Disclaimer: “The Alita Army” is not officially affiliated with either Open Bionics, Tilly Lockey, or the makers of Alita: Battle Angel.
Some background: As fans of Alita: Battle Angel, we started a campaign to show how passionate we are as a fan base and to give the film studios faith that an Alita sequel will be successful. We wanted to fly a banner with “#AlitaSequel #AlitaArmy” over the red carpet at the Academy Awards. The quote we had for the banner to fly was $1,810. Our deadline to pay that was Wednesday, January 29, 2020. We’ve funded that thanks to your generous donations. Every donation that we now receive will go to charity. The fundraiser will remain open until February 19, 2020.
Where the donations are going: With the banner flight paid for, every donation from this point on is going towards giving someone a bionic arm through Open Bionics. Open Bionics develops affordable prosthetic limbs for amputees. Their mission is “to make beautiful bionic limbs more accessible.” They will receive the donations, and even if we don’t raise enough money to cover the whole cost of an arm, we can substantially decrease the cost of one for someone.
TARGET: According to the Open Bionics Twitter account manager: “The entire process includes paying a clinical team, this is the only way to fit a hand, so at the moment the entire process including clinical costs totals £10,000.” With this information, we have set the final target to $15,000: That’s $13,000 for the entire process of providing a complete Hero Arm, the $1,810 we already paid, and a small addition to cover payment processing fees. (GoFundMe charges no platform fees, but WePay, PayPal, and the other payment processors charge 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction)
Why we chose Open Bionics: When thinking of a good cause to work for, we remembered the partnership that the Alita: Battle Angel movie design team had made with Open Bionics. Together, they designed an affordable Alita: Battle Angel themed cover for prosthetic arms. One of these designs were modeled by Tilly Lockey at the premier of the Alita film where she met lead actress Rosa Salazar, whom she took many photos with.
This was our first exposure to both Tilly Lockey and Open Bionics. Her story warmed our hearts and we became fans of not just Alita, but also of Tilly who in an inspirational way we see as a real “battle angel”.
See Tilly Lockey’s story in the following video:
We would love to help other young people like Tilly be able to receive cool prosthetic arms. So we have decided to give all funds beyond what we need to fly the banner to Open Bionics so that they can bring some much needed assistance and joy to the world.
Thank you very much for your support!
UPDATE (APRIL 28, 2022): The Alita Army gifts a young boy a bionic arm
The Alita Army 
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