Potential donations from Canadians not getting to Haiti
Posted January 14, 2010 9:41 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – A Vancouver text messaging service says over 8,000 attempted donations to musician Wyclef Jean’s Haiti charity were misdirected yesterday. Jean has endorsed a text message cell phone campaign encouraging people to donate five dollars to the Yele Haiti Earthquake fund, by texting to 501501, but the campaign was intended for U.S. residents only.
Vancouver’s 501 Media Group, which has no affiliation with Wyclef Jean’s Haiti charity campaign, started to notice an increase in text activity yesterday morning. It’s not set up to receive donations, and says a potential $40,000 in Canadian donations was lost when Canadian cell phone users mistakenly reached them.
They’ve now programmed a response telling Canadian users how they can donate through the web.