Wyclef Jean will join George Clooney and CNN’s Anderson Cooper in hosting MTV Networks’ “Hope for Haiti,” the global telethon to air commercial-free across ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, CNN, BET, the CW, HBO, MTV, VH1, and CMT on Friday, Jan. 22, at 8 p.m. ET/PT.
The telethon will be hosted by Clooney in Los Angeles, Jean in New York, and Cooper in Haiti. All donations will directly benefit Oxfam America, Partners in Health, Red Cross, UNICEF, and Wyclef’s Yele Haiti Foundation.
“Hope for Haiti” will feature performances and celebrity appearances to be announced in the coming days, as well as live news reports from CNN. Facebook and MySpace have signed on as official social-media partners to help steer viewers to the telethon and drive donations.
Yele Haiti has already raised $2 million through text-message donations, the organization announced on Friday (Jan. 15). By texting “Yele” to 501501, mobile users can donate $5 to relief efforts.
“This is apocalypse,” Jean said about the destruction in his home country. “We spent the day picking up dead bodies, all day that’s what we did. There’s so much bodies in the streets that the morgues are filled up, the cemeteries are filled up.”