Tyler and Jessica Blevins

ninja/Instagram

Ninja and his wife donate $150,000 to coronavirus relief

They were inspired by Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively, and Jimmy Fallon.

 

Nahila Bonfiglio

Internet Culture

Posted on Mar 24, 2020

Ninja and his wife are doing their part to assist with the coronavirus pandemic by donating $150,000 to Feeding America.

Ninja, whose real name is Tyler Blevins, made a name for himself through his Fortnite streams and uploads to Twitch and YouTube. As the spread of the coronavirus continues to shut down schools, businesses, and places of work, Ninja and his wife Jessica want to help.

The couple announced their donation through a stream posted to Ninja’s Instagram. “We donated $150,000 to Feeding America to help those battling hunger right now,” the caption on the post reads. “Especially the students not getting school lunches.” The Blevins credited Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively, as well as Jimmy Fallon, for inspiring the donation. Reynolds and Lively donated $1 million to non-profits in the U.S. and Canada last week, a few days after Fallon announced his donation to Feeding America via Instagram.

The Blevins chose Feeding America, a non-profit aimed at reducing hunger, for several reasons. Namely, as they noted in their video, to assist the children who were relying on school lunches to feed themselves.

“We’ve been fortunate enough… to be in the financial situation that my wife and I are in right now. So one thing that we wanted to do was to give back as much as we can,” Ninja said. Blevins noted that Feeding America is enhancing its efforts in response to COVID-19. “Something that compelled Tyler and I to donate to this specific cause… is just the kids that are out of school that really depend on school food for lunch and don’t have food outside of it,” she said. “They’re ensuring that they still get to these kids and that they have boxes for their families.”

The couple encouraged anyone else to join them in donating. They also stressed the necessity of social distancing and urged everyone to stay indoors if possible. “This is a very serious issue,” Ninja said. “We see a lot of young people, and, you know, a lot of people who aren’t really practicing social distancing… we have to do everything that we can in our power to lower the curve, so it is very important that every single influencer, I feel like it is your guys’ job—it is our job—to make sure that we are telling our audience how serious this is and to be practicing social distancing at this time.”

The couple also sought to comfort their fans.

“Let’s try to make something positive out of this,” Ninja said. “There’s so many things for you guys to be able to do… watch and hopefully create.”

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H/T Game Industry

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*First Published: Mar 24, 2020, 9:25 am CDT