News: Jay-Z Promotes H20 At United Nations
Appearing at the United Nations headquarters in New York, rapper-turned-Def Jam president Jay-Z urged young people to get educated about the worldwide water crisis, citing that 1.1 billion people live without clean drinking water and 2.6 billion lack proper sanitation.
"I figure that once I stumbled upon that, if the information was out and young people knew that these problems exist while we're having Poland Springs at [restaurant] Cipriani and things like that, that we'll get involved," said Jay-Z, who has teamed with the UN and MTV to get the word out.
Born Shawn Carter, Jay-Z said he had been looking for a way to assist the less fortunate. After touring Africa, the rap mogul figured his celebrity could be used to inform the hip hop generation of Africa's water plight.
"As I started looking around and looking at ways that I could become helpful, it started at the first thing - water, something as simple as water," he said at a news conference at U.N. headquarters. "It took very little, very little to see these numbers."
MTV film crews will follow the rapper on his upcoming worldwide tour, which begins Sept. 9. "The Diary of Jay-Z: Water for Life" will feature first-person accounts of meetings with people around the world who lack water, MTV President Christina Norman said.
Jay-Z is planning to build 1,000 "play pumps" in Africa before the tour comes to an end. The device features a rudimentary merry-go-round that pumps water from a well into a storage tank as it spins.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan recalled how President Kennedy once remarked that anyone who could solve the world's water problems would get two Nobel Prizes - one for peace and one for science. "Together, we may yet inspire a young viewer to take up President Kennedy's challenge, and claim both those Nobel Prizes," Annan said. www.eurweb.com | 
