YouTube is an amazing platform where the world truly comes together. Recently, YouTube¡¯s Mr. Beast was on a campaign to raise $20 million to plant over 20 million trees across the globe. Each dollar raised will get a tree planted. And now, they¡¯ve managed to generate over $21 million (approximately Rs 149 crores).
Now, Mr Beast (aka Jimmy Donaldson) plans to use these funds to plant 21 million trees not just in the United States, but also in countries like Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France Mozambique, as well as India.?
As per The Arbor Day Foundation,(first reported by The Verge) the first round of tree plantation will start this year with 100,000 trees in California, 350,00 in Kenyas Kijabe Forest and 400,000 in South India¡¯s Cauvery River basin.
In May, last year, Jimmy Donaldson was asked (or as he says, spammed) by his followers to plant 20 million trees to celebrate his channel reaching 20 million subscribers. Initially, he collaborated with content creators like Mark Rober, Rhett & Link, electronic music artist Marshmello, ASAP Science, among others -- and managed to plant only 1700 trees.
Later, he collaborated with Arbour Day Foundation -- a non-profit that plants trees for donations made to them. Post, this, there was no looking back.
Many other YouTubers came together, with people like Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Twitter CEO Zack Dorsey, etc. also contributing huge chunks of money and joining the cause. Elon Musk also briefly changed his twitter handle name from Elon to Treelon.?
EDM artist Alan Walker pledged for 100,001 trees. YouTube's CEO Susan Wojcicki wasn't behind on the fun as she contributed 200,000 trees. And they managed to get to the target by the end of December 2019 -- a total $21 million.
During one of the videos promoting the initiative, Jimmy stated, "We only have one Earth and it's important we take care of it. Recently lots of not so great things have been happening to forests and people just keep making fun of our generation for retweet activism and not actually doing something, which is why we created TeamTrees.org with the help of the Arbor Day Foundation."