[News] Miley Has Raised More than $200,000 for Charity Since the VMAs

For two years running now, the post-V.M.A.s story that has continued to hold people’s attention has been instigated by one Miley Cyrus. But while last year, Cyrus’s on-stage antics had the nation semi-scandalized, as footage of her twerking upon Robin Thicke played on a loop on seemingly every network for days, this year, the post-game discussion is . . . well, it’s of a very different nature.

Cyrus had Jesse Helt, a 22-year-old homeless man, accept her Video Music Award prize, for video of the year, on Sunday night. Helt said he was accepting the award “on behalf of the 1.6 million runaways and homeless homeless youth in the United States who are starving, lost, and scared for their lives right now,” while Cyrus watched on, tearfully, from the front row of the audience. Helt directed fans to Cyrus’s Facebook page where there was information for donating to My Friend's Place, a Los Angeles organization that, per The New York Times, “helps homeless people from the ages of 12 to 25 find housing, jobs, health care and schooling.” Cyrus then spent the rest of the evening with Helt, Instagramming a shot of them at In-N-Out after the show, writing “me and my hero at in n out celebratin.”

According to Mashable, Cyrus’s rep said that MTV was not aware of Cyrus’s plans in advance of the evening, and My Friend’s Place said they similarly did not know what Cyrus was planning. According to The New York Times, Cyrus had, by Monday afternoon, raised more than $200,000 via her Facebook page for the organization. (People who donate before Septemeber 21 are entered in a lottery, the prize being a chance to hang out with Cyrus in Rio de Janeiro when she is there on her Bangerz tour.) “Now is just the beginning for me,” Cyrus said in a video released after the V.M.A.s. “We gotta start somewhere.”

According to the executive director of My Friend’s Place, Cyrus met Helt last Tuesday at the center. She bought him the suit and dress shirt he wore to the ceremony, and she put him up in the hotel he stayed at over the weekend. She also paid for him to return to Salem, Oregon, to spend time with his family following the V.M.A.s. Cyrus told Ryan Seacrest Monday that Helt—who sat next to her during the telecast—was mistaken for her boyfriend several times at the show.

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