Humans of New York Social Media Phenomenon Raises Millions for Cancer!

May 26, 2016

The social media documentary project Humans of New York has spent the last three weeks capturing the stories of children diagnosed with cancer, and their families. In that short time, they’ve raised nearly $4 million to combat the disease. Photographer and blogger Brandon Stanton asked for donations to the pediatric program at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and over 100,000 donors came through in flying colors. Nina Pickett, Sloan Kettering’s pediatric administrator, said “I’ve never seen anything like it, but I think it speaks to Brandon’s authenticity, his honesty, and the power of these stories to connect people.”
The project started earlier this year with Stanton contacting the center asking to tell a story about childhood cancer to his already existing 2 million social media followers. Pickett helped Stanton contact patients and their families. Soon after, he began to feature them and their stories on the Humans of New York Facebook and Instagram pages. From there, the pages and the donations blew up. A third of money raised will be going to the hospital’s family support services while the rest will fund pediatric cancer research.