Bristol second year behind new online charity craze

She’s better than us

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Its nice to do something nice to help those in need, and that’s exactly what one second year has been spending her time doing.

Bristol second year Emily Flitterman, studying Spanish, is one of the minds behind the “Then and Now” campaign that’s started to dominate your social media.

Emily

The aim of “Then and Now” is to raise money for Great Ormond Street Hospital by encouraging people to upload a photo of themselves as a child to Facebook. Next they tag more people to follow suit, and then donate.

Its like neck-nominate. But much better. And less disgusting.

“Now and Then”

The Tab caught up with Emily in order to chat about how the campaign came about, and where she envisions it going from here.

So Emily, what was the reasoning behind the campaign?

“My mum’s friend came up with the idea a few weeks ago and we all laughed at her, thinking it would never take off. She didn’t even know what a hashtag was and had no idea how to start it, so Tamara (second year at Birmingham) and I thought we’d give it a try.

“The ‘nomakeupselfie’ was an incredible success, so we knew there was potential, and everyone loves looking at childhood photos.

“We chose to donate to Great Ormond Street as these childhood photos reminded us of the new chance at life that GOSH gives to so many children every day. The aim is to give kids a ‘now’ and a bright future.”

Some of them are very sweet

Have you ever attempted something like this before?

“I’ve never done anything like this before so was incredibly excited to see how quickly it escalated and how positively people reacted to it. It’s been my number one priority recently, so a great way to procrastinate from work!”

Have you been surprised at how it has caught fire?

“We launched this project not knowing how social media would respond, but for the past 3 days my newsfeed has been bombarded by hundreds of baby photos and the donations have constantly been on the rise. I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how quickly things have taken off and how many people have been participating ”

Ballin’

How much money has the campaign raised? Whats your target?

“So far we’ve raised over £4000, which considering people have been donating an average of £2 is incredible!

“We don’t have a target for the campaign but seeing as we’re already on £4000, we would love to at least quadruple that and make it go viral.”

Now I feel better 🙂

So how can people get involved?

“Simply upload a picture of yourself to Facebook from ‘then’, and donate by texting THEN77 plus the amount (£2-£10) to 70070 and then don’t forget to nominate your other friends to do the same so we can make this go nationwide.”

Your author at a fundamentally happier time