No one ever accused Alicia Keys of f***ing around when it comes to philanthropy, and if you ever felt like you wanted to, she’s about to prove you seven shades of wrong. The singer, along with a host of other celebrities, are about to pull the plug on their online selves for charity.
Lady Gaga, Justin Timberlake, Ryan Seacrest, Usher and others are among the celebs who are taking part with Keys in a campaign called Digital Life Sacrifice for Key’s charity Keep a Child Alive. The campaign involves basically what it says on the tin – the participants are going to remove themselves from their Twitter and Facebook accounts – and they ain’t comin’ back until the charity raises a million dollars.
“It’s so important to shock you to the point of waking up,” says Keys in a phone interview with Huffington Post. “It’s not that people don’t care or it’s not that people don’t want to do something, it’s that they never thought of it quite like that.”
“This is such a direct and instantly emotional way and a little sarcastic, you know, of a way to get people to pay attention.” Truer say, Keys. And I can’t imagine people won’t pay attention. With so many celebs – Jennifer Hudson, Kim and Khloe Kardashian, Serena Williams, Elijah Wood, and more among them – suddenly off the grid, I’ve got a feeling we might see that million dollars pretty quick.
“We’re trying to sort of make the remark,” says Leigh Blake, president and co-founder of Keep a Child Alive. “Why do we care so much about the death of one celebrity as opposed to millions and millions of people dying in the place that we’re all from?” A lot of us don’t, Blake. But we get the sentiment. “It’s about love and respect and human dignity,” she adds.
If you worship at the altar of celebrity and fear you might go into withdrawal at your favourite tabloid stars’ disappearance from the web this Wednesday, you might want to head over the KaCA’s website to look into donating.
“As a human being, you deserve to have a chance at life,” says Keys.
“I have a feeling that Gaga is going to raise it all by herself,” says Blake.
