Kenyans for Kenya started an initiative to raise money for the crisis in Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia. By social media and mobile phones within a few days there has been raised over €500.000 by Kenyans, through mobile phones. The NaiLab is running the online campaign.
Last week, I arrived in Nairobi to a chilly welcoming. After one year finally getting back to the NaiLab, where great thing are going on (more about that later).
Barely 24 hours in Kenya, I heard about the launch of the ‘Kenyans 4 Kenya’ initiative and I’m impressed about the impact of it. Let me briefly explain what it is all about. As you know, Kenya is located next to Somali, also known as the Horn of Africa and millions are suffering from famine and drought in the region.
The initiative was launched by the Safaricom Foundation in partnership with Kenya Commercial Bank initiated the ‘Kenyans 4 Kenya’ campaign. The initiative has brought together a number of organizations among them Safaricom Foundation, KCB Foundation and the country’s leading media houses operating under the umbrella of the Media Owners Association (MOA). The effort will be administered by relief agency Kenya Red Cross Society. Other corporate have also joined the band wagon and progress is being noted.
The initiative: Kenyans who’re standing together to help Kenyans who are in, extremely, need of help and have employed the use of mobile phones to transfer funds at no cost. This will ensure that even the smallest donation (as low as Sh10 (€0,07)) is harnessed, as this will go a long way in improving the situation of millions of Kenyans currently staring starvation and death in the eye.
The very same day of the launch, Sam Gichuru (Manager NaiLab) was having a discussion online on how the rest of the online community can get involved and tap more contributions. Everyone had their own ideas but how to bring them together was the challenge. A number of independent initiatives were also taking place online and offline.
An idea floated in, how about we create a platform where we can harness all these together and have a platform that would act as an official platform? The social media team at the NaiLab (they also did the haba na haba initiative that raised Kes. 136,000 (almost €1.000) in six hours) created a Facebook page and within 5 hours, the page had over 3,000 likes. Their wide reach to Kenyans on Facebook has seen the page grow to be popular and more Kenyans are becoming fans on the page every day.
No suprise that the same team also runs the 1%CLUB fanpage…
The team then visited Gina Din, a professional communications consulting firm who are doing the official communication for the initiative and floated in their strategies on how social media can be used to boost the efforts to save dying Kenyans. Since then, the team has been on ground on all the activities and is always in communication with the Gina Din team that sends them updates and any information they would want pitched out to Kenyans using social media.
The initiative has had a mention on Mashable and BBC and their efforts to raise money via mobile is indeed taking shape as all mobile phone service providers have come on board to easen transactions.
By the time this blog was going up, Kenyans 4 Kenya initiative had managed to raise Ksh. 77, 633, 983 (over €500.000) and is targeting Ksh. 100million (€700.000) by midnight. Their target is half a billion, about 3.5 million euros. And I think…no…I know –for sure- they’ll going to make it.
At the same moment in my country, The Netherlands, today started the ‘Week of the Horn’ (Dutch). The campaign is runned by Giro 555 (Dutch), a collaboration of the biggest development organizations in The Netherlands: initiatives are starting all over the world.
Neither in Kenya or The Netherlands: we aim the same. Everyone is giving their best 1%.
One of the team members, Stephen Musyoka has this parting shot for me: ”Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your fellow countrymen.”
The quote applies well in this situation.
