FEATURE: Celebrities give generously, but few leave behind glitz

FEATURE: Celebrities give generously, but few leave behind glitz and glamour for devastation of Aceh By Eric Unmacht, dpa Eds: epa photos of Warner and Toomer available = Banda Aceh (dpa)

Few celebrities leave glitz behind for Aceh

Eric Unmacht Guardian News Service/Banda Aceh

Celebrities love to get behind a good cause -- especially a non- political one.

They'll literally sing and dance around it, as shown by recent tsunami fund-raising performances by Alicia Keys, Stevie Wonder, Bono and Slash at the Grammy awards.

They'll also put their names and faces on it and open their wallets for it.

Yet, there are far fewer celebrities who are willing to leave behind the glitz and glamor to travel across the globe to temporarily live in it, as was the case with American football players Kurt Warner and Amani Toomer, who recently visited Aceh, the area worst hit by the Dec. 26 tsunami.

"Obviously this is huge and bigger than anything I can recall and I think America has done a whole bunch," said New York Giants quarterback Kurt Warner. "But a lot of what we do in America is still to give money."

"So often we think we're rich, we can give some money, and it's awesome and goes a long way, but to give time and effort I think goes even farther," he said.

Nearly two months after a tsunami decimated coastlines around the Indian Ocean, aid groups are trying to line up high-profile personalities to visit and keep attention on the area in the months and years to come.

But the job of persuading celebrities to leave behind the comforts of life in the fast lane is often not an easy task.

Besides the football players, earlier this month, former singer Cat Stevens, who turned his back on the industry in the late 1970s for a life devoted to Islam and changed his name to Yusuf Islam, briefly remerged into the spotlight to visit this deeply religious province in the world's most populous Moslem nation.

They are among the few celebrities to have visited Aceh to lend what they have most to offer -- the publicity that naturally follows them around.

A posse of photographers, cameramen and reporters spent three days with the American National Football Leaguers, who came on behalf of the UN World Food Program (WFP).

Warner and Toomer helped to unload goods from a relief helicopter in an area of Sumatra's decimated west coast, visited members of the U.S. Navy on a hospital ship, showed kids how to play American football and helped clear rubble in the city.

Some of the horrific scenes they saw may partly explain why few celebrities jump to make these journeys into the heart of the cause they're striving to help.

"You can't imagine," said Giant's wide receiver Toomer. "I was talking about it with Kurt and some of the other guys and you can't imagine how big and how much force would have to be used to make a wave that size. When you see cars all mangled up, worse than you'd see in fatal car accidents, it's just, just very shocking."

In addition to the emotional toll, for stars looking for celebrity treatment, there's not much to be found. The football players slept on cots in UN tents with the other aid workers and shared the same breakfast of oatmeal.

But those trying to drum up support for the aid efforts say these visits are invaluable to raising funds and other support in the developed world for the immediate cause and causes in other countries, as well.

"There are corporations that spend millions and millions in getting celebrities to advertise because they sell more pop," said WFP marketing director Renae Morgavi. "There is definitely factual information and statistics that show you what a celebrity personality brings to the table."

"They're able to educate people, not just about this disaster, but about all the things happening in the world," she added.

One of the quiet grumbles from aid workers who see disasters like the tsunami getting so much attention is that other tragedies and conflicts also deserving attention continue to wallow in the relative media shadow.

"The Congo, Uganda, Ivory Coast, all of these places where people suffer and die every day in huge numbers, but don't receive a 100th of the attention and financing of what has happened here," said Joel Boutroue, head of UN relief operations in Aceh.

"The huge momentum and solidarity here is welcome," he said. "What we need to do is to make people touched by this suffering realize that there is huge amount of suffering happening in other countries as well, in Africa in particular."

Aid workers are trying to learn how to channel the attention from these high-profile tragedies to other lesser-known ones, but they say most of the value of these celebrity visits is still in bringing the immediate cause to forefront after the media attention dwindles.

Knowing this, the UN appointed former president Bill Clinton, who visited the region earlier this week with former president George Bush, as their special envoy for tsunami relief this month.

Nicole Kidman is expected to come for Unicef in March and soul legend James Brown is also scheduled to headline a fund-raising music festival in Indonesia that month.

"The emergency is almost behind us, it was pretty successful, but now the real hard part starts," Boutroue said. "We need people to keep the level of interest very high."

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GetDPA 1.10 -- FEB 17, 2005 14:43:08