The Game explains why he pledged $1M to Flint

Jan 28, 2016

On Tuesday, The Game took to Instagram to announce that he was donating $500,000 to Flint, Michigan, making his the largest celebrity donation to the crisis and bringing him into the public eye.

The Instagram post showed the rapper’s charity, The Robin Hood Project, wiring the money to Avita, a water company. Avita, for its part, pledged to match The Game’s donation, bringing the total sent to Flint up to $1 million.

I put up $1,000,000 yesterday for water in flint but even that won't be enough being that it will only provide 9-10 bottles per person a day just to barely get to the next day… The population is a bit over 100,000 so what we're donating is all good but it won't last forever & will be consumed in just weeks…. This situation isn't about who has the most money or who's getting the biggest media coverage, it's about bringing awareness to this tragedy to the millions of people on the outside looking in on flint Michigan wondering how to help. It's about not one person trying to make a difference but everyone pulling their resources together and doing what's best for the community of Flint, making sure that the dollars set in place to actually help Flint not only gets to Flint but gets there in a timely manner. It's not just about giving water away but the make up of the whole process, from workers bottling useable water, to trucking companies delivering water down to the people who takes the water when it's time to distribute the water. It's a whole big picture people don't see. If I give 1000 cases of water away and 200 get into the hands of a person who truely isn't in need and is just taking water because it's free, then those people are just as big as the problem. Or if someone donates money for water but the company who gets money donation knows that realistically they can't get water to flint for several days or weeks then that company is part of the problem. That's why I choose to team @therobinhoodproject up with @avitawater through @moneygangworldwide. They are for 1, a Michigan based company only hours away from Flint Michigan so getting water to Flint is no problem. It's also very important that all donations touch the community of Flint. It's a underlying problem bigger than the water itself and people need to see and understand that….. when they are trying to figure out what roll they can play in this situation… If you want a trustworthy charity organization to donate to… Selfmadefoundation.org & whatever you donate will help get the city back on track….. They deserve it !

A photo posted by The Game (@losangelesconfidential) on Jan 27, 2016 at 4:00pm PST

The Game explained why he felt the need to act when he learned about the situation in Flint, where the city is in crisis as the drinking water is contaminated with led. In his post, The Game said his younger sister and her children live in Flint, and that he cares.

Thousands of kids have been exposed to lead poisoning, which can damage their developmental growth, and the adults in the town are not fairing much better. A state of emergency was declared in the city over the state of the water.

“It’s obviously a very big deal and a tragedy in Flint, and I saw people donating small amounts, and I just thought I’d go above and beyond that,” The Game, reports the Daily Beast. “So I donated the funds from the first 11 shows of my European tour. Avita matched it and they’ll be one million bottles of water given out — 33,000 bottles of water at a time because of trucking and shipping it in and out. It’s not easy shipping it out because of the snowstorms, and trucks being backed up. But we’ll get it there, however long it takes.”

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