Folks, you probably know about the water crisis in Flint, Michigan. Lots of people have no clean, safe drinking water and they're in a state of emergency. Yesterday, I announced that I'd teamed up with CrowdRise to launch a massive Water for Flint challenge. Our goal was to deliver 25,000 cases of water to the residents of Flint. Water is one of the most basic human rights. (There's even a donate button at the bottom of this blog post, where you can give right now...)
It's important for people from across the U.S. to support the people of Flint right now.
The challenge: for every $20 you donated to any CrowdRise campaign for the Flint Water Crisis Relief, craigconnects matched the donation with 100 cases of water to be distributed to the residents in Flint by The United Way of Southeastern Michigan.
The deal is I want to put clean drinking water into the hands of every person who's in Flint, Michigan. I actually spent about a decade living not too far from Flint, so this really hits close to home for me.
Good news: thanks to all the good folks raising awareness and giving back, we met our goal of $50K in less than 24 hours. With a 1pm EST launch time, the goal was met by 8:15pm EST last night. That's 25,000 cases of clean water, or 600,000 bottles of water. This is the real deal, and it's what happens when good folks come together to support our communities in need.
My goal was to make $20 go so much further, which is why I matched donations to any Flint fundraiser on CrowdRise in cases of water. These fundraisers are still running, and you can still give to ensure that there's enough clean, drinkable water.
A few others are really helping out, too. CrowdRise is working with musician and Detroit-native Big Sean and his nonprofit the Sean Anderson Foundation by launching the #HEALFLINTKIDS campaign, Pearl Jam launched a campaign kicked off by a $300,000 donation, and Jack White of the White Stripes and Detroit-based Third Man Records joined the effort.
If you want to help out even more, you can set up your own fundraiser to aid in relief efforts. Every fundraiser helps provide even more water to Flint residents. If you're able, please help out. Any amount helps; let's do this, folks.