News

YouTube set for charity takeover

IT | Niki May Young | 16 Dec 2010

Beatbullying and Save the Children are among eight charities chosen to feature in this year's annual ‘Project for Awesome’ charity YouTube take-over, which will see the platform overrun with charity and cause-related content for 24 hours.

Project for Awesome is set for action on 17 December focusing on four areas: innovation in education, health, poverty and children’s wish-giving.

Project for Awesome first held its YouTube campaign in 2007 calling for users to create video content based on their chosen cause, with the same screenshots, titles and theme, uniting charities and individual causes on the video platform.

This year eight charities have been invited by Google, which owns YouTube, to be featured in the promotion. Beatbullying has been invited as the only UK health charity to participate and will use the opportunity to post three videos explaining challenges within youth mental health and bullying and call for viewers to take action via social networking to directly contact their leaders asking for action to prevent bullying.

Emma-Jane Cross, chief executive of Beatbullying, said: “Digital campaigning is absolutely central to the work Beatbullying does, particularly given the rise in cyber bullying and the prominence of social networking sites, which have made children and young people even more vulnerable to bullying both in and out of school.

 “Collectively, through harnessing the power of the millions of YouTube users worldwide, we hope to send a clear message to world leaders including deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and President Obama: bullying is absolutely unacceptable, and collectively we won’t stand for it anymore.”

DonorsChoose, Make a Wish Foundation, Marine Toys for Tots, Open University, Save the Children, Partners in Health and Water.org have also been invited by Google and will join Beatbullying in taking part in a four-hour live show from 12am midnight on Saturday.  
 

Directory: Beatbullying