Rock stars, humanitarian aid, and development efforts are far from being a new blend. Well to the contrary, events like Live Earth and organizations such as DATA were preceded by similar efforts more than twenty years ago. Many may still remember Live Aid, the concert held on July 13, 1985 in London, Philadelphia, Sidney and Moscow to raise funds to combat famine in Ethiopia and other African countries. Many more will remember the song “We Are the World,” which was performed on the Philadelphia stage.

More than forty-five popular artists — including Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, and Ray Charles — pulled an all-nighter to record it at a Hollywood studio in January 1985. The song was a collective hit in the U.S. and England, and sales from the single and related merchandise generated over $63 million for famine relief, though critics claim that artists made a mistake in giving the money directly to the governments of the affected countries.

Humanitarian relief and international development theory and practice have come a long way since 1985. Rather than focusing on monetary and material donations, the trend now is to enable poor countries to do well on their own through capacity building and the improvement of structural conditions that lock nations into poverty. DATA, the organization founded in 2002 by U2 lead singer Bono, Bobby Shriver, and activists of the Drop the Debt Campaign, has identified three key issues and adopted a clear-cut approach to eradicating extreme poverty and AIDS in Africa.

The key to DATA’s philosophy is embedded in its name. DATA stands for Debt, AIDS, Trade, Africa. Labeled “the triple crisis in Africa,” unpayable external debt, the AIDS epidemic, and unfair world trade conditions are the prime reasons that African nations remain poor.
Although the organization acts on a variety of fronts, in principle “DATA exists to hold leaders to their promises and to push them to go further,” according to its website. By leaders they mean the heads of the G8 (Group of Eight), the world largest economies and donors — the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Japan and Russia. For instance, in 2005 DATA “persuaded” the G8 nations to commit to a record increase in development assistance, extensive debt cancellation, universal access to education, and near universal access to AIDS and malaria treatment and prevention.

DATA is monitoring the progress of these commitments and holding G8 leaders accountable in the public eye. However, leaders of African countries are also checked upon by DATA, which also promotes democracy, accountability, and transparency — three necessary elements to assure that additional resources are utilized effectively.

But putting pressure on governments of Africa and G8 nations is not DATA’s only action front. Based in Washington, London and Berlin, DATA and its partner organizations are engaged in a comprehensive array of initiatives to help solve the triple crisis.

The ONE campaign, initially launched by DATA and eleven other organizations, now involves almost 3 million people and over 100 of the top non-profit and humanitarian organizations across the U.S. ONE raises public awareness and asks U.S. political leaders to do more to fight AIDS and extreme poverty. ONE Vote, their largest campaign so far, aims at making global health and extreme poverty priorities in the 2008 presidential election.

(Product) RED is another of DATA’s partners. It’s main objective is to engage private companies in the fight against AIDS in Africa. Companies that feature the RED mark on their products give a sizable percentage of the sales or part of the profits from those products to the Global Fund to finance AIDS programs in Africa. RED is the color of emergencies, and in addition to funds, the distinctive mark helps raise public awareness of the AIDS pandemic.

EDUN, a fair trade non-profit clothing company, is a third partner. EDUN’s mission is “to create beautiful clothing, while fostering sustainable employment in developing areas of the world,” with a focus on Africa, “the continent where every street corner boasts an entrepreneur,” as Bono stated in a recent Vanity Fair article. For instance, the EDUN Live brand fosters trade in Africa through the wholesale of blank cotton t-shirts, 100 percent African from grower to sewer.

DATA’s eight-member Board of Directors is made up of leading professionals with vast experience in politics, advocacy, finance, and development policy. The Board of Directors includes founders Bono, Jamie Drummond, and Bobby Shriver, together with personalities such as Susan A. Buffet — from the Sherwood Foundation and the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation — a former Intel executive, and officers from the Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation.

Below the Board of Directors, a ten-member Policy Advisory Board unites a seemingly disparate team of leading figures in international development, the arts, academia and the private sector, with a strong African presence. Here we can find a former finance and foreign Minister of Nigeria — actually the only woman in the history of that country to have occupied such positions — the executive secretary of the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa, two senior fellows from top U.S. research centers, an African religious leader and an anti-corruption crusader. They work together with top financial executives and entrepreneurial investors, the director of the Gates Foundation and the most celebrated musician in African history.

DATA boast a small permanent staff, though job ads for their communication and policy departments can often be seen on their website. In addition, unpaid internships are available occasionally in their Washington, D.C. office. Application procedures are pretty standard — cover letter, resume, and writing sample. Visit DATA’s website for more information.

Although celebrities’ involvement in international development has critics, DATA is a well-thought organization with clear and vigorous leadership. Critics such as famous economist William Easterly claim that some decaying celebrities benefit more from their charitable efforts than the people they are supposed to help in the first place. This is hard to say about DATA or Bono, who sees Africa “as an opportunity, an adventure, not a burden” and “the proving ground for whether or not we believe in equality.”