Dozens of French-speaking streamers, five days of live broadcast and a single objective: to raise funds for the actions in Palestine and the West Bank of the NGO Médecins du Monde. This is the program for the Streamers 4 Palestinians charity event which, at the initiative of Swiss videographer Baghera Jones, will begin on Twitch on Friday May 31 at 8 p.m. and end on Wednesday evening at midnight.
Since the beginning of the week and the bombing by the Israeli army of a Gazan displaced camp in Rafah, which left at least 45 dead, French-speaking influencers, most of whom had until now remained less vocal on the Israeli conflict -Palestinian, were numerous to add their voices to those demanding a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip. Some of them then sponsored and relayed crowdfunding campaigns aimed at families of Palestinian civilians.
The Streamers 4 Palestinians live stream is part of this wave of online solidarity. Among the personalities present, there are several well-known profiles such as Natoo, LittleBigWhale, AngleDroit, Clément Viktorovitch, Doigby, MisterMV… And many others. “Like everyone else, I obviously feel very touched by what is happening there,” explains to Le Monde Antoine Billy, aka TPK, who will launch his first live stream dedicated to this cause on Saturday morning. The same feeling goes for streamer Aurélien Gilles, known under the pseudonym Ponce: “I speak to thousands of people every day and I would feel bad if I did nothing.”
“Normal” lives, others more serious
If the Twitch channel of Baghera Jones, who has been preparing the event behind the scenes since Wednesday in collaboration with Médecins du Monde, will certainly be a space of convergence for all Internet users, each streamer involved will be from their own Twitch channel. Donors will be directed to a collective pot administered via the Streamlabs Charity online platform. According to several videographers, the objective of the event will not be to ensure a constant presence for five days but rather to offer “spontaneous moments”.
As for the content, it will remain in the spirit of what streamers usually broadcast on the Amazon platform: video game games, group activities, discussions with their chats… “I will take the time at the beginning and at the end of each live to talk [about the situation in Gaza], I will check with Médecins du Monde to receive one of their spokespersons on Monday on my channel, announced to Le Monde Ponce. Otherwise, my program does not change: it will just be in the colors of Palestine. »
“We don’t want to improvise as experts in geopolitics or historians: we really just want to help the actors who are on the ground and who are doing their best to ensure that this human drama is as least important as possible. possible,” TPK continues. For his part, Lâm Hua, rather a fan of gaming and technology, plans to play alone or with other streamers, but will also adapt his program: “The objective will above all be to raise awareness of the message of Médecins du Monde. »
“All support counts”
Across the Atlantic, several dozen North American content creators also produced a charity livestream called Creators for Palestine on Thursday. Broadcast for five hours on The Try Guys’ YouTube channel, the event raised more than $1.5 million for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Middle East (UNRWA) and humanitarian organizations Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, Medical Aid for Palestinians and HEAL Palestine.
French-speaking streamers and their viewers are also used to this type of meeting. For several years, marathons aimed at collecting donations for NGOs have been legion: Z Event, SpeeDons, Furax, Téléthon Gaming or the Desert Bus de l’Espoir… Like ZeratoR, creator of the Z Event, certain recurring faces of these formulas are also involved in the Streamers 4 Palestinians initiative. In the same way that live broadcasts had also been improvised after the earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria in 2023, “this is an event organized urgently, we have not planned a lot of things”, underlines Ponce.
The fact remains that streamers, like TPK, want to count on “the legendary generosity of the French public” and at least on the general mobilization which has been shaking a large number of young Internet users for several weeks. “We see the collection capacity of this community, we are quite convinced of the effect that Streamers 4 Palestinians can have,” enthuses Virginie Poux, innovation project manager in the collection department of Médecins du Monde, to Le Monde. And we are happy that they are mobilizing for this cause because, for the teams on site, all support counts. »