Keep a Child Alive, the Brooklyn-based nonprofit that benefits children and families in Africa living with HIV/AIDS, held its fifth annual Black Ball last Thursday at Hammerstein Ballrooom. More than 1,000 people gathered to raise money, reward the philanthropic honorees, and enjoy a lineup of performers that included host and co-founder Alicia Keys, Chris Daughtry, and Justin Timberlake.
The Condé Nast Media Group-sponsored evening was something of a marathon, with some staying for cocktails, dinner, the auction, the award presentation, and the concluding concert, a lineup that lasted almost six hours. For guests, the event’s dependably A-list roster of musicians was a distracting highlight, but planners within the organization aimed to combat this draw by maintaining the message of need in Africa throughout the evening.
"We're constantly looking for new ways to be able to talk about the issue of AIDS in Africa,” says Keep a Child Alive creative director Earle Sebastian, who was charged with conceptualizing the theme of this year’s event. “On our last trip to Africa, we documented the ways people survived, interviewing them, and the last question we asked each of them was ‘What is your dream?’ Their answers are so simple, and so smart. They just want to help themselves and others who are in similar situations.”
Responses ranged from simple daily necessities (a bowl of rice or a toothbrush), to the more complex desires for their futures and their families (companionship and photographs of those they’ve lost). Sebastian turned to designer David Stark to incorporate the responses into the decor and the night’s theme of “Museum of Dreams.” Stark took literal and imaginative interpretations of the dreams and placed them under bell jars in Hammerstein’s lobby and on tables in the dining room. Guests sat before centerpieces as simple as a solitary egg encased in glass, treated like something precious, as it is by so many in need.
One way to help those dreams come true is to maintain adequate funding, and in a trying economic climate, many charities suffer greatly. As Keep a Child global ambassador Padma Lakshmi pointed out during the opening remarks, even the wealthiest are less willing to pledge donations with so much uncertainty in the air. Planners at Keep a Child Alive attempted to troubleshoot this threat beforehand by introducing a live auction—and positioning it after a few wrenching testimonials from some of the people who’ve benefited from funds raised at previous Black Balls.
Christie's auctioneers oversaw bidding for more than 10 packages that included trips to Africa and a year's membership to global concierge service Quintessentially. The reward for the non-winning audience, however, had to be the Jamie Reid-signed “God Save the Queen” poster, which resulted in a very animated bidding war between Queen Latifah and John Mayer. The auction helped Keep a Child Alive raise the event's total take to more than $2.4 million.
