A graphic designer from Rio de Janeiro, an essential service worker from New York, and a music teacher from Calcutta among others have sung “We are the World” to spread the message of “love, hope and unity”.

Eighty “ordinary people” who love to sing or are musically inclined from 32 countries have collaborated for the project, initiated by the music teacher at Don Bosco Park Circus to talk about some positivity when “deaths, unemployment and poverty have cast a dark shadow over the entire humanity”.

The 8.10-minute music video was launched last Saturday with people from different time zones singing from the confines of their homes.

The song goes: “There comes a time… when the world must come together as one/There are people dying/Oh, and it’s time to lend a hand to life/The greatest gift of all.”

“The idea is to tell people that no one is suffering alone but the entire world is facing this crisis. We are in it together and we need to combat it together,” Peter Gomes, head of the music department at Don Bosco Park Circus, said.

He said he chose the iconic song created by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie in 1985.

Not all who featured in the video was known to Gomes personally but he set the ball rolling on social media and connected with friends abroad who introduced him to their friends.

One criterion was all had to be singers.

“It didn’t matter if it was only a few seconds that we were singing but it was singing in unison with people from so many countries,” Melanie Trindade, the head of merchandise planning section in a kids fashion brand in Warsaw, Poland, said.

Trindade participated with her husband Philip Gracias and daughter Heather.

“It did help to cheer ourselves up and hope it will cheer others, too,” she said.

Sloan Thomas of New York sent his recording in between doing his duty as an “essential service” person as he had to provide hotspots to people working from home.

“I was not at home during the lockdown because my work demanded being on the field and we were considered essential service providers because we had to support people with Internet access as they were mostly working from home,” Thomas said. “Living in a city which is one of the hardest hit, the idea of the song is to bring back the strength of people and fight it together.”

Thomas works in a networking and communications company.

Back in the city, for Gomes it was a mammoth task coordinating with people from different time zones from his own “studio bedroom”.

“I had to stay up the whole night discussing plans with people in Europe and the US. In the morning I coordinated with people in Australia and East Asia. But it was all worth it, uniting the world together in such depressing times and what better way than music,” Gomes said.

Mister Martinho from Brazil’s Rio edited and compiled the video.

The music video has received 9,600 views as on Friday.