Hi people we want to ask you for a favor; please VOTE The Echelon House for Best Charity![SHORTY VOX POPULI] at the SHORTY AWARDS
These people have been doing an amazing job since 2008 and they deserve your support. check out an interview they did for MTV;
Forgets stans, y’all. When it comes to The Echelon – the super passionate fan army behind mega-band 30 Seconds To Mars – we’re talking about phans aka philanthropists + fans.
From planting trees in Haiti for frontman Jared Leto’s big 4-0 to organizing a Charity: Water donation drive in honor of the cosmic crew’s Guinness World Record-breaking 300th show, the do-goodery of their devoted followers is an international phenomenon that’s truly making the world a better place.
Over here at Act, we are hella impressed by the platoon of selfless phans who march to the give-back tune of pop rock’s hardest working boys, so we decided to get the deets on how it all got started from one of their most faithful soul-diers, Lily Sebert, the founder of The Echelon House, one of the first 30STM fan-based charity endeavors. Check out her inspiring interview below — and join The Echelon by taking Action after the jump!
How did you get the idea to start Echelon House?
In 2008, between the release of A Beautiful Lie and This Is War, 30 Seconds to Mars partnered with Habitat for Humanity in their hometown of Los Angeles, auctioning off a spot to be able to volunteer and build a house with them, with all money going to Habitat.
Interestingly enough, the idea originally started out as a message board thread (before the emergence of twitter, the majority of fans hung out and got to know each other on the band’s official message board), and the thread was simply designed to encourage people to volunteer with Habitat in their local areas, since we weren’t able to help out in LA.
That same day, one of the girls in the UK found the Habitat Hopebuilders site where you could ‘build’ houses as a group online, and thought maybe we could do it as a project. Since I’d started the original thread, I signed us up, thinking that maybe we could work our way towards finishing a house if all of us worked together. And thus “The House That The Echelon Built” was born.
Amazingly, within a week, we had completed our first house and were working on our second. The band even found out about the project on their own (ninja skills, perhaps?) and posted about it on their blog and their website.
Almost four years later, it’s incredible to see how far we’ve come. What started off as a fairly small project has turned into a large, global endeavour, encompassing volunteering, creative fundraising projects, merchandise, donations, and much much more. I can’t wait to roll out our plans for 2012, to continue to expand what we’re doing, and build more houses for those who need it most.
Tell us about your success so far — how many homes have you built with donations from The Echelon?
We are currently working on our 28th house, which is almost complete! To date, we have raised over $50,000 USD to help those less fortunate. The folks at Habitat have been nothing short of incredible, and have supported us every step of the way – from technical issues, to logo usage, to including us in newsletters and year end reports, and even helping us fund raise at our Habitat-themed 30STM concert in Toronto. I’m so proud of all that we’ve accomplished. To think that 28 families have roofs over their heads because of our work is humbling, to say the least.
We wrote about The Echelon Donates project to build trees in Haiti for Jared’s 40th birthday — and Echelon House also had a special Haiti project for the frontman’s big 4-0. What’s going on with that? Can fans still get involved?
Absolutely! This year for Jared’s birthday project, we decided to focus specifically on funding for Haiti, as we know it’s a place that holds a lot of importance to him. The donation amount is up to each individual, and can be made directly at www.bit.ly/houseforhaiti.
We decided to do a project that combined photography as well as personalized notes. To participate, all you need to do is snap a photo of yourself holding a sign for Jared’s birthday (we have some sample ones on our website, such as ““Happy Birthday Jared! I donated to help those in need” or something similar). Fans then have the opportunity to write a letter to Jared, detailing why they chose to donate to The Echelon House for his birthday. These submissions will be compiled into a book for purchase by fans, and also for Jared himself as our birthday gift for his 40th. Depending on number of submissions, we will also look into making a poster from the photos.
For full details on both projects, you can visit www.bit.ly/echelonprojects.
If you have a twitter account, you can help them win a Shorty Award for BEST CHARITY!
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