Just yesterday a major relief concert was held in New York City to raise funds for the millions of people that were severely affected by superstorm Sandy. The group behind the concert hoped to raise millions of dollars for the relief effort and the mission was an absolute success. Thanks to the help of dozens of high profile celebrities and singers there was plenty of money flowing into the charity.

The one night concert drew nearly 2 billion viewers which is an absolutely incredible statistic. Obviously not everyone donated to the cause but early reports say that at least $35 million were raised in ticket sales alone with around $50 million in other donations coming throughout the night. This type of relief effort is becoming relatively common when it comes to massive disasters such as this and everyone agrees that last night’s relief concert was an overwhelming success.

Raising millions of dollars is not enough to fix everything that was destroyed, but basically everyone is happy to report that this is a great start. Experts estimate that the total damage in the area is likely around to be around $50 billion. The very high damage count will take a long time to cleanup and fix but this is a great step in the right direction.

After the absolutely horrific shooting in Aurora Colorado last week a number of organizations and charities set up funds to help pay for medical bills and so far things have been going incredibly well. Currently the donations total over $2 million dollars which is an absolutely astonishing figure, and the current estimates are that there will be even more incoming money.

The donations are being raised to fund medical expenses and all recovery expenses for the victims and thanks to major organizations like Warner Brothers the entire effort has been remarkably successful. Families and friends of the victims have expressed nothing but happiness and gratefulness as the donations have continued to roll in.

The shooting itself was obviously a horrific tragedy but the fact that the citizens and people all around the country have united so strongly to help support the recovery is absolutely great to see. Even some of the major actors that were part of the movie the victims were watching showed up at the hospital to chat with the victims and offer their support and encouragement. Overall the strength and determination shown by the community has been absolutely amazing. Hopefully the strength and support will continue to help the recovering victims as many of them are still in desperate need of whatever help they can get.

This week a very heartbreaking video and story have been circling the internet and over the course of a few days millions of people have seen the video. The video was shot by a student on a school bus in New York and after it was uploaded to Youtube the world reacted very quickly.

Throughout the 6 minute long video dozens of kids were seen bullying and harassing the elderly bus monitor until she began to cry, nothing was done to punish the kids or resolve the situation in the video but an online fundraising group has done what they can to remedy the situation. The video originally went viral early this week and in just a few days the online fund has raised over $350,000 for the woman.

The response has been absolutely overwhelming according to the women in the video and thanks to the new found internet fame she has been able to speak out against bullying and harassment around the country. The funds that have been raised will go in part to her, and in part to a variety of anti-bullying groups so that hopefully this sort of incident will not continue. The fact that the internet response has been so overwhelming is very heartwarming and the victim in the case has been able to reach millions of victims that suffer from bullying every day and will hopefully be able to make a difference in people’s lives.

Stacey Jacobs is a mother in California and immediately after the horrible earthquake and tsunami hit Japan she decided she was going to take action to help out. Jacobs was apparently tired of seeing so many horrible disasters around the world and decided to step in and do what she could to help.

Jacobs also says that her idea came immediately so she just stepped into action. Jacobs and a few of her friends began working immediately on the project and soon there were hundreds of schools on board as well. The actual fundraising is based entirely on children folding origami cranes which are a symbol of how much they care.

Japanese tradition dictates that anyone who folds 1000 cranes will have a wish come true; while this may not be true it is true that these will be making a difference. Children and families are encouraged to fold as many cranes as they can and along with each crane they will donate $1 to the cause.

The overall hope is that 1 million cranes will be folded and along with that $1 million dollars will be donated. Jacobs and her friends believe the program should raise quite a bit of money to send to Japan through the American Red Cross; as expected the Red Cross is happy to receive such a generous donation.

Haitian Earthquake Survivors Help Japanese

Very few people know the terrible experience of a massive earthquake so it only makes sense that survivors do their part to help after a major disaster. That is exactly what a group of people from Haiti are doing; following last year’s earthquake they were among the survivors and now they are helping in Japan as well.

The two boys from Haiti were moved to action after seeing what had happened. Despite still living in tents because much of Haiti still is not rebuilt the boys have decided to do what they can to help those affected in Japan.

The two boys are now officially working to collect anything and everything they can to send to Japan to help with the recovery effort. In order to help the boys are selling bracelets to raise funds and right now they have reportedly earned thousands of dollars to send.

No word on what else the boys are hoping to do but they have said repeatedly that they are hoping to expand their plans to raise even more money to send to Japan. The boys are also hoping to find a way to go to Japan and literally lend a helping hand, assuming they can manage to raise enough funds and donations.