FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Wednesday January 13, 2010 – Canadian based 501 Media Group ( www.501501.com ) discovered that over 7000 attempts made by Canadians to donate to the Haiti earthquake relief efforts were mistakenly unsuccessful. This morning Grammy-winning rapper and humanitarian Wyclef Jean endorsed a text message campaign on CNN and encouraged viewers to please donate. “We are asking those interested to please do one of two things: Either you can use your cell phone to text ‘YELE' to 501501, which will automatically donate $5 to the Yele Haiti Earthquake Fund (it will be charged to your cell phone bill), or you can visit Yele.org and click on DONATE.” The message spread quickly across the Internet and was a hot topic on various social networks and twitter feeds. Unfortunately this text message campaign is only for US cell phone customers. 501 Media Group operates the 501501 text services in Canada with no affiliation with the US service provider. Furthermore, 501 Media Group had no knowledge of the US Campaign until they began experiencing an increase in text activity this morning. Mandeep Sandhu, Director of Technology at 501 Media Group commented, “Although we are a fully functional text message marketing company, we are not provisioned to receive donations, and would like to clarify that no donations have been accepted by us.” Realizing that a potential $35,000 could have been raised if Canadian cell phone users had the correct information, 501 Media Group has programmed an informative response informing any Canadian cell phone user who texts ‘YELE' to 501501 as to how they can still donate. Sandhu added, “Our response message alerts users to either donate at www.yele.org or Rogers & Bell customers can text ‘HAITI' to 45678 to donate $5 to the Canadian Salvation Army Haiti relief fund. We are doing our best to ensure Canadians know how they can help and that these potential donations are properly directed to victims of the earthquake.” - 30 - For all media inquiries contact Darren Risling www.501media.ca |