No-makeup selfies campaign generates £2m windfall for cancer research

Tens of thousands of women have shared pictures of themselves on social networking sites by raising awareness for cancer research. Tens of thousands of women urged on by their friends to share pictures of themselves without wearing no make up to raise awareness of breast cancer, by Friday the viral trend had transformed into a fundraising Phenomon on generating 2 million windfall for Cancer research UK. The #nomakeupselfie campaign Raised the money in just 48 hours, as there were hundreds and thousands of donations from popular social networking sites like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter users sharing pictures of themselves without make up and nominating a friend to do the same.

The idea itself appears to have begun last week when American crime author Laura Lippman tweeted a picture of herself without makeup in support of Kim Novak, the 81-year-old actor whose looks had been criticised at the Oscars. The theme was picked up by celebrities and fans of Lippman before spreading more widely.

Twitter said the hashtag started to gather steam on Tuesday and peaked on Thursday, with 83,000 mentions since Wednesday alone. Instagram saw 59,000 posts in 24 hours from Thursday to Friday, and estimated those users would have donated £180,000.

Eccles said the charity had tried to push fundraising using selfies before but that nothing had taken off like this campaign, which has prompted donations from around the world.

"We're over the moon. When we do a social media campaign we want to engage as many people as possible, and this has taken off like crazy."

I think that it's a great way to aware people of breast cancer by going on popular social networking sites which has thousands and millions of users using these sites every day, also is a great way of having celebrities to do this because m many celebrities are role models like Holly Willoughby and Kym Marsh and a lot of people will follow them and do the same. I also think that was a great way of making sure people know what breast-cancer is and by having famous people doing this, it will allow more people to donate money to find a cure and stop breast cancer.