Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, April 23, 1990                   TAG: 9004210427
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: E-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ROGER CATLIN THE HARTFORD COURANT
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

GROUP BEHIND `WE ARE THE WORLD' CLOSES SHOP

For USA for Africa, the organization behind "We Are the World," that time came five years ago this spring.

And went.

All told, the organization raised $60 million for hunger relief, chiefly from the sale of merchandise surrounding "We Are the World," which became the best-selling single in history.

Sales of the song, written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie, reached 7.3 million singles. Children's choirs included it in annual programs. The album sold more than 4 million copies. It became the inspiration for a dozen subsequent superstar charity sing-along singles. And the tune became so well-known, it spawned a number of parodies as well.

The single began its four-week reign at No. 1 five years ago this week. On Good Friday, April 5, 1985 - five years ago last Thursday - in an unprecedented move, some 8,000 radio stations worldwide simultaneously played "We Are the World" at noon.

Today, you'd be hard-pressed to hear the song on any radio station. It would be even tougher to find it in record stores - mainly because CBS records stopped pressing and distributing the vinyl two years ago.

And while once the founding goal was to find a solution to world hunger, the goal of the modest, seven-person operation these days is to merely close shop.

"USA for Africa is winding up its operation," executive director Marcia Thomas said in a phone interview from Los Angeles. "We'll be winding up at the end of the year. We're not planning any new events. Basically, we're just preparing to close up."

After years of asking for contributions, USA for Africa is no longer accepting donations.

"We never started out to form an organization," said Ken Kragen, an originator of USA for Africa, who remains on the board. "There are lots of organizations working in these areas doing some good jobs. This organization was created strictly to distribute money that was raised."

In all, "We Are the World" and its spinoff, Hands Across America, formed a year later, raised $106 million, of which $2 million remains to be distributed this year. Once the rest of the money is allocated, USA for Africa's job is over. (The organization's administrative costs have been paid for solely from interest realized from the contributions; no principal was spent on overhead.)

Nevertheless, famine in Africa has not subsided. In fact, famine in Ethiopia, complicated by an ongoing civil war, is feared to be reaching the kind of crisis stage that existed in 1984-85, when the starvation deaths of 500,000 people led to the fund-raising single.

There is now more awareness of homelessness and domestic hunger as well, Kragen said, partly as a result of the May 26, 1985, Hands Across America campaign.

That event, which involved nearly 6 million Americans who failed to hold hands across the nation, as planned, was organized partly as a reaction to USA for Africa, Kragen said.