NetAid was launched on October 9 1999 by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Cisco Systems through a series of high-profile rock concerts designed to raise money and awareness about hunger and poverty. Taking place in Geneva, London, and New York, these concerts were web-cast around the world (reaching 132 nations).

Information and communication technology (ICT) is, as this launch process suggests, key to NetAid's strategy for building an active network of individuals and organisations committed to its mission. As detailed on the NetAid website, NetAid created online outreach and advocacy programmes during its first few years, launching an online volunteering programme which used the internet to match motivated individuals with poverty-fighting organisations. (By the end of 2003, more than 5,000 people from 75 countries were offering their skills as translators, fundraisers, and web designers to groups around the world.)

A key focus of NetAid's work is educating, inspiring and empowering new generations of young people to fight global poverty throughout their lives. In addition to its interactive web offerings, NetAid carries out various initiatives to engage youth, such as:

• NetAid Global Citizen Corps - empowers high school students in the United States to educate and rally their peers in efforts to end global poverty
• NetAid Global Action Awards - honours high schools students in the USA who take outstanding actions to improve the lives of the world's economically poorest people
• NetAid World Schoolhouse - connects individuals and organisations to local projects that help the world's economically poorest children go to school

The goal of these programmes (click here to read more about them) is to create a movement of informed youth who understand the root causes of global poverty and are committed to ending it.

Hunger, Poverty, Economic Development, Rights.

NetAid aims to: facilitate community building, direct communications, and coordination among the millions of people dedicated to these aims; act as a one-stop resource for people interested in making a commitment to change; build new online tools to promote exchanges of ideas and success stories; help developing country partners get access to and learn to utilise new technologies; and issue periodic calls to action on items of urgency and focus attention on what works.