The season of giving thanks is upon us and just last week Children’s Mercy Hospitals main event “Extra Life,” held their official game day making this week the perfect time to dive into the world of charities and how gaming has become a mecca for helping not only bring awareness to causes around the world but also raise substantial amounts of much needed money.
Game Day 2019 is in the books! We're so proud of the Extra Life community for rising above the setbacks of multiple DDoS attacks in favor of filling the day w/ games, laughter and most importantly, funds raised for @CMNHospitals + @CMNCanada. Congrats on $9.6M raised + counting! pic.twitter.com/aLY8jdq9ew
— Extra Life (@ExtraLife4Kids) November 3, 2019
Extra Life isn’t the only charity worth investing your time, money or cheerleading skills into. In fact – from supporting veterans, to local outreach’s, animals and so many other worthy causes there really is no wrong decision on who you decide to support as a content creator or gamer. Today though I’d like to introduce our readers to a charity that was founded by American Youtuber and philanthropist Jimmy “MrBeast6000” Donaldson who started his Youtube career with “Let’s Play” videos at the age of 13. MrBeast is best known today for his stunt donations to random twitch streamers and insane sponsored giveaways of the “cream of the crop” luxury!
Hashtag TeamTrees
The seed was planted in May 2019 when MrBeast fans on YouTube, Reddit, and Twitter suggested he plant 20 million trees to celebrate reaching 20 million subscribers which of course came across as a challenge he could not refuse! Teaming up with the Arbor Day Foundation, (one of the largest nonprofit conservation organizations dedicated to planting and nurturing trees) who is also in the middle of their own tree-planting challenge with the goal of planting 100 million trees by 2022, #TeamTrees bloomed into fruition.
A Treelon Musk Is Born
The saying “it takes a village,” is perfect in this scenario as the #TeamTrees initiative is not growing with MrBeast alone. Partnering with ex NASA engineer and Youtuber Mark Rober #TeamTrees has become a YouTube community collaborative fundraising challenge gaining the support of Youtubers like:
– Marshmello (40.2 million subs)
– Ninja (22.4million subs))
– Jacksepticeye (20.9 million subs)
Just to name a few. What has also jolted this campaign is the reaction from international personalities like tech entrepreneur, investor, and engineer Elon Musk. One tweet was all it took from the CEO, founder and chief engineer/designer of SpaceX. Founder, product architect of Tesla plus a whole list of other ingenious companies (including PayPal) and the viral phenomenon kicked in.
Ok, sounds legit, will donate 1M trees
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 29, 2019
How incredible is that?
Marc Benioff just planted 900,000 trees and brought us over 14 million!!!!!!!!!!!!! WE ARE SO CLOSE! pic.twitter.com/q0Lb4Sk8XJ
— MrBeast (@MrBeast) November 6, 2019
Jean just planted 100,000!!!!! ???????????????? https://t.co/TwMSZK7YXl
— MrBeast (@MrBeast) October 31, 2019
This is fucking incredible! I just gave $50,000 to plant 50 thousand trees ? Spread the word and help our planet ?? https://t.co/X9118gn40R
— Jeffree Star (@JeffreeStar) October 26, 2019
At the writing of this article #TeamTrees has raised $14,305, 720 and in among all these grand back to earth gestures the only question that remains is:
Are you going to plant a tree for future generations to build their lives upon?
