When we took the photo of Ben, Elisa Steele and Jeff Goodby yesterday, we promised to donate to Ben’s StillerStrong charity a dollar per view up to $50,000, the cost to build a temporary school in earthquake-ravaged Haiti. And, whether it’s out of a desire to do good or just because they wanted to see Ben’s signature “Blue Steel,” the clicks came.

Blog posts on Yahoo! and Flickr, a video from Ben (see below) and tweets from Ben, Yahoo! and hundreds of people who liked the idea drove visitors to the photo. Within eight hours of being posted, we had already hit 50,000 views on the two sites where the image was being hosted, flickr.com/stillerstrongyahoo and flickr.com/yahooadvertising. As of posting, the photo has more than 100,000 views–double the views we were shooting for.

People seemed to love the idea, and Ben’s StillerStrong work in general. More than two hundred people commented, saying things like, “This is such a lovely project. Keep it up, man!” and, for the Zoolander fans out there, “Will this be a school for kids who can’t read good and want to do other stuff good too?” (Heh.)

Thanks for clicking and helping to raise money for the school. We hope soon to have another picture to show: a finished school!

—Jeff Sweat, blog editor

At the end of the session, Ben posed for a group photo with Elisa and Jeff and a crowd wearing StillerStrong headbands, and uploaded it to Flickr. He asked everyone to view it and share it with their friends. For every click, Yahoo! will donate a dollar, up to $50,000, to Ben’s StillerStrong charity. StillerStrong is raising money for the Haitian School Initiative, an effort to help provide temporary schools for Haitians displaced by the earthquake in January 2010.

$50,000 will pay for one temporary school. Your view pays for part of that school. So click on it, and pass it on!

When disaster strikes, people want to help, but they often don’t have the resources at their fingertips.  At Yahoo!, we’ve implemented a number of ways people can stay up to date in the aftermath of the devastating Haiti earthquake and find ways to help with disaster relief efforts.

I am very fortunate to work in Yahoo! for Good, a team at Yahoo! whose focus is to empower people around the world to make a positive impact.  To support relief efforts in Haiti, Yahoo! is collaborating with non-profit organizations, leveraging our global network of services to raise awareness, and offering much-needed funding for the millions of people who have been affected by this natural disaster.

Here are the ways we are helping.

• The homepages of Yahoo.com, Yahoo! UK, Yahoo! Italy, Yahoo! Canada, and Yahoo! Mobile are connecting people to the latest news and ways to donate.
• Yahoo! News is providing ‘How to Help’ links in related stories and created a Topic page about the earthquake with donation resources.
• The Yahoo! Employee Foundation approved a $100,000 emergency grant to UNICEF and Partners in Health.
• US Yahoo!s have donated more than $80,000 to the cause in the last 48 hours, including corporate matches for those donations.

It doesn’t stop there.  We are scheduling banner ads across the Yahoo! network to support organizations like the American Red Cross and UNICEF who are providing relief efforts in Haiti.  We are also providing prominent placements on Yahoo! Sports and OMG to encourage people to donate. And there is more to come.

In the last 48 hours, I’ve been so inspired and humbled by fellow Yahoos who have stepped up to make all of this happen at lightning speed.  It’s times like these that remind me once again of the amazing power of the Yahoo! network to encourage people to take action. Join us in this important cause by making a donation to one of the charities listed here.

By Connie Chan, Yahoo! for Good