Watch OneRepublic frontman Ryan Tedder's livestream concert for Verizon's 'Pay It Forward Live' weekly series
Verizon has launched Pay It Forward Live, a weekly streaming concert series to support small businesses affected by COVID-19. The intimate shows kicked off last week with Dave Matthews, and continued this week with OneRepublic frontman and Grammy-winning superstar songwriter Ryan Tedder.
The performance, which originally streamed from Tedder’s home on April 2, will be available for replay here for one week afterwards.
“As we’re all feeling right now, small businesses are a huge part of our daily lives,” says Tedder. “I’m grateful that I am able to take part in an initiative to help lessen the impact of this crisis.”
Video: Ryan Tedder Performs ‘Better Days’
Over the course of Pay It Forward Live, viewers are encouraged to tag their favorite local businesses and do what they can to support them — shop online, make a purchase in advance for when the crisis is over and the businesses reopen, or order a meal. Verizon will also donate $10 to support small businesses, up to $2.5 million, when the hashtag #PayItForwardLive is used.
Verizon is also giving consumers as many ways to support small businesses as possible, including partnering with PayPal and Square to give Pay It Forward Live viewers the ability to support small businesses within the live streams.
Expanding its commitment to small businesses, this week Verizon Business will pay it forward to a number of small businesses preparing daily meals to feed healthcare workers. This program brings together multiple New York City restaurants with six area hospitals in an effort to help both the restaurants’ workers and hospital staff on the front line providing care to patients. Meals are being provided seven days a week throughout the month of April, at no cost to the hospitals or their employees. The ordering and delivery process is managed by Grubhub, which donated its service to help this cause.
Participating restaurants include: Blue Restaurant, Bella Notte, Dino, Dosa Royale, Locksmith Bar and Mimi Cheng’s. Medical centers receiving food include: Maimonides Medical Center and Hospital for Special Surgery.
Video: Ryan Tedder Performs ‘Counting Stars’
Verizon is planning to scale these efforts, with continued support from Grubhub, to help as many as possible in our backyard and beyond. Verizon is urging companies in other cities to support similar efforts to fund local restaurants’ efforts to feed healthcare workers.
To date, Verizon is supporting communities through a combined $20 million donation to nonprofits directed at serving students, healthcare first responders, and small businesses. To find out more about what Verizon is doing to help customers and small businesses, visit verizon.com/about/news/our-response-coronavirus.
Verizon is the parent company of Yahoo.
For the latest coronavirus news and updates, follow along at https://news.yahoo.com/coronavirus. According to experts, people over 60 and those who are immunocompromised continue to be the most at risk. If you have questions, please reference the CDC and WHO’s resource guides.
