going to school now because of debt cancellation."

 

In Tanzania he saw the impact of that in the classroom. "Two years ago an extra 1.5 million went to school. Last year that figure went up to three million. Where there were seven children to a desk now there's four. Instead of one book per desk there's now three.

 

"In Ghana there's a ghetto just outside Accra called Nima." Some 70,000 people lived there without any sanitation whatsoever when he visited five years ago. "I was back there last year and peeing in this public bathroom and looked up and saw a sign saying paid for by HIPC – that's the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative. That's debt relief."

 

What has been preoccupying him is building a movement to do in the United States what Make Poverty History did in the UK. "The British people and government have been global leaders in the fight against poverty, and the recent spending review confirms that. So people here forget that things are nowhere near so advanced in other places."

 

The lobbying organisation he and Bob Geldof founded, DATA, ran a massive campaign to lift global poverty up the domestic agenda in Germany before the last G8 there, with a level of success which surprised many commentators. They are doing the same in Japan ahead of the next G8. But the market to crack is the United States. "We need a Make Poverty History in the United States and we're working on one. It's called The One Campaign and we have 2.5 million Americans signed up." But they need far more.

 

That is, in part, what the (Red) campaign is about. Shopping is what Bono calls the gateway drug to wider activism. "A lot of the time we're working on governments, and talking about billions in debt relief and multibillion-dollar Aids initiatives launched by the G8. But there's something personal about (Red). People are always asking: 'What can I do personally?' And we always say get out on the streets, get organised, sign up to Oxfam or Save the Children or Christian Aid. But they say: 'What else can I do?' And (Red) gives them that, even while they're buying their Christmas presents."

 

There are some sceptics to be convinced. Organisations like BuyLessCrap.com have accused (Red) of encouraging over-consumption. Others say that what goes to the Global Fund is only a fraction of what (Red) partners – like Armani, American Express and Apple – spend on marketing. Bono is unimpressed. "Our attitude is that if people make the right choices then buying more stuff is buying also more Aids drugs for Africans."

 

Buying a pair of Armani sunglasses pays for 53 doses of nevirapine which prevents the transmission of HIV from mother to child during child birth. "I'm not going to challengepeople's buying habits. That's a matter for them. But if they want to buy an iPod they might as well buy a (Red) one and know that somebody's little sister or somebody's big brother is going to see another year."

 

(Red) has another key component. "What people in the UK don't understand is that in the US – though we had the churches and the campuses, Hollywood and the hip-hop community – we never had the shopping malls." Going about their ordinary business in their constituencies it was easy for US politicians to forget that 5,500 people are dying a day of a preventable disease. They can't forget that now. It's in their face, courtesy of Gap or Motorola. If they walk into an Armani to buy a party frock they'll see a gigantic collection of (Red) clothes beautifully designed by Giorgio." The potent ads of these big business now scream Aids awareness messages.

 

If (Red) has made things personal so has some of the criticism. Bono has been attacked for being "both a punk rocker and a multimillionaire. They see a contradiction in that. Well I don't. I'd much rather be known as tough in business than some kind of Mother Teresa figure. I don't buy into this idea that all artists are above material stuff. People sense the bull$h!t in that. You've got to go back to why you joined a band in the first place. We always had two instincts. We wanted to have fun. And we wanted to change the world. And if we could do both at the same time then we'd be happy."

 

As to the notion that all commerce is tainted: "People who know anything about extreme poverty know that the way to get people out of it is not aid but trade, it's commerce".

 

He tells a story of how he was booed at a conference in Africa recently. "I was accused of just being about aid and not business enough. Africans have this deep desire to be in charge of their own destiny. They are instinctively entrepreneurial and they know that if they can get a level playing field on trade they are more than capable of getting themselves out of extreme poverty.

 

"Those who say that commerce is part of the problem not the solution should tell that to someone in Lesotho whosefactory has closed down because the manufacture has moved to China," he says, with a rare touch of asperity to his tone.

 

He is equally impatient with African ideologues who say that all aid is bad for the continent. "Whenever you see Africans saying they don't want aid it's pretty clear it's not their sisters, brothers, cousins who are dying for lack of the few cents a day for the two little pills that would keep them alive."

 

His key message is that individuals – whether they are punk rockers marching with priests and nuns on the G8 or Christmas shoppers in high-street stores – can make a difference. "People need to know that by marching on Gleneagles they made the world a better place. It was a real moment in history. Naysayers who belittle that take the wind out of the sails of momentum. We mustn't lose momentum."

 

For Bono that message is both personal and political. He hopes to have a new U2 album out next year. "We have enough material for two albums but it has to be extraordinary. And I think we've got that." On the (Red) front he is no more modest. He has two "gigantic" new partners to be announced in January and, on Valentine's Day, a (Red) Art Auction with many of the world's top living artists contributing major pieces.

 

"Next year is going to be a great year for (Red). But The Independent should be very proud because it was our first associate. A $50m contribution to the Global Fund is about the best Christmas present anyone could ever have."

 

 

:w00t: :w00t:

06.12.2007

Modern Art is... (RED)

 

Jeff Koons, Anish Kapoor, Jasper Johns, Sam Taylor-Wood and Antony Gormley are among the leading artists to accept Damien Hirst's invitation to contribute to The (RED) Auction to help fight HIV/AIDS in developing countries.

 

Hirst asked them to contribute works inspired by the colour red. Bono calls the results 'the best collection of art from the best artists in the world'.

 

"What we raise from this auction will make a huge difference for a lot of people." Hirst told The Independent. "For a relatively small amount of effort on each artist's part we can actually save many lives. It's great to be able to give something back and make a difference."

 

Hirst has contributed seven works including a red heart-shaped butterfly painting entitled All You Need is Love, a red rectangular butterfly painting entitled Love You and a pill cabinet entitled Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way, which is filled with HIV antiretroviral drugs for the treatment of HIV.

 

"I love art for art’s sake but what we have here is a real moment in art history," said Bono, adding that Hirst's ‘Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way’ " provides the neatest, completest metaphor: a pill-becomes-art-becomes-a-pill, that’s as close to framing saving a life as you’re going to get.”

 

The sale, at Sotheby’s New York, will be preceded by a preview exhibition at Gagosian Gallery from February 4th.

 

Hirst persuades art world's biggest names to go (RED)

 

By Arifa Akbar, Arts Reporter

Published: 05 December 2007

When Damien Hirst invited more than 100 artists to contribute works to an auction inspired by the colour red and dedicated to raising awareness of HIV/Aids, he said he hoped it would make a difference to those most in need.

 

The result of his efforts, an extraordinary collection straddling the contemporary artistic spectrum, is unprecedented in quality and diversity, and forms one of the largest and most spectacular charity auctions, with an estimated collective worth of more than £20m. The money raised will go directly to the Global Fund, a recipient of donations to the (RED) charity which provides urgently needed resources to countries struggling to fight the spread of disease.

 

In just one year, (RED) has become one of the key donors to the Global Fund, helping thousands of Aids patients receive life-saving treatment in Africa.

 

The U2 singer and campaigner Bono, who is collaborating in the auction, has called it a historic moment which brings together "the best collection of art from the best artists in the world". From Jeff Koons to Anish Kapoor, Antony Gormley to Douglas Gor.on, the sale combines some of the finest names in contemporary art. International stars such as Jasper Johns, Matthew Barney, Andreas Gursky, Georg Baselitz and Marc Quinn are offering works.

 

Organised by Hirst and Bono in conjunction with the Gagosian Gallery in London, it will be held at Sotheby's in New York on Valentine's Day next year, with Hirst donating seven pieces worth an estimated £4m alone.

 

Among Hirst's specially created works is a red heart-shaped butterfly painting entitled All You Need is Love, as well as a piece called Love You and a pill cabinet, Where There's a Will, There's a Way, filled with antiretroviral drugs.

 

Hirst said: " Money is a key and what we raise from this auction will make a huge difference for a lot of people. For a relatively small amount of effort on each artist's part we can actually save many lives. It's great to be able to give something back and make a difference."

 

Bono said that the collection represented a "real moment in art history", adding: "I love art for art's sake but what we have here is a real moment in art history. Damien is being too modest; the effort of these artists is considerable, the impact immeasurable. His Where There's a Will, There's a Way provides the neatest, completest metaphor: a pill-becomes-art-becomes-a-pill, that's as close to framing saving a life as you're going to get."

 

A preview exhibition of the works at the Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea will be held from 4 to 13 February. A dedicated website will be posted later this month.

 

 

The Independent