Celebrity Response to Haiti: Part II

As I stated in my previous blog, celebrity response to a disaster generally has a positive result. For Haiti, billions of dollars have been raised between the U.S. and other countries towards relief efforts; the celebrity response is single-handedly responsible for raising millions of those dollars. The publicity of the celebrities keeps the medias attention there, and people generally tend to idolize "superstars." If George Clooney is on television asking you to donate money to Haitian relief efforts, you're much more inclined to do so than if a "nobody" was on television asking you to do the same. People want to feel like they are a part of something bigger, and publicizing celebrity response makes people feel as though they are also a part of this.

George Clooney co-produced and hosted an emergency fundraising telethon called "Hope for Haiti Now." This aired on January 22, 2010 from 8-10 p.m. on several channels; ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, CNN, BET, The CW, HBO, MTV, VH1 CMT, and many others, and all without commercial interruption. Clooney hosted the show from Los Angeles, while Haitian native Wycleaf Jean co-hosted from New York City, and CNN anchor Anderson Cooper co-hosted from Haiti. All funds raised were split between five Haitian relief organizations; Oxfam America, UNICEF, Partners in Health, the Red Cross, and Wyclef's Yele Haiti Foundation. "Hope For Haiti Now" was the most widely distributed telethon in history, internationally and across media platforms, including live streaming globally on sites including YouTube, Hulu, MySpace, Fancast, AOL, MSN.com, Yahoo, Bing.com, BET.com, MTV.com, and Rhapsody and on mobile via Alltel, AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, and FloTV. More than 100 of the biggest names in film, television, and the music industry signed up to perform, provide testimonials, and answer phones. The two-hour fundraising telethon raised about $60 million.

Yele Haiti was founded in 2005 by Grammy-award winning artist Wycleaf Jean. It was a grassroots, non-political charitable organization focusing mainly on employment, youth development and education, tree planting and agriculture, and  emergency relief. In January 2007, Jean became a goodwill ambassador for Haiti, to help improve its image abroad. In May 2008, Yéle partnered with the World Food Programme of the United Nations to launch www.togetherforhaiti.org. In September of that year, Yéle delivered food to Hurricane Ike victims. In 2009, Yéle and the Timberland Company joined forces to help raise environmental awareness in Haiti. Their campaign was created to push to support and educate the country as well as helping to improve health care and the environment, and the community. The Yele Haiti Foundation was permanently changed after January 12, 2010. Now, the current programs include a combination of emergency relief and long-term rebuilding of the society. Wycleaf Jean and the Yele Haiti Foundation have together raised over $1 million since the devastating earthquake.

Sources:
Yele Haiti Foundation.
http://yele.org/home

Filed, D. (2010). Hope for Haiti Telethon Money Raised Results.
http://news.spreadit.org/hope-for-haiti-telethon-money-raised/

Dio, M. (2010). Hope for Haiti Now: The Telethon.
http://new.music.yahoo.com/blogs/live/3872/hope-for-haiti-now-the-telethon/