In my opinion there are currently two big Charities going strong on YouTube the first one is #TeamSeas and the $1.000.000 stream for St. Jude.
Lets firstly talk about the charity stream for St. Jude. This stream was the third part of the channel Game Theorist and its community to support the lifesaving mission of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is changing the way the world thinks about, treats, and defeats cancer in children and other life-threatening diseases. Because all a family should worry about is helping their kid live, your contribution ensures that families never get a bill from St. Jude for treatment, travel, housing, or food. St. Jude has contributed to an increase in juvenile cancer survival rates from fewer than 20% when we first opened to more than 80% now. In 2019, the Game Theorists began a series of livestreams for St. Jude, with fans donating $1.3 million. The Game Theorists held another livestream in 2020 to raise almost $3 million for the St. Jude mission after a year of uncertainty. The Game Theorists challenged their community to a livestream at the end of the year. The community in this livestream where over 50 creators came together for a 9 and half hour stream and raised over $1.6 million. In total, these streams have accumulated $6 million.
Then Team Seas, also known as #TeamSeas, is an international collaborative fundraiser endeavour run by the YouTubers MrBeast and Mark Rober. They hope to raise $30 million and pledge to remove 30 million pounds (14 million kg) of marine trash from the ocean by the end of 2021. This fundraiser is partnering with The Ocean Cleanup and the Ocean Conservancy. Team Seas is de successor of Team Trees, abbreviated as #TEAMTREES, which is a collaborative fundraising effort, also by Mr Beast and Mark Rober, that aimed to raise $20 million by the start off 2020 in order to plant 20 million trees. All the funds go to the Arbor Day Foundation, a tree-planting charity that promises to plant one tree for every dollar donated in the United States. The project has raised $23,556,817 by December 23, 2021, exceeding the fundraiser’s aim of planting 20 million trees. These 23 million trees would absorb 1.6 million tons of carbon and remove 116 thousand tons of chemical air pollution from the atmosphere, according to some estimates. Team Seas is currently only at 2/3 of their goal and only having 8 days left till the end of the year. Currently over 1000’s of creators are supporting the cause and asking for their viewers to donate. The thing I find inventive about team seas is that they try to tackle the source of oceans trash by removing the trash from the most toxic rivers and cleaning up beaches. Though I do not think that this is a permanent solution however it makes people more aware of the issue.
I think both of these charities are great causes and even though the St. Jude charity stream has ended you can if you haven’t bought all your Christmas presents for your family maybe think of donating for them to charity, it doesn’t matter if it is with these charities or others.
I love both these charities! I think collaborations like these are incredibly impressive and they do so much good. It’s a prime example of influencers using their platform for something good. Some of the Youtubers I watch, like RTgames and DougDoug, stream for charity quite often as well, I think it is wonderful when they match donations to a certain amount! Thank you for this positive article and reminding me not everything is bad!
I heard a lot about the Arbor Day Foundation with planting trees with every purchase/donation, but I think that it came out that this organization was a massive scam in reality. Aside from that, I think that influencers using their expansive platforms to raise awareness for social and environmental issues is really important when it comes to bringing light on these topics to the public. Although its obvious that the influencers/famous people will be pocketing a ton of money from the publicity and the creation of content that in turn raises this sort of awareness, it’s still a pretty noble cause.
It’s great that you’re sharing this! The digital is really great when it comes to charity as it is able to reach a large audience through it. i think the fact that creators nowadays are also occupied with promoting or even starting charities not only shows the reaches of social media but it also shows the responsibility that large-platform creators have nowadays, especially considering their audiences!