Queen, featuring Adam Lambert on lead, and Elton John are set to play the Elena Pinchuk ANTIAIDS Foundation show in Kiev the night before the Euro 2012 Final.
Adam Lambert. Photo by Ros O'Gorman.
The June 30 show at Independence Square is a charity event dedicated to the fight against HIV/AIDS and is expected to draw hundreds of thousands of people to the main square in Kiev along with being watched by millions in the Ukraine and Poland.
This is not the first time either act has stepped forward to fight HIV and AIDS in the Ukraine. From the press release:
Sir Elton John, whose AIDS Foundation has been working in Ukraine since 2002, first joined forces with the Elena Pinchuk ANTIAIDS Foundation in 2007 with a free national concert and a joint nationwide programme aimed at helping HIV-positive children. Elena Pinchuk ANTIAIDS Foundation provided a grant of 2.5 million USD for the five-year project “Children+”, which was also supported by the Big Lottery Fund from the UK. To date, the programme has directly supported over 3,000 children infected and affected by HIV/AIDS.
In 2011 the two Foundations presented a second initiative to the public – a new joint charity project providing prevention and care services for homeless girls and young women who live and work on the streets of Kiev, one in five of whom are living with HIV.
One of the lasting results of a concert by Queen + Paul Rodgers at the Kharkov Plosha Svobody (the Liberty Square) organized in cooperation with the Mercury Phoenix Trust (www.mercuryphoenixtrust.com) in September 2008 was a new care centre for HIV-positive children in the Zelenogaisky orphanage in Kharkov which was repaired and renovated using the funds raised the concert.
