‘Hugs for the Philippines’ video turning into a hit

Warm hugs and donations for the Philippines as seen on the ‘Philippines Typhoon Relief – Hugs’ video (Screen grabs from YouTube)

A video of a unique initiative in support of the “Yolanda” (Haiyan) relief has gone viral.

A certain GiveLiveInspire posted on YouTube the video titled “Philippines Typhoon Relief – Hugs.” The four-minute-15-seconder video, published on Nov. 17, has had more than 39,000 views as of this writing.

Its description read: “As many of you may know, a typhoon recently hit the Philippines, taking the lives of thousands of innocent people. We wanted to help with the Philippines Typhoon Relief as well as spread awareness about it. So we decided to stand on the streets of San Francisco for 1 hour…”

Two “Average Guys” – as how GiveLiveInspire described them – are seen on the video holding a cardboard box banner that read: “HUGS for the PHILIPPINES,” “TYPHOON HAIYAN RELIEF,” and “1 HUG = WE DONATE $1.”

They positioned themselves separately, as seen on the video, along the crowded streets of San Francisco, California.

The video shows the continuous hugs they got from strangers of different ages and races. Some were generous enough to give money – apart from the hug – as donation.

Midway through the video, the other man related: “So far, we’ve got 36 hugs… so that’s 36 dollars we’re donating. And actually, a couple of people gave us money…”

Talking to his companion, he asked, “How many did we get? ‘$6.’ I got $2 so that’s $8. So we got $44 that we’re gonna donate so far.”

As they continued, they got another $17 handed out to them by huggers.

“We’ve been getting a lot of hugs and instead of donating $1, we’ll gonna switch this to $5,” said the same man.

“So we’ve got a total of 62 hugs, also got $25 in donation, which we’ll be donating to the Red Cross for Philippines… so it’s a very successful day,” he added. The total amount of donation, which is $335, is equivalent to more or less P15,000.

He ended by encouraging viewers to click on the link on how to donate to Philippine Red Cross’ typhoon relief efforts (http://www.redcross.org.ph/donate).

“Any donation will be good for the Philippines. We really encourage you to spread this awareness to everybody. Thank you very much.”

The video’s end credits read: “In one hour, we were able to get 62 hugs which totals to $310 that we have already donated to the Philippine Red Cross. In addition, people gave us another $25 which was also donated. Give more. Live more. Inspire more.”

‘Hugs for the Philippines’ video turning into a hit

Source: Mb.com.ph (November 21, 2013 at 03:49PM)

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