VIDEO: LeVar Burton Breaks Down After Raising $1M for ‘Reading Rainbow’

Yesterday LeVar Burton launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise $1 million by July 2 to bring back the children’s television show Reading Rainbow as an online series. In less than 24 hours, the project surpassed that goal. Over 39,000 backers have currently pledged money totaling over $1.8 million and counting.

With this campaign, Burton hopes to bring an interactive version of Reading Rainbow to classrooms in low-income schools in an effort to reach children who might not be able to access the Reading Rainbow app that was introduced in 2012.

An overwhelming amount of people responded immediately to the project yesterday. “We’re not just getting pledges, but so much email love that our server froze,” Mark Wolfe, Burton’s business partner, stated. They have received many messages saying “I’m so happy to help” and “LeVar taught me how to read.”

Once the project reached $1 million last night, Burton took to Twitter to respond:

A cameraman was also on hand to take video of the moment Burton and his friends saw the Kickstarter pledges hit $1 million. They all cheer before he takes a moment to tearfully thank all of the supporters of the project.