The Late Movies: Awesome Videos for Charity

In case you missed it, last weekend's Project for Awesome was an incredible and sort of unprecedented outpouring of activism on behalf of (what seemed like) the entire YouTube community. Spearheaded by John and Hank Green, it galvanized hundreds of YouTubers to make videos advocating for their favorite charities (I made one too), raised over $100,000 dollars by raffling off weirdo prizes like John Green's nerd glasses or a personalized song from ChatRoulette piano improv dude Merton, and culminated with a four-hour live telecast on YouTube featuring YouTube's best and brightest (vloggers, singer/songwriters, etc). (FWIW, YouTube has only live telecasted a precious few things, including a concert by U2 and a speech by President Obama.) I was watching over John's shoulder as the Project for Awesome world-wide-trended to the top of Twitter (I only recently understood what this means, but it means a lot), and was proud to be a part of something that mobilized millions of young people -- from a generation that seems to have been labeled apathetic -- for a variety of good causes.

I wanted to share with you some of my favorite Project for Awesome videos, each of which advocates for a different charity. There's a lot of creativity and passion here, and I'd love to see some mental_flossers make videos for next year's p4a!

Christina (AKA Italktosnakes) went to Guatemala to help the children ... and advocate for Help the Children.

Michael Buckley's cousin is in desperate need of a heart transplant. He's advocating for organ donation in general, and also looking for donations to help his cousin's family.

You've probably heard about conflict diamonds -- but what about conflict minerals? Chances are, the rare earth minerals that your fancy cell phone needs to be all fancy come from places like the Congo, where competition for such resources is fueling ongoing wars and suffering. This YouTuber is advocating for the Enough Project, which works to end human rights abuses in Africa.

Triangles of Truth pays tribute to the memory of people killed in the Holocaust by fighting current genocides in their name.

The Trevor Project is a suicide prevention organization aimed at helping LGBT youth.

These guys hate malaria so much, they wrote a song about it.