Alicia Keys Contest Will Take Five Fans With Her To Africa; YouTube Concert Tonight
Grammy Award-winning vocalist Alicia Keys is launching a contest through her charity, the Keep a Child Alive foundation, that will give five people an opportunity to visit the continent with her. She says her first trip to Africa was emotional and inspiring, and she wants to share the experience again, but this time with fans.
“I was able to see the great separation between have and have not,” Keys told the Associated Press. Her foundation provides life-saving treatment, care and support to families affected by HIV/AIDS in Africa and India. “I was able to see the incredible spirit of people. I was able to learn firsthand about the AIDS pandemic of Africa.”
Keys will announce the contest today (December 1), which is World AIDS Day, when she performs at the Nokia Theatre in New York. The concert will air live on YouTube at 8 p.m. ET, 5 p.m. PT. She will be performing songs from her upcoming CD, The Element of Freedom, which is due December 15 and features the Smooth Jazz Top 20 hit single “Doesn’t Mean Anything.”
Fans will be able to enter the contest online at the foundation’s Web site, or by sending a text. The fee for the text is $5, but it will be donated to Keep a Child Alive. Keys said the winners, who will travel throughout Africa for five days sometime next year, will visit the people and places that were most influential to her.
To learn more about Alicia’s foundation or the contest, go to keepachildalive.org.