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KHAYELITSHA, South Africa (AP) - "American Idol" viewers will never see this particular performance of anti-AIDS songs and dances in a modest community hall, but they helped pay for it.
After a star-studded "American Idol" extravaganza in April raised more than $75 million, the money is trickling down to charities in the United States and Africa. Five charities working in Africa each received $6 million, including an anti-AIDS peer education program where students fuse "What a Wonderful World" with African opera and break-dancing with traditional rhythms.
"In the cemetery there's young people. The youth are dying," said Mzamo Ngemntu, a 23-year-old peer educator in Khayelitsha, an impoverished Cape Town district of a million people. He said the project is all that stopped him from joining his many friends either in jail or in a grave.
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