It was a selfie gone wrong. Regardless, the selfies taken last week have been used in a more productive way, ditching its often-narcissistic nature, much thanks to Fiona Cunningham.
Cunningham is a teenage mother living in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire who created the #nomakeupselfie campaign that went viral last week. She then set up a Facebook page while in her room and encouraged people to donate money to the Cancer Research UK - yes, together with their selfies. She admitted getting inspired by actress Kim Novak, who started the trend of going to the Oscars barefaced.
"The no-makeup selfie craze really captured my imagination and I was amazed at the response from people around the world and just thought how great it would be if it could be done for charity. After seeing nothing similar on Facebook or Twitter, I thought there was something in it that it could raise awareness of cancer. Initially, I was just going to try and raise awareness for breast cancer, but it just became all cancer and that is even better," Cunningham said.
The campaign came out successful, spreading across many social media platforms like wildfire -until an autocorrect feature changed the course of the donations by mistake to UNICEF instead of the said cancer charity.
An estimate of £20,000 went to UNICEF after people mistakenly used the word "donate" rather than "beat" in a text message donation to 70099, where donations have been coursed through. The text message promises to donate money to the supposed cancer charity.
Not only that, some people unintentionally inquired on polar bear adoption from the World Wildlife Fund, when their phones autocorrected the word "beat" to "bear" using the same 70099 number.
It has been said that the number 70099 is for the sole use of UNICEF, but the same number is in use for animal adoption inquiries. Both the cancer charity and the agency share the same text number for donations, but with varied keywords.
The director of individual giving at UNICEF UK, Mike Flynn, said it was an honest mistake.
"Unicef believes this error has occurred due to those interested in donating to the #nomakeupselfie campaign sharing the text keyword 'DONATE' - rather than the keyword 'BEAT' - and the text number 70099, which has then been repeated across social media, " Flynn said.
UNICEF is a United Nations agency providing humanitarian care for children and mothers in developing countries. The agency said that it already plans to transfer the money to the cancer charity, after confirming about £18,625 of donations. The cancer charity also confirmed this.
"We're really grateful to everyone who donated to Cancer Research UK through the #nomakeupselfie campaign. We've agreed with Unicef that the donations they received will be given to Cancer Research UK," said Carolan Davidge, director of communications of Cancer Research UK.
"People who made a donation in error to Unicef have already been contacted to let them know the money is being transferred," Davidge added.
Reports say the selfie campaign already raised over £2 million in just two days, but its origins remains unclear. In less than a week, the cancer charity raised more than £8 million, making the latest campaign the most successful of all its fundraising drives. The charity disclosed that the selfie-generated donation would fund 10 clinical trials, which were put on hold because of the lack of funding.
Cunningham lives with her fiancé Carl Cook and her one-year-old son Jenson.
