The Live Aid festival took place on July 13, 1985, and this is the most grandiose event in the history of music! Never before, neither before nor after, has there been such a large-scale and great show. It took place on four sites at once: in Japan, Australia, USA and England. The main ones were on the Wembley Stadium in London, which was designed for 82 thousand people, and the John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia built to host 99 thousand people. All records were broken on TV broadcasts as almost 2 billion viewers in 150 countries of the world watched it live. All the legends of music performed on stage: Elton John, Madonna, Sade, Queen, Paul McCartney, David Bowie, U2, B-B King, Sting, Brian Adams, Status Quo, Dire Straits, Phil Collins, in total more than 70 performers.
The idea of the event was born in the mind of Bob Geldof, the leader of the Irish punk rock band The Boomtown Rats. The man was no typical rock star. He was always attracted by Africa! Traveling along it, he was terrified by the famine that choked Ethiopia, and decided to help. Bob released a charity single and announced a big concert. “Initially, we planned to raise at least £1 million for the purchase of trucks to eliminate food supply disruptions,” as Geldof admitted.
For about a year, Bob organized the process. He personally traveled to many stars and persuaded them to participate. The 16 hour music marathon was to be broadcast by the BBC. During the broadcast, everyone could donate any amount of money. The phone number and address for the donations were shown on screen every 20 minutes.
And then hour X arrived. The concert began in London at 12:00 local time, Philadelphia picked up at 13:51. Performances at Wembley ended at 10:00 pm, and at the John F. Kennedy Stadium at 4:05.
In total, the Live Aid festival managed to raise 150 million pounds. Most of the money came from crisis-ridden Ireland. And the largest single donation was transferred by the ruling family of Dubai. It was thought that through large and small charities this money would go to Ethiopia and feed all the hungry there. Was this goal achieved? Alas, this is still a debate.
The mysterious fate of donations
The first investigations and accusations thundered in the 2000s. According to the BBC channel, a substantial part of the funds raised went to support the civil war and the rebels, since it was spent on weapons for the Ethiopian warlords. The Daily Mail found out that at least 20% of the donors’ money went to the rebels. Ethiopian commander Gebremedin Araya announced a most shocking figure as up to 63 million pounds of the charity were spent on political and military support for the rebels.
Thinking about it is scary. Large charities are blind and opaque, vulnerable to fraud and abuse from officials in their own right. But if politics also intervenes in the process, then it is quite a disaster. The investigations naturally led to scandals, a fall in public confidence and a decrease in income for charities. The industry has recovered and continued to grow. But again and again, fraudsters or politicians are impeding its development. Remember the investigations into Age UK, Kids Company or Oxfam. And that’s in Britain alone.
The only solution here is to allow the donors to control the spending of their donations themselves. This is the solution we propose.
With the help of blockchain and IT technologies, the W12 team is providing a charity a platform where the flow of funds is transparent and available at any time for verification. The donations are deposited on a smart contract in tokens. The fundraisers do not receive the full amount at once, but in installments. When the first stage of the roadmap of the charity project is completed, they get the money for the implementation of the second stage. And so on. Each execution of the stage must be confirmed by donors or oracles. The transactions, including all the overhead costs, are recorded in a public distributed registry. The contracts and documents are uploaded there. This data cannot be changed retroactively. Any cost inconsistency will become apparent immediately. Moreover, it is possible to trace where any token was spent. That is, on W12, the donors can really measure the benefits of their investments.
