Yesterday was the best day we have had thus far for donthateonhaiti. We ha over $700 in cash donations when I went out to the merch tent. People were so generous and sweet. My keyboardist Toad came out and manned the bullhorn whilst i cheesed it for the cameras and flicked it for the autographs. I ended up kindof turning myself into a ‘kisser for the cause’. What’s that u might ask? Well, I went for it and started selling my kisses for 20 bucks a pop. I know that sounds dangerous, but so is this disaster. so I say to hell with a a safe demonstration, let’s bring lips into this situation. Plus, we made a ton of money, and if we continue to make this kindof dough, we will have enough money for both of the wells in Haiti!! So bring your hearts, AND lips to my merch booth on warped tour and get educated about this disaster. 300,000 people still need help!!!

Yesterday was amazing!!! We had fuse TV shooting the whole demonstration and kids were nuts! We had one girl who paid 50 bucks for a Haiti shirt! I thanked her graciously and then all these other kids just started donating money right over this massive crowd ‘fire-water-bucket’ style. You guys were the best givers we’ve had yet!!! Gonna post a video that rules.

Yesterday was such a great day to be beating the pavement with a fist of charity. There were so many people excited and eager to help this worthy cause. I think we sold around 10 Don’t Hate on Haiti shirts, which is sweet, and we handed out about 500 handbills tha have our mission statement on it. All in all, it was a great bunch of people and I think we created a good vibe of awareness to be passed on. So for all you people comming out to warped this summer, make sure u come by the rejects merch tent around 2pm every day and we can help spread the good word. We also, just today, started an idea to get you guys involved in the show. We have three containers at our merch table that have three different songs on each container. The idea is, you throw change in the container which has the song you want to hear on it, and which ever container has the most money in it by the time we play, then that song will be played in the set!!! All of the change collected will go towards benefiting Haiti. We call it CHANGE the set!!! Just another way to get your hands involved in helping others AND voicing your opinion on which song we play. Pictures comming soon!!!

Ty

As many of you know, Haiti has been completely devastated by the overwhelming outcome of the tragic earthquake earlier this year. We have been raising money for the last 4 months or so and it’s been a quiet start so far. Primarily because I’ve been looking for a worthy cause to send what money we raise to a charity that will benefit the country of Haiti the most. First I thought, “what do i want to achieve?” Build a house? Clean up a village? Where is the money most needed right now for the people of Haiti? I read articles about sanitation and living situations of some of these people and how many are living in their own sewage without clean water of their own to drink. On my way to this telethon the driver of our car service had said he recently had gone home to Haiti to check on his loved ones and they were in dire need of help. 

“What’s the main problem that your loved ones are facing?” I asked. 

   He only replied “Clean WATER.”

   This was odd to me, i mean, I’ve always had clean water a twist of a faucet away from me, and here was a man with an entire family that had to carry their water some many hours every day just to facilitate their family’s need for bare-necessities. THE bare-necessity, WATER. After looking on the internet and a welcomed tip from an associate, i found Charity: Water. This is a 100% non-profit charity that is truly making an impact on this world. They’ve impacted over 16 countries and given over a million people clean water. I, like many of us, have tried many charities in the search for a good home for the monies we generate for Haiti. I found them all to have boards of trustees or some loopholes with bullshit red tape, yadda yadda, but Charity:Water is different. It was started by this guy named Scott Harrison. when he was 28, he decided that life was about more then just cheap thrills and living for your own success. He jumped in a volunteer program called Mercy Ships and went to third world countries to document treatment of patients on his ship. This is where he realized that many of the people he was encountering were all victims because they had no clean water to consume. This is when he decided to come back to the U.S with a mission: Work towards quenching the thirst of one BILLION people. I went and saw his key-note speech about the mission of Charity:Water and his presentation blew me away. I knew then and there that this is where we can send our money for Haiti. So, what is OUR GOAL? I want to try and build 3 wells for Haiti by generating $15,000 from the sales of the Don’t Hate On Haiti shirt. I want everyone who helped to be able to see exactly where the wells were built and what people were benefiting directly from OUR donation. And with Charity:Water, we can!!! Every well or water project they build has a GPS location, pictures, and testimonials from the people who have benefited from donations!!!

Now, im working on getting a T-shirt sponsor to cover the cost for the shirt, and I am personally paying the printing costs for the shirt, so after covering the shirt costs, ALL of the proceeds of this will go towards making our goal. I’m so excited to get this going!!!! We start the big push for this at Warped Tour next week, so start sending me pics of you guys in the shirt, I’ll be at our merch booth every day to help spread the good word!!!!

WWW.DONTHATEONHAITI.ORG

WWW.CHARITYWATER.ORG

Your friend,

Tyson Ritter

The All-American Rejects