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Wyclef Jean Haiti Relief

January 14, 2010 by · Comments Off on Wyclef Jean Haiti Relief 

wyclef-190Wyclef Jean Haiti Relief:The mobile communications company that is working with the pop musician Wyclef Jean to raise money for disaster relief in Haiti said on Thursday that it had raised more than $750,000 in donations since its campaign began on Tuesday. In a news release, Give on the Go, the fund-raising division of the Miami company Red Fish Media, said its goal was to raise more than $1 million per day. The campaign allows the users of mobile devices to make an instant donation of $5 to Mr. Jean’s Yéle Haiti foundation, a relief charity, by texting “Yele” to 501501. (The charge appears later on the user’s telephone bill.) In a statement, Matt McKenna, president of Red Fish Media, said “100 percent of the donations” are given directly to the charity. The campaign began at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, and Mr. Jean has tirelessly promoted it on his Twitter account, soon after a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti about 10 miles southwest of Port-au-Prince.

Among the other notable names in entertainment who are also contributing to the cause are the actors Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, who said in a statement on Wednesday that their Jolie-Pitt Foundation would give $1 million to the emergency medical operations of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières, which is responding to the devastation in Haiti. “It is incredibly horrible to see a catastrophe of this size hit a people who have been suffering from extreme poverty, violence and unrest for so many decades,” Ms. Jolie said in a statement.

For more on the rescue effort in Haiti, please visit The Lede blog. A list of contact information and links for some agencies that plan to provide relief is here.

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