What’s better than using the positive vibes from captured dreams to help others?
Starting Tuesday, Twitter will be donating nearly $1 million to charities such as Boys and Girls Club, Destination Crenshaw, The 3-D Foundation, and UNICEF Canada as part of its campaign highlighting the prophetic tweets of celebrities from before they achieved their dreams.
Of the 12 celebrities, five are athletes, including 2021 WNBA champion Diamond DeShields and 2021 WNBA Rookie of the Year Michaela Onyenwere. DeShields is a guard for the Chicago Sky and Onyenwere is a forward for the New York Liberty.
The athletes were able to choose which charities the money goes to. In addition, 39+ billboards that feature the athletes pictured next to their tweets will be going up in eight cities across North America. Those cities are New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Toronto, Houston, Tampa and Talladega.
“With this campaign we’re celebrating a group of talented individuals who, through their own hard work and drive, were able to manifest and make the dreams they Tweeted their reality,” said Jenna Ross, senior manager of entertainment partnerships at Twitter. “We hope to help inspire countless others to dream big, put their goals out into the world and Tweet them into existence.”
92.7 percent of DeShields’ 26.6K followers have come after her tweet above. For Onyenwere the percentage is 95.9 and she had 7,768 followers as of Tuesday morning.
DeShields was 18 and a freshman at UNC at the time of her tweet. She came in as the No. 3 Hoop Gurlz high school recruit and went on to become the national Freshman of the Year. She transferred to Tennessee, played there for two years and then went pro in Turkey for the 2017-18 season before being drafted No. 3 overall in the 2018 WNBA Draft. She averaged 14.4 points per game as a Sky rookie and 16.2 in her 2019 All-Star season.
In 2021, the Sky signed WNBA legend Candace Parker and were expected to contend for the title. They then overcame an average regular-season record by defeating the Dallas Wings and upsetting the Minnesota Lynx and Connecticut Sun in the playoffs en route to the WNBA Finals. Not only did DeShields fulfill her dream of making it to the Finals, but her Sky went on to defeat the Phoenix Mercury in four games, capturing the franchise’s first championship.
DeShields went to Norcross High School in Norcross, Ga.
Onyenwere was 14 at the time of her tweet. She attended Grandview High School in Aurora, Colo. and was the No. 10 Hoop Gurlz recruit in the class of 2017, choosing to play at UCLA. She averaged north of 18 points per game in each of her final three seasons as a Bruin and was an All-American as a junior and senior. She was selected sixth overall in 2021 and outshined the five rookies drafted ahead of her. She started in 29 of 32 games and her scoring average of 8.6 helped lead the Liberty to the playoffs.
The other celebrities to be featured on billboards are
- Leonard Fournette
- Bubba Wallace
- Patrick Mahomes
- Megan Thee Stallion
- Simu Liu
- Issa Rae
- Niall Horan
- Demi Lovato
- Steve Saylor
- Matthew Cherry