USA FOR AFRICA: READY TO HELP THE USA

“They was here and then they was gone,” said June Sketo. “It was beautiful, them all together and singing.”

The way she talked, the grandmotherly manager of the Taft Salvation Army Thrift Store on Center Street might have been discussing last year’s fashionable compassion for African famine victims.

But no. From the store’s front window she was marveling at how quickly 100 celebrities could come in a convoy of Greyhound Americruisers into her dusty San Joaquin Valley oil town, hold hands with 1,200 common townsfolk for a few hours of filming, then, vanish back to Hollywood.

Throughout the daylong do on a Saturday last weekend, no stars stopped by the store, which helps feed and pay gas bills for the poverty-stricken of Taft and other central California towns. (“Sure we’ve got ‘em here. I guess there’s homeless people just about everywhere,” she said.)

Two of the moving forces behind USA for Africa--Ken Kragen and his starry client, Kenny Rogers--plan to change that this year. They started putting their plan into action in Taft when they rolled in to make a three-minute TV commercial and then departed nearly as quickly as last year’s celebrated all-star sing-along (a year ago this Tuesday). That time, it was to save starving Ethiopian babies.

That’s all right with June Sketo. America has its starving too. The singing outside her store was “just beautiful,” she kept repeating.

Diana Ross, Rogers and dozens of other stars were kept segregated from Taft most of the day. Star singers practiced inside the Skate Escape roller rink while townsfolk practiced three blocks away in the Fox movie theater. Celebrities inside the skating rink ate a catered lunch (deep-pit barbecue sirloin tips and apple pie, from Leonard’s of Taft), while town residents lined up outside for free Cokes and hot dogs.

But they finally did get together for an egalitarian hour of singing on the streets of Taft, although the song was not “We Are the World.”

While he hopes to pick up that perennial hit’s sales following next month’s Grammy Awards, USA for Africa founder Ken Kragen has shifted the focus of his foundation away from Africa in 1986.

The song this day was new, “Hands Across America.” According to Kragen, just as “We Are the World” was the famine anthem last year, this one is a sure-fire hit, destined to be this year’s anti-hunger theme song, even with sentimental lyrics like:

“This sky so serene / has felt the kiss of countless dreams / and this earth that smells so sweet / cradles us all in its great heartbeat.”

Kragen, 48, manager of Rogers and Lionel Richie, is figuring that some 6 million Americans will pay $10 each to stand in a coast-to-coast line May 25 and sing “Hands Across America.”

The Taft commercial--celebrities swaying hand-in-hand with middle-class America in joyous song to raise $100 million for America’s needy--is scheduled to debut today in the Super Bowl pregame show on NBC.

“This is something that is going to be remembered and enjoyed by all of us for the rest of our lives,” Kragen preached to the townspeople of Taft.

Mrs. Sketo was pleased that USA for Africa’s camera eye has come around to America’s homeless and hungry rather than those half a globe away in the wastelands of Africa: “I’m for helping people but I think we should help people at home first,” she said.

“This doesn’t mean we’re forgetting about Africa,” Kragen said a couple days earlier to a packed press conference/rally at West Hollywood’s nifty Le Bel Age Hotel. He called it the official “kick-off” buffet bash for Hands Across America.

He said he wanted to emphasize that his organization would continue to earn and spend money on Africa.

(According to USA for Africa figures released last week, the foundation had taken in $42.5 million and spent $13.5 million. One month before, the foundation had only spent $7.3 million.)

For the moment, even Marty Rogol, USA for Africa executive director, conceded that the famine spotlight has shifted to America. He defends the shift. It is a practical and clever way of keeping fickle Middle America focused on the fundamental issue of ending hunger by the year 2000, he said.

“The issue is hunger and whatever way we can raise people’s awareness is important, whether it’s here or in Africa,” he said. “The issue of hunger has been at the forefront of people’s consciousness now for about 14 months. With Hands Across America, we hope to keep it there another six to eight months.

“Then we’ll pick up on Africa again.”

Despite its new all-American direction, USA for Africa continues to have its troubles with Africa.

Following a contract dispute, the only on-site representative USA for Africa actually had in Africa--Charles Moed--quit last month. Since Moed’s last trip to the Sudan in October, USA for Africa officials have had few direct dealings with the dying continent they set out to save a year ago.

There have been no USA for Africa representatives in Africa to monitor spending and watch for emergency needs for more than three months. The day-to-day oversight of USA for Africa’s spending has been contracted out: Operation California is paid $15,000 a month to monitor procurement programs so that Rogol and his staff can concentrate on administering USA for Africa in the U.S.A.

(Hands Across America will operate on a separate budget from USA for Africa. Kragen said that administrative overhead will cost about 28% of its hoped-for income of $100 million.

(Rogol is quick to point out that USA for Africa spent about $500,000 on administrative overhead during its first year, which he said is less than 2% of its income. Most of that money came from interest earned on short-term Treasury bills that USA for Africa purchased with foundation funds.

(But many charities could never pay their administrative costs with interest earned from donations alone, Rogol said. They use as much as 40% of their total annual income just on overhead.)

Rogol said he is interviewing candidates for two or three new positions that will require some travel to Africa to see how the money is being spent, but is deferring at present to Operation California president Richard Walden. But Walden, who operates out of a modest office over a Melrose Avenue clothing store, won’t go to Africa in the near future, Rogol said.

There are other signs of how tough the job of saving a continent really can be, especially from a Hollywood vantage point.

As one dissident within the foundation recently observed: “It’s hard to tell what’s going on in Africa when you’re sitting in your office staring at the Hollywood sign.” The famous sign is visible on clear days from Rogol’s conference room at foundation headquarters on the 14th floor of a Century City high-rise.

But the only time that Rogol or anyone else associated with the USA for Africa administration visited Africa was during a two-week tour last June during which a well-publicized airlift of $1 million in food and supplies was flown to Ethiopia and Sudan. A second airlift of $92,000 in infant nutrients was flown to Sudan in July, but no one from USA for Africa accompanied the shipment.

Foundation officials canceled planned airlifts last fall to drought-stricken countries like Mali, Niger and Chad. Rogol said at the time that USA for Africa resources could be more effectively used on buying discounted supplies and overseeing fund raising at home than on flashy but not particularly cost-effective airlifts.

Despite the note of urgency that marked its beginnings, USA for Africa has settled into a routine of accepting or rejecting project proposals from organizations like the Red Cross, CARE, Save the Children, Africare and World Vision.

But money was never really the point, insofar as rock charity was concerned. The point, said the Red Cross’ Ralph Wright Jr., is publicity.

He should know. His title is Information Delegate for the League of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Ethiopia.

“We’ll spend $150 million in Ethiopia alone this year,” Wright said of his own relief agency.

All the rock charities combined earned less than $125 million in 1985, he pointed out. The Red Cross received more help from the Mormon Church than from Live Aid and USA for Africa combined--and with only a fraction of the publicity.

The Red Cross will continue to be among those agencies that ask USA for Africa for money, but in the larger scheme of things, the total amount of money USA for Africa has taken in is “a fire-extinguisher amount of water to put out a forest fire,” Wright said.

Officials like Wright and UNICEF’s special projects director, Peter Hansen, acknowledge that the publicity has been beneficial--even invaluable--in getting the message to America that Africa is in trouble.

Hansen takes it a step further, pointing out that USA for Africa’s high profile has actually filled an “advocacy” vacuum in Washington.

“Before ‘We Are the World,’ Congress didn’t want to allocate much to African famine at all,” Hansen said.

Following the wide popularity of the song, constituency-sensitive lawmakers voted more than $800 million for African relief in 1985. President Reagan, who had been lukewarm about sending U.S. tax dollars to Marxist regimes like Ethiopia and Mozambique, approved the funding without protest.

But Kragen’s role as advocate/publicist has removed him and his organization from the day-to-day needs of famine victims, as he willingly acknowledges.

Following the formula that has made him a Hollywood success story, he delegates the problems of spending charity dollars in Africa to others and concentrates on what he does best: drumming up popular support for causes or star clients.

“Good quality on-site people (in Africa) are not cheap,” Kragen told Calendar. USA for Africa is looking for them, he assured.

But on-site representatives in Ethiopia or Sudan might be considered necessary, especially for an organization whose hierarchy for the most part--including Myra Lebo, Rogol’s chief assistant, and director of procurement Tracy Gordon--has never been to Africa.

Such simple matters as currency exchange rates, customs fees and shipping charges become expensive roadblocks in Africa. Even with an on-site diplomat to shepherd food shipments to famine victims and to watch over road-building and well-digging projects, there are no guarantees that supplies and funds will get past thieves, embezzlers and underpaid civil servants.

“That’s why USA for Africa would be well-advised to work through existing relief organizations to the greatest extent possible,” said an executive of one relief agency that has received USA for Africa grants in recent months. “Most of us have already learned how to overcome those obstacles.”

In addition to Moed, the foundation treasurer Len Freedman resigned from the board of directors this month. Kragen said the demands on Freedman’s time have been too heavy. His accounting firm, Jess Morgan Co., has been keeping track of the 300 contribution checks that continue to come in to USA for Africa on the average day.

They total about $10,000 a day, Kragen told Calendar.

Freedman will be replaced on the board by Richard deBlois of the international accounting firm of Ernst & Whinney, which has offices in Nairobi. Said Rogol, “It’s possible their people over there can go to double- check on some of our projects.”

Unlike Freedman’s firm, which contributed its services, Ernst & Whinney will charge for bookkeeping. It will be $7,500 a month, or what Kragen said is about half the normal fee for corporate customers.

Similarly, attorney and board secretary Jay Cooper is also now on a USA for Africa retainer. Cooper figured that he was contributing about $35,000 worth of legal services monthly to USA for Africa shortly after it incorporated last January. Since adding the burden of Hands Across America last summer, he now charges the organization at a rate of $140 per hour. He said his usual fee is $250 an hour.

“It just got to the point where I was just losing too much money,” Cooper explained.

Generally, critics will speak of USA for Africa only on condition that their names not be used, for the obvious reason that they fear retribution. But off the record, they’re as stern in their criticism as the Red Cross’s Ralph Wright.

Said Wright, “Part of the problem working in the celebrity world is that everybody has to get credit. My biggest complaint pure and simple is that the expectation levels of these people in Africa--the field workers, the government people, the relief agencies--were raised by USA for Africa and Live Aid and, by and large, they were disappointed.”

Wright and others point out that USA for Africa and Live Aid want to be able to point to high-profile items that they’ve bought rather than salaries or expenses of relief workers. Proposals to buy tangibles such as trucks, shoes and food are welcomed, but a nurse’s wages or relief camp worker’s plane fare home is not.

Responded Kragen, “I think that’s an unfair criticism. Last May, we wanted to present ourselves in such a way as to keep the ball rolling and to keep the resources flowing. In order to keep the income rolling in, you have to have certain criteria and you must limit the kinds of projects you want to go into.”

During an interview in his Sunset Strip office, he displayed a color photograph of a fleet of 15 tractors bought for Ethiopia and the Sudan. Kragen said he was offering no false-modest apology for the USA for Africa insignia painted on the front of each vehicle. It was a $150,000 expenditure for 15 tractors that involved a substantial discount. The foundation will be able to put the picture on display any time that a potential contributor might ask for proof that USA for Africa monies are well spent.

“But I don’t remember ever approving a certain project just because it was high profile,” Kragen said. “I can remember saying let’s go into a project jointly with Band Aid so we can put to rest any question that (Bob) Geldof and I aren’t getting along.”

It was for just that reason that USA for Africa and the London-based Band Aid/Live Aid Trust each chipped in $75,000 recently to build a “music” bridge over a river in Chad.

Kragen further countered critics with a story out of Africa, where Sudanese officials asked Kragen and Harry Belafonte point blank last June to establish a $500,000 joint checking account with municipal leaders of the central Saharan town of Nyala.

“We’re not going to give anybody a blank check,” Kragen said. “We have no intention of financing somebody’s vacation home in Switzerland.”

Representatives of the World Food Program, Red Cross, UNICEF and several other famine relief organizations have all sought general grants that amount to the kind of “blank checks” that Kragen scorns. The organizations contend that their track records as relief experts with dozens of years of experience should be proof enough that they would spend the money wisely.

Though Kragen said he does not mean to imply that the World Food Program might be building Swiss chalets with “We Are the World” royalties, he defends the demand for accountability. Tangible goods are one way of insuring that each dollar spent is spent well.

“At the time of the recording session (for “We Are the World”) the initial notion was that we would have a single or maybe an album, raise a few million dollars and everybody would go their separate ways,” Rogol said.

Instead, the song became the basis for a movement that generated more money more quickly than Belafonte, Kragen, Rogol or anyone in the project ever figured. As a result, USA for Africa has made some errors, Rogol said.

But he said he learned from his mistakes: “I think Hands Across America will be a lot quicker in distributing the money. We have more time up front because the event is still several months off. I’m going to use this time right now to set up the spending process.”

If the project nets the $100 million, Rogol said he plans to make about 15,000 grants to worthy U.S. organizations that deal with the halt and the hungry within as little as six weeks of the Memorial Day daisy chain.

One of those organizations might well be the Salvation Army, Rogol said.

“They’ve been active in distributing food,” he said.

“I got to see Kenny Rogers and his wife. And Susie . . . what’s her name? Anton. That’s it,” said Salvation Army trooper June Sketo.

None of them came into her store though.

“The only one we had to come in the store here was Billy something or other--one of the dancers on ‘Fame.’ ”

But the dancer didn’t come in to support the Army’s long standing program of selling donated second-hand goods to raise money to feed America’s homeless and hungry.

“He came in ‘cause the young girls was mobbing him,” said Mrs. Sketo.

She gave him a glass of water and let him hide out in the rest room until his adoring throng went back into the street for more autographs and ogling.

He didn’t buy anything, but Mrs. Sketo didn’t really expect him to. She was simply grateful that her granddaughter was able to get his autograph.