Global Citizen CEO on what to expect from the 'One World: Together at Home' benefit event

Global Citizen CEO Hugh Evans joined Yahoo Finance's Jen Rogers, Myles Udland, Dan Roberts, and Melody Hahm to discuss the 'One World: Together at Home' event taking place on Saturday, April 18th to benefit the frontline works of the coronavirus crisis.

Video Transcript

MYLES UDLAND: All right, welcome back to Yahoo Finance Live. Myles Udland here, in New York. We're joined now by Hugh Evans. He is the CEO of Global Citizen, joining us to discuss the watch One World: Together at Home concert coming up this Saturday night. So Hugh, thanks for joining. I guess, tell us a little bit about this event, your guys' involvement in it, and what the group is trying to accomplish with this event.

HUGH EVANS: Well, thank you very much, Myles, for having me on your program today. So the whole purpose of One World: Together at Home, is to provide a moment around the world. To bring everyone together to celebrate and support the community health workers who are at the forefront of fighting COVID-19.

It all started a few weeks ago, when we received a phone call from the United Nations Deputy Secretary General, Amina Mohammed, and the head of the WHO, Dr. Ted Ross, who asked us if we could mobilize the artist ambassadors behind Global Citizen to support efforts to promote social distancing. At that point in time, Chris Martin of Coldplay, he started an acoustic performance in his living room that went viral, as part of Together at Home, and all of a sudden, artists around the world started doing it.

And then a week or so later, Lady Gaga called because Dr. Ted Ross of the WHO had asked her-- because her mom is a WHO ambassador-- to curate a global special. And so we wanted to use this moment to bring the artist community, to bring the private sector, to bring philanthropists together, who are raising critical funds to support frontline community health workers.

JEN ROGERS: And Hugh, in terms of raising funds, you are no stranger to that. You are going out and trying to get money every day from people. Is it harder, or is it easier right now? And harder in the sense that, look, we know what the labor market is looking like. We just got a new data point on that. People are losing their jobs. Or easier, because people are coming together and want to help.

HUGH EVANS: It's a great question, Jennifer. I think-- the first thing I'd say is that, this is not about doing a telethon. It's as you say, over 10 million people have filed for unemployment in the last month. And so we didn't want this to be the moment where we asked people to pull out their wallets. Instead what we decided to do was, use this is a moment to ask the private sector and philanthropists to step up.

And so amazing companies like Johnson & Johnson, Procter and Gamble, both Coke and Pepsi, Verizon, Cisco, IBM, so many others that stepped up alongside the Rockefeller Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies. Everyone started contributing and in the first week alone, we were able to raise over the $35 million for COVID relief. And we're hoping by the time the special ends this weekend, that that number will be significantly higher. So we have been working extremely hard. And thanks to Lady Gaga, who chaired a phone call with many CEOs of the Fortune 100 companies alongside our partner, Declan Kelly at Teneo, who helped bring everyone together.

So it's been a big effort. And to your question, Jennifer, I think what we're finding is that, because this is such an urgent crisis, that everyone's willing to put down their normal competitive spirit and jump in and all support it together.

- Hey Hugh. I think Global Citizen clearly has become a household name in many regards, especially with a lot of the A-list artists who tend to take the stage. When you think about the struggling artists and the independent artists who were so dependent on going to their local bar, and doing a set, and raising some money that way, are there any plans for you to really support those up-and-coming artists, those people whose tours got canceled and unfortunately don't have income right now, given this crisis?

HUGH EVANS: So what we've been doing, every single day since Chris Martin kicked it off, is we've been encouraging every artist around the world to be part of the Global Citizen Together at Home platform. We're finding hundreds and hundreds of artists every single week. Independent, local artists are participating. And we're using the Global Citizen platform to promote their work.

We're also really encouraged that our partner at Live Nation launched a fund to support many of the important stuff that are behind the scenes. Because all tours are on hold at the moment, there's so many staff that are out of work. And so we're really encouraged that Live Nation put together that urgent fund of $10 million to get that going. Ultimately, I think that nothing is going to replace live music. And the one way we're going to be able to restart live music, is if we can fight COVID-19 by making testing readily available to everyone, for free.

And until that day, I think it's going to be extremely hard to reopen the economy. And so all of our efforts are focused on, how do we advocate for governments to make sure they are providing free testing so we can reopen the economy?

MYLES UDLAND: And then, Hugh, just to wrap up on that point, obviously everything at every organization is in flux right now. And no one really knows what the next six, 9, 12 months look like. You guys are putting this event on preliminarily as you think about your plans for the next year. How have you guys approached things so far, in terms of trying to get events out the door?

I think right now, everyone is excited about having anything. Whether it's Zoom, virtual, or what have you. How are you guys approaching this environment?

HUGH EVANS: Well in the first instance, when all of our initial plans were put on hold, we just wanted to be useful. We just wanted to be helpful. So we redeployed all of our infrastructure that we usually use for Central Park and for Global Citizen in New York every year, September, and we focused it all on this. And so we've got 200, 300 people around the world working full time right now to make One World: Together at Home so important.

But as we look further afield, after the summer, we've been thinking a lot about a range of scenarios that we're going to be exploring over the coming days. Right now, because we're sprinting towards Saturday, we haven't had a whole lot of time to be able to plan what's going to be further afield come September, but we're going to make some announcements in early May on that.

MYLES UDLAND: All right. Hugh Evans is the CEO of Global Citizen. The One World: Together at Home concert tonight-- or, tonight-- Saturday night, 8:00 eastern. NBC, CBS, ABC here in the States. You can watch it online a variety of platforms. Facebook, Instagram, Amazon Prime, among others. Hugh, thanks so much for joining us today and we'll talk to you soon.

HUGH EVANS: Thank you so much, Myles. Appreciate it.