Cisco Systems Inc has teamed with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to end extreme poverty. Rather than just, say, giving part of Cisco’s profits to the poor, the company and the UNDP have decided to hold a rock concert. After all, the same strategy proved stunningly effective at back in the eighties when it was first tried. Scheduled for October 9 1999, Cisco’s twist on Band Aid will be held at three sites: the Giants stadium in New Jersey, Wembley in London and the Palais de Nations in Geneva. The simultaneous concerts will be broadcast over the web under the stunningly original name, NetAid.
Unfortunately extreme poverty is on the rise and existing tools and resources to combat the world’s worst poverty are clearly insufficient, observed UNDP administrator Mark Malloch Brown. But Cisco’s router technology, combined with donated expertise from KPMG, Akamai Technologies and RealNetworks, will soon fix that. Brown explained that the concerts will: create new virtual communities that will work together to eradicate extreme poverty. Actually, the proceeds will go to yet another Western aid organization, this one called the NetAid Foundation, which promises to spend it on refugees in the Kosovo conflict and the poor in Africa. Isn’t that’s the beauty of the web? Put net in front of the name and suddenly, everything old is new again.
