A helping hand for Haiti

Like many people, I’ve spent a lot of time the past few days staring horrified at my television screen while images of the Haiti earthquake aftermath burned into my eyes.

The photos and videos made me angry. They made me cry. They made me feel helpless; I wanted to do something but I didn’t know what.

Then a friend pointed me to a Haiti fundraiser that’s been set up in a skybox on Radio Signals’s sim Scribble. The brainchild of OMGWTF Barbecue, aka Barb, the event is open to any Second Life merchant, with all proceeds going to the American Red Cross International Response Fund.

Radio and Barb set up the skybox Thursday night, January 14.

“I’m just very emotional and empathetic to these sorts of things,” Barb said. “I sat down on Thursday morning with my coffee and read the news and just lost it and started sobbing. And then I realized no one I knew had really mobilized in SL yet, so I IMed Radio Signals and asked her if we could set up a skybox in Scribble.

“I did a friends conference with all of my content creator friends, and people started making stuff right away. It was great. By Friday we had a nearly full skybox.”

Initially, Barb hoped to raise “a couple hundred bucks.” But as of about 3 pm SL time on Sunday, January 17 – less than 72 hours after going live – the fundraiser had taken in 1,311,781 Linden, or about $4,800 US dollars.

The skybox will be set up through next Sunday, January 24, and Barb has already adjusted her goal.

“I think it would be amazing if we could reach two million Linden,” she said. “Yeah, it’s a big goal but… we have another week and tons more stuff happening… I think we can do it!”

That would work out to nearly $10,000, far above her early hopes. In the meantime, she’s also lined up a sponsor who prefers to remain anonymous – “It’s a large communications company” – which is going to match the donations raised by the project.

For anyone concerned about just where their money is going, all funds are paid to an alt named RedCrossDonations Guardian that Barb created specifically for the event.

“Daily screenshots of the total are being uploaded to my Flickr and Plurk, and at the end of it I will show screenshots of the Lindex cash out, as well as the receipt of the donation being made via the Red Cross website,” Barb said. “I will also provide a spreadsheet of all the donation transactions to anyone who wants to see it. Also, as some people have asked – I do have direct permission from Carol Robinson, Director of Creative Resources at the Red Cross, to use their logo and to fundraise on their behalf in Second Life.”

Merchant participation is simple – just get a folder from Barb that contains donation boxes you can set up in your own store, a landmark to the skybox, and a copyable script with instructions to put in your own vendor, which you can then rez in the Scribble skybox.

Friday, January 22, is Fifty Linden Friday. Many participating merchants will set out red items for 50L with all proceeds going to charity. Barb noted that one of those vendors will be AOHARU, with items also expected from Maitreya, fri.day, CheerNo and others, so it’s a good idea to check back every so often.

I’ll never be known as one of Second Life’s top content creators, but even I can do my part to help out. I have some nice real-life photos of hibiscus flowers – the national flower of Haiti – that I sell on deviantArt, so I made a mahogany frame and will be putting them in the skybox. I also made a pair of drawings, a computer-drawn sailboat on a serene ocean, and a hand-drawn one of a hibiscus and a Hispaniolan Trogon, the country’s national bird. They’ll be going into the skybox late Sunday night, January 17.

There are all kinds of items already offered in the skybox – jewelry, furniture, clothes, skyboxes and more – and many are priced well below what they normally sell for. So instead of hitting the malls and designer stores, check out the charity skybox at Scribble first – you might get a great deal, and your Lindens will help the Haiti earthquake victims.