When Nancy Lublin, CEO of the teen social change organization DoSomething.org, started texting teenagers to help with her social advocacy organization, what she found was shocking -- they started texting back about their own problems, from bullying to depression to abuse.
DoSomething.org is a charity that runs national campaigns impacting causes teens care about. For example, Teens for Jeans collected more than 1mil pairs of jeans for homeless youth. Give a Spit registered 15,000 new donors for the bone marrow registry--and has already saved 8 lives!
Her new project is a text-only crisis line, and the results might be even more important than she expected.
Take 5 minutes and watch this video. It will literally change the way you look at texting.
Here's How To Help
As a startup subsidiary of DoSomething.org, Nancy and her team be able to leverage both the technological ability and experience from DoSomething.org to help launch the Crisis Text Line.
The Crisis Text Line will use text messaging to connect teens with support and resources. The goal is to create a national (and ultimately international) infrastructure to ensure that teens can use SMS to get help 24/7.
By donating to this project, you will help that teen who is being bullied and feels they have no where to go. You will help the teen who is being sexually abused at home or the teen who has struggled with depression and is feeling suicidal. Your dollars could literally save lives.
Right now Crisis Text Line is crowdsourcing donations on Indiegogo. They are trying to raise funds to get the first phase of the project off the ground.
Please donate. $5, $25 or whatever you can to this cause. It doesn't matter how much. It just matters that YOU do something to help teens in crisis.
