Hinged.press Charity Event

Once again, we are joining the #Thankmas charity live-stream event on YouTube, and we need your help

On 13 December 2020, still under the name The Weekly Knob, our community bonded together to launch our very first charity live stream to collect donations for Red Nose Day in an effort to relieve some of the world’s food insecurity created by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Together, we streamed for over four hours and managed to collect US$6,276.00 on Tiltify. That year, all participating content creators managed to raise $4,728,990.05 under the Thankmas banner.

This year Thankmas will be held in support of the World Central Kitchen and we intend to be there again to lend a hand.

Because food is not a luxury reserved for the lucky few. It’s a universal human right to live free from hunger. — José Andrés

World Central Kitchen was founded in 2010 by Chef José Andrés — and since then has provided more than 200 million meals around the world to people impacted by natural disasters, humanitarian disasters, and other crises.

We’re raising the bar

The last time we live-streamed, it was a success beyond anything we could have imagined. Admittedly this was in part because a really big YouTube personality gave us a shout out. We can’t count on history repeating itself, so we will once again put $500.00 as the donation amount we want to reach with our stream.

But just because we have the same goal in mind, doesn’t mean we’re not more ambitious this time around. We are going to fit all the submitted stories into a larger, overarching story line. It will be one big collective storytelling project.

The overarching story will be set in an alternate universe, one that can include fantasy or sci-fi elements, basically anything you want to fit into your story will exist in this world.

In this alternate universe, a large earthquake has devastated the Capital City and many of its people are left without the means to feed themselves. The World Central Kitchen provides meals to anyone who is in need. It is run by the folk hero Chef Angel Andres. Unfortunately, Chef Angel has suffered a terrible accident and has lost his memory of who he is and what his mission is. A group of Scribes and Sous-chefs are traveling through the land collecting stories about the joy of cooking and the ability of a shared meal to build community and bring hope. By sharing those stories with the Chef they hope to restore his memory to allow him to resume his mission at the World Central Kitchen.

How can you participate

Write a story about food saving the day. The themes of the story should include charity, community and hope. It can be fiction, or creative nonfiction. It can be a poem or, if you are feeling especially daring, a song.

Once you’ve written the story, record yourself (or a friend or family member) reading it. Don’t stress too much about the quality of the recording, we do have editing software to clean it up. A recording from your smartphone will do just fine. We will turn the recordings into little videos to play during the live stream.

It is completely optional, but if you have an idea of where the group would find your narrator, or what they might be doing when the group of scribes find them, let us know and we will incorporate it into the story. Otherwise we will make something up for you.

Send your written story and the audio file before November 25th to aura.a.wilming@gmail.com with #thankmas in the subject line.

Want to get even more involved?

If you think it might be fun to be part of the live stream itself or be one of the scribes or sous-chefs on the search for stories, send me an email at the same address. The stream will be semi-improvised story telling in a role play like format. You don’t need to be a great actor, just willing to step into the shoes of a character and be on the stream.

Miscellaneous details

• Fund raising will go though Tiltify.com, which means the money will go directly to the charity and we will not be handling any of it.
• #thankmas charity event will take place on Saturday December 10th.
• The time and place of Hinged.press charity stream to be announced soon.
• The project is open to all writers, feel free to share this story with anyone who might be interested.
• We will keep you updated with the progress and changes, so make sure you subscribe to our newsletter.