Charity’s Video With Sexy Recitation of Poverty Data Goes Viral

A creative video posted by global aid charity Save the Children in which models were tricked into reciting grim poverty and health statistics in sexy voices has gone viral, ringing up more than 1.9 million YouTube views as of Monday, The New York Times reports.

In the fundraising clip released last week, models who believed they were making a perfume commercial read lines about lust and desire, but during the shoot the cue cards changed to messages such as “Almost 800 mothers and 18,000 children die each day.” The models express befuddlement but attempt to read the increasingly graphic lines in a sexy way at a director’s urging.

“All their reactions are authentic,” said Eileen Burke, a spokeswoman for Save the Children. The video has fueled some online criticism over the models’ being duped, but Josh Ruben, who co-directed the spot, said that after learning about the video’s real nature the models “were unanimously happy to have been part of it.”