IDAHO, USA — The YouTube tandem of Mark Rober and Mr. Best combines for more than 100 million subscribers and is using their influence to clean our oceans by way of a fundraiser called #TeamSeas.
For every dollar raised, #TeamSeas pledges to remove one pound of trash from the ocean. The campaign has teamed up with non-profits Ocean Conservancy and The Ocean Cleanup.
It caught the eye of Eagle High School's Madison Jiang, a member of the Utah-Idaho District Key Club, who is now leading fundraising efforts throughout high schools in the region.
"It's worthy problem to focus on because the ocean does a lot for us even though we don't appreciate it. Especially in Utah and Idaho, we don't have any coasts next to the ocean," Jiang said.
The key club district has between 800-900 members across all high schools, according to Jiang. While there isn't a specific fundraising goal for the district on a local level, #TeamSeas is aiming for $30 million by the end of the calendar year.
The fundraising launched in late October and is already more than halfway there, according to the #TeamSeas website.
"That translates to 15.6 million pounds of trash removed from the ocean," Utah key club member Alexandre Andtbacka said. "And we really wanted to help that and add what we could to this organization."
High schools in the key club district are still in the planning and promotion phase, according to Jiang; however, they plan to make their fundraising push through the month of December.
"We really wanted to make sure we helped something for the right cause," Andtbacka said. "And especially now with COVID, we wanted to make sure we had something that could impact the world."
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