Calvin Harris Donates $20,000 To DJ Snake’s Charity Campaign Benefiting The Rohingyas Totaling Almost $1.5 Million
In November 2017, Calvin Harris contributed $20,000 to a crowdfunding campaign organized by DJ Snake to raise humanitarian aid for the Rohingya people — an ethnic minority in Myanmar facing what the United Nations had described as a textbook case of ethnic cleansing. Harris’s donation came as the campaign was closing in on $1.5 million in less than a week, making it one of the most successful artist-led humanitarian efforts in electronic music history.
The Love Army for Rohingya Campaign
DJ Snake, born William Sami Étienne Grigahcine, launched the “Love Army for Rohingya” GoFundMe campaign alongside a group of French social media influencers and content creators including Jérôme Jarre, Juanpa Zurita, and others. The campaign was part of a broader movement organized through social media, where creators with massive followings coordinated to direct attention and resources toward the crisis in Myanmar’s Rakhine State.
By late 2017, over 700,000 Rohingya refugees had fled to neighboring Bangladesh following a military crackdown that Amnesty International and other human rights organizations documented as involving mass killings, sexual violence, and the systematic burning of villages. The crisis had been building for years, but the scale of displacement in the second half of 2017 brought it to international headlines.
DJ Snake used his platform — over 20 million followers across social media at the time — to amplify the campaign directly to his audience. The strategy worked: donations poured in from fans, fellow artists, and public figures, ultimately raising millions of dollars that were directed toward organizations providing food, medical care, and shelter in refugee camps in Bangladesh.
Calvin Harris and EDM Philanthropy
Calvin Harris’s $20,000 donation was part of a broader pattern of charitable giving within the electronic music community. Harris, who at the time was the world’s highest-paid DJ according to Forbes, had previously been involved in philanthropic efforts including donating his entire OMNIA Las Vegas booking fee to charity following the October 2017 Las Vegas shooting. That donation, made to multiple organizations supporting victims and first responders, drew significant attention to the role that top-earning DJs could play in disaster relief and humanitarian causes.
IT STARTS WITH US. Please donate now. The Rohingya people need our help. Human to Human. Let’s make a difference. https://t.co/Rts4BXAUlv pic.twitter.com/VJwnyFSxba
— DJ SNAKE (@djsnake) November 28, 2017
.@CalvinHarris donated 20 000$ for #LoveArmyForRohingya, what a man 💪💕 pic.twitter.com/U0oXseFEMQ
— Calvin Harris France (@CalvinHFR) November 29, 2017
The Bigger Picture
The Love Army for Rohingya campaign demonstrated the fundraising power of social media-native artists who could mobilize their audiences for causes beyond music. It also reflected a shift in how the EDM community engaged with global issues. Where earlier generations of electronic artists had supported causes primarily through benefit concerts and compilation albums, the 2017 campaign showed that direct social media appeals — backed by the personal credibility and reach of artists like DJ Snake and Calvin Harris — could generate significant real-world impact in a matter of days.
The Rohingya crisis has continued in the years since, with hundreds of thousands of refugees still living in camps in Bangladesh. The funds raised by the Love Army campaign were directed toward immediate relief, but the situation remains one of the most pressing humanitarian challenges in Southeast Asia.
