Were The Two Versions Of “We Are The World” Meaningful Humanitarian Efforts or Colossal Failures?

Analyzing the impact of The 1985 and 2010 industry-wide charity singles

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Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash

Did the songs We Are The World (WATW) and We Are The World 25 Haiti (WATW25) substantially help sub-Saharan Africa and Haiti?

Sub-Saharan Africa and Haiti are on fire right now. While the former is experiencing several civil wars across the region, the latter is still politically recovering from the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse.

While the political and war-themed headlines related to sub-Saharan Africa and Haiti may not reach the eyes of most people in the West, both nations were all over the news in 1985 and 2010, respectively.

Why was that?

At the time, the music industry was blasting WATW and WATW25 across our screens and radios to convince us to donate to help people facing disastrous life-threatening events like famines and earthquakes.

For this piece, I will measure how effective these charity songs were for the causes they were responsible for addressing. More specifically, I will dissect the following four factors for both events:

Cause — Was there a clear cause? Were there clear objectives?

Dollars Donated — How much money did the charity song raise?

Distribution — How was the money distributed? What organization was in charge of distributing materials to victims?

Impact — How many people were supported thanks to the funds raised?

Next, I will talk about the exciting and upcoming 2024 We Are The World NOW (WATWN) initiative. At the end of the piece, I will outline lessons from WATW and WATW25 that project leaders for WATWN should keep in mind when completing their new initiative.