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Mobile phone relief: Americans text aid to Haiti
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Mobile phone relief: Americans text aid to Haiti
AFP - Saturday, January 16
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A woman sends text messages in 2008 on her Blackberry phone in Washington, DC. Text HAITI to 90999 or Yele to 501501. Americans are digging deep for Haiti and sending millions of dollars to relief organizations via innovative mobile phone giving campaigns.
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WASHINGTON (AFP) - – Text HAITI to 90999 or Yele to 501501. Americans are digging deep for Haiti and sending millions of dollars to relief organizations via innovative mobile phone giving campaigns.
A mobile phone campaign set up by the US Red Cross to raise money for victims of the cataclysmic earthquake in Haiti had raised more than eight million dollars early Friday, with the money pouring in at the rate of 100,000 dollars an hour, officials said.
US donors were donating 10 dollars at a time for the Haiti relief effort by texting the word HAITI to 90999, a special cellphone number set up within hours of the quake by the American Red Cross, with help from the State Department.
A spokeswoman for the US Red Cross, Abi Weaver, said the mobile giving campaign passed the seven-million-dollar mark at 11:00 pm (0300 GMT) on Thursday, two days after the powerful quake struck the impoverished Caribbean island state, reducing much of the capital Port-au-Prince to rubble.
"As far as we know, this has broken all global mobile marketing campaigns in history. The money is coming in at a rate of 100,000 dollars an hour," Weaver told AFP.
The mobile phone campaign brought in around a quarter of all donations that poured into the American Red Cross in the 48 hours after the powerful quake rocked Haiti and makes up the lion's share of funds that have been earmarked to help victims of the temblor, Weaver said.
"As of last night, we had received 35 million dollars in donations, 10 million of which, including the texting funds, has been designated specifically for Haiti.
"But we are doing damage assessment and we do anticipate that we will be spending more than the 10 million for sure for Haiti," Weaver said.
A similar text message campaign run by Yele Haiti, a grassroots group founded by former Fugees singer Wyclef Jean, who has Haitian roots, has raised more than two million dollars.
"Somewhere in the vicinity of 350,000 dollars came in the first evening, roughly a million dollars on the second day and another million on Thursday," Albert Angel, head of Give on the Go, the company running Yele Haiti's mobile phone donations campaign, told AFP.
Five dollars are donated to help desperate quake survivors in Haiti and relief and rescue work each time the word "Yele" is sent to the number 501501, and donors can re-text the message up to six times.
Four other organizations -- the Clinton Foundation, International Medical Corps, International Rescue Committee and Salvation Army -- are taking donations of five or 10 dollars for the relief effort, delivered by the simple act of texting the word HAITI to special mobile phone numbers.
The amount donated appears on donors' monthly phone bills, and 100 percent of the pledged amount is remitted by the phone service provider to the Mobile Giving Foundation, which is coordinating the six groups' cellphone-giving campaign in the United States.
Mobile Giving then passes the funds on to the donor's chosen cause.
"The carriers are aware that normal processing poses some challenges in an emergency situation, so discussions are taking place to see what can be done," to get mobile phone providers to advance funds for relief work to the organizations working on the ground, Jim Manis, chairman of the Mobile Giving Foundation, told AFP.
According to Adriene Davis of the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University in Indianapolis, which monitors disaster fundraising, US donors gave 1.92 billion dollars for relief and aid efforts after the Asian tsunami in late 2004.
"More than 200 million dollars was raised within the first five days of the disaster, all from US individuals, foundations and corporations," Davis said.
"We have a sense that mobile phone fundraising, both from the standpoint of organizations making the appeals and from the standpoint of donors, is a much larger phenomenon this time than it ever has been in past disasters," Davis told AFP.
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