Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Reading Rainbow Kickstarter Earns One Million Dollars In Less Than a Day

Posted by samzenpus on from the bucks-for-books dept.

An anonymous reader writes "LeVar Burton and the rest of the Reading Rainbow crew opened a Kickstarter campaign to bring back Reading Rainbow yesterday, with the ambitious goal of collecting a million dollars for their cause. They are now at almost two million dollars, with over a month left to go. 'This Kickstarter campaign is about reaching every web-connected child. Universal access. Thousands of more books than what we have now. And hundreds of more video field trips,' Burton said."

2 of 164 comments (clear)

  1. Let's see why... by Above · · Score: 5, Insightful
    1. Well known Celebrity, check.
    2. Celebrity actually cares about, and is involved in the cause, check.
    3. The cause is to help children, puppies, or other small cute things everyone likes, check.
    4. The cause promises to make the future a better place, check.
    5. Makes a large group of people sentimental for the past, check.
    6. Rewards appeal to people with money, check. [Come on, geeks like Star Trek, geeks make good money.]
    7. Kick off carefully coordinated to multiple popular internet web sites, check.
    8. Asked for a modest amount of money compared to what they actually want to accomplish, check.

    It was a kick-starter wet dream. When I saw the initial post I said "He'll have the money in 48 hours tops". Apparently I overestimated by about 4x!

  2. Re:Two Problems by The+Grim+Reefer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yeah, except this guy is not a dim wit and my Star Trek fanboy nonsense aside, go take a look at his record. LeVar Burton has been involved in encouraging kids to read and generally expand their knowledge since the 80's. He's not doing this for himself, he genuinely cares about this. He's by no means a a multi-bajillionaire from working in Hollywood but he certainly doesn't need the money (is he even getting anything out of this other than some facetime on the interwebs?).

    If he can use some of his geek cache to help kids get an education outside of our broken school system than more power to him. This isn't Madonna or Angelina adopting a kid from Somali because it's suddenly fashionable to do so, this is a guy who has been passionate about kids education since he was young lending his semi-famous name to a good and worthy cause.

    I have to agree with you on damn near everything you stated. But I do take exception to your statement regarding Angelina Jolie. She started adopting kids before it was fashionable. Much to her chagrin, she's probably part of the reason that doing so has become fashionable.