The Weeknd Donates $300,000 to Beirut Explosion Relief

The Weeknd has made a donation of $300,000 to Global Aid for Lebanon to assist victims of the Beirut explosion, which killed more than 200 people and destroyed a central hub in the capital city on August 4th.

Wassim “Sal” Slaiby, manager for the Weeknd, announced the donation on social media and thanked Live Nation for their additional $50,000 contribution. Slaiby and his wife, Rima Fakih, who were both born in Lebanon, donated $250,000 to the fund and have been mobilizing relief efforts for the country over the past week. (Both emigrated to the Weeknd’s home country of Canada in their youth.)

“I am so honored and humbled to work with artists who have such deep care for the world and right now for our brothers and sisters of Lebanon who are in pain and need our collective help,” Slaiby wrote. “I want to thank my brother @theweeknd for his generous and class act of donating $300,000 to the Global Aid for Lebanon campaign.”

In June, the Weeknd made several large donations to charities, including $200,000 each to Black Lives Matter and the Colin Kaepernick Know Your Rights Camp Legal Defense Initiative; $100,000 to National Bail Out; and $500,000 each to the MusiCares Covid-19 Relief Fund and to frontline health workers at Scarborough Health Network, the healthcare network in his Ontario hometown. Last week, he hosted a virtual concert on TikTok that raised $350,000 for the platform’s Equal Justice Initiative.