Local YouTube star's delight as his charity initiative raises over $7 million
YouTube star Jacksepticeye described last Saturday as one of the greatest days of his life, after a charity initiative he organised to help tackle homelessness globally raised over $7 million.
The online celebrity, who's originally from Cloghan in Offaly and lived in Athlone for a number of years, has been holding fundraising streaming events called 'Thankmas' in the lead-up to Christmas each year.
For this year's event, the chosen charity was New Story, a US-based non-profit organisation which builds homes for low-income families that lack adequate housing.
To date, New Story has built more than 2,300 homes across Haiti, El Salvador, Bolivia and Mexico for families living on less than $10 a day.
On Saturday last, Jacksepticye (Sean McLoughlin) hosted a marathon 10-hour live stream for Thankmas, in which people's donations were broadcast and counted in real time.
Online donations can still be made here but by the early hours of Sunday morning more than $7.2 million had been generated.
Sean made a personal donation of $150,000 to the charity during his live stream.
On Twitter, he said he couldn't believe the public response to the fundraiser, which had made it one of the best days of his life.
His 10-hour charity stream from Saturday can be viewed here:
Sean is a former Athlone IT student who lived in the town before moving to Brighton, England, in 2017.
He is by far the biggest YouTube star from Ireland, and currently has almost 28 million subscribers on the video streaming platform.