Millionaires asking billionaires to donate for the sake of some of the poorest regions in the wolrd.
Breaking the record for the most money raised for philanthropic causes during a single stream, the influencer trio of YouTube king MrBeast, Trump supporter Adin Ross and unofficial Kick mascot xQc have managed to accumulate donations of more than 12 million US dollars in the span of only 18 hours.
The proceeds from the Kick-hosted livestream will go to UK-based NGO WaterAid.
Approximately 670,000 USD Per Hour
Aside from presumably wanting to kick off his Kick channel with a bang, MrBeast originally intended for the event to raise 5 million US dollars in donations for his collaborative fundraiser "Team Water". The campaign, whose fundraising period is supposed to last throughout August 2025, aims to provide clean drinking water to about 2 million people in underdeveloped regions.
It thus serves a follow-up to past projects of the influencer, in which he called on various other creators to call for support for tree planting (Team Trees) and ocean trash removal (Team Water). While these projects – along with MrBeast himself, relating to the working conditions of his staff and the quality of products of which he had become the face of as part of other business ventures – have been subject to controversies in the past, they did manage to reach their donation goals.
After the three streamers surpassed their $5 million goal fairly quickly, they decided to try and break the record for the money raised for philanthropic causes during a single stream, not wanting to end the broadcast before the new $12 million target had been met. After the pace of contributions had started to slow down, the three multi-millionaires managed to break the record after personally contacting various CEOs and entrepreneurs live on stream.
Approximately 800,000 People Per Year
...That's the number of victims who die because of unsafe access to drinking water, according to the Global Burden of Disease report by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in 2021. The actual number is likely far higher due to underreporting as well as the additional effects that unclean drinking water can have on other health aspects, which may indirectly lead to death.
The likelihood to suffer these consequences from unclean drinking water are very much localized, with the most victims being reported in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia. For example, while Europe has a death rate from unsafe water sources of under 0.1 per 100,000 people, the same rate is 35.2 in India, 37.4 in Papua New Guinea, 118.4 in Chad and 130.4 in South Sudan.
UK-based NGO WaterAid, which will receive the money collected as part of the Team Water campaign, has relied ony large-scale donation packages like the one from MrBeast's Kick stream in the past; with it having been founded by large companies in the UK water industry and subsequently enjoying support from the likes of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Google or PepsiCo.
If you wish to familiarize yourself with how the organization presents itself and its activities, you can find their website here.