Philanthropy Prodigy Establishes New Charity-Concert Model

Australian anti-poverty activist Hugh Evans, the 29-year-old chief organizer of next month’s Global Festival 2012 benefit concert in New York’s Central Park, is the subject of a profile in The New York Times.

The Sept. 29 show headlined by rockers the Black Keys, Foo Fighters, and Neil Young seeks to establish a new model for charity concerts, focused more on action than straight fundraising. Admission is free, but would-be attendees must earn tickets through activities such as spreading information about poverty and disease through social media, signing digital petitions, or donating to global aid groups.

The goal is to “gamify the whole experience” and create a “sustainable movement” to pressure world political leaders to ease developing countries’ debt burden and increase foreign aid, according to Mr. Evans, a poverty campaigner since his mid-teens whom the article describes as akin to a “prodigy” in the philanthropic world.

While at college Mr. Evans started the Oaktree Foundation, which has raised millions of dollars for education in the third world. He subsequently led a successful effort to get Australia to double its foreign aid and now heads the Global Poverty Project, the nonprofit group behind the Central Park concert.