t's an unlikely scenario: Pop stars meet computer geeks meet United Nations development workers. Together, these unusual partners come up with an ambitious plan to fight world hunger and poverty.
Odd as it sounds, that's precisely the strategy behind NetAid, a project that aims to combine the communications power of the Internet with the celebrity lure of such artists as Bono and Bush. The initiative will make a splash on Oct. 9 with simultaneous concerts in Geneva, London, and the Meadowlands, N.J., that will be broadcast on television, radio, and over the Internet. The lineup so far includes both the U2 singer and Bush, the Corrs and the Counting Crows, Celine Dion, Jewel, Eurythmics, Wyclef Jean, George Michael, Jimmy Page, Pete Townshend, and Robbie Williams. About a dozen additional acts are expected to be announced in the near future.
The celebrity-studded concerts are designed to raise awareness of a new activist Web site, www.netaid.org, a joint project of the computer networking company Cisco Systems and the United Nations Development Program. The organizers want the site to serve as a sort of global portal for social activism, providing information on such issues as hunger, refugees, the environment, and human rights. When the site is in full operation, it will provide ways for individuals to hook up with relief and aid organizations, either to donate funds or volunteer services.
''The primary goal isn't to raise money, it's to raise consciousness and get people engaged,'' says Don Listwin, executive vice president of Cisco Systems. ''It's like the eBay concept: You are able to match up your desire with the right thing. In this case, it doesn't happen to be a Furby; it happens to be a social issue.''
Mark Malloch Brown, the UN Development Program's administrator, likens the site to a ''sophisticated dating service,'' matching individuals with the needs of nongovernmental organizations. ''The Net is a great constituency-building tool,'' he says. ''In the old days, you could only get this kind of information by traveling or joining the Peace Corps.''
The concerts - at Giants Stadium in the Meadowlands, Wembley Stadium in London, and the Palais des Nations in Geneva - provide the big splash to attract attention to the site: They will be broadcast by VH1, MTV, BBC, and on line. Listwin says this will be the ''largest fully integrated global multimedia event'' ever; thanks to efforts by Cambridge-based Akamai Technologies, the Web site can handle up to 10 million viewers during the event and 125,000 simultaneous video streams - 10 times the capacity for the 1998 Olympics and the 1998 men's World Cup soccer tournament.
The site will be launched Sept. 8, the same day as the debut performance of a NetAid single, ''New Day,'' written by Bono and hip-hop artist Wyclef Jean, who will play it at the United Nations. The single, Listwin says, may be available for free digital download, a proven way to attract viewers to a new Web site.
But this effort isn't simply ''We Are the World'' with computers. And unlike other one-time-only musical events, NetAid is not simply a feel-good knee-jerk response to social issues, Brown says. It is a sustainable project with three long-term goals: to build a global constituency to fight poverty; to build a public-private partnership that Brown says will ''get the UN out of its hidebound, bureaucratic environment''; and to bridge the digital gap between developed countries and the Third World. ''At the moment, about 2 billion people have not even placed a telephone call, much less [gone] on line,'' says Brown. ''But I want to raise this as a challenge to the information technology industry: How do we meet the challenge of providing connectivity? The Internet, we know, can be a great equalizing tool.''
For a variety of reasons, the Internet industry has hardly been a model of philanthropic largesse, despite huge profits and rapid growth. ''That's one of the great possibilities here,'' says Brown. ''This new industry has been growing up out West without a sense of social responsibility, but now they're starting to come to it.''
In addition to the Web site, there also will be a NetAid Foundation that will donate the proceeds from the concerts to refugees in Kosovo and Africa. And when the music stops, the site will live on. ''Five years ago, we didn't have any idea how rampant e-commerce and the Net would be,'' Listwin says. ''Now if the Net could only have one-tenth the impact on social change as it is having on business, we could do great things.''
Tickets go on sale Sept. 8 for the Giants Stadium show and will be sold through T icketMaster and other venues.
