Ryan Lewis Raises $30,000 for Charity in One Day After Revealing His Mother Is HIV-Positive

Singer and his mom open up about her battle with the virus

By Brett Malec Apr 23, 2014 7:07 PMTags
Macklemore, Ryan LewisLester Cohen/WireImage

Ryan Lewis is doing a lot of good for charity!

One day after the Grammy winner revealed that his mother Julie Lewis has been living with HIV for 30 years, Lewis took to Twitter to announce he's already raised a boatload of money for his new healthcare charity the 30/30 project.

"Wowwww!!! The @3030project reached 30k in the first 24 hours!" Macklemore's BFF wrote. "Amazing support, thank you to all the incredible donors!"

Lewis founded his 30/30 charity to raise money for affordable healthcare worldwide. The charity's first endeavor will be establishing a health center in Malawi, where many are affected by HIV and AIDS.

Twitter

Lewis and his mother Julie also stopped by CBS This Morning today to open up about their family's touching story. Julie was infected with HIV back in 1984 when she received a blood transfusion in the hospital after giving birth. She found out she was HIV-positive several years later.

"My immediate concern was, ‘Is our whole family infected?'" Julie told CBS. "Because the minute I found out I was HIV positive, the next step was that every single person in our family needed to have an HIV test. And we had to wait three or four days for those tests to come back. And I will tell you, that was the longest three or four days I will have ever lived."

No one else in the Lewis family had been infected. And 30 years later, Lewis and his mom celebrated her survival by founding the 30/30 project and sharing their story.

"It's pretty amazing for me that my family could have this story, my mom could go through all of this and it could come to this point that I could use sort of the platform that's been provided to invest my time and energy into something that is just really positive," Lewis said.

"Yes, I'm grateful that I lived," Julie said, adding, "But I want to do something to honor all those people that we love dearly who died along the way."