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5 Times Social Media Affected Global Poverty

Social Media Affected Global Poverty
Social media has become a powerful presence in today’s world, with 3.48 billion people, 45 percent of the world’s total population, using social networks. Because social media can help get a message across or start many campaigns, people often use it to spread the word about things they are passionate about, including global poverty. Here are the five times social media affected global poverty.

Jonathan Acuff

Jonathan Acuff is an American author who runs a popular blog, StuffChristiansLike.net, that over three million people read. He has amassed a couple hundred thousand followers over all of his social media platforms, and they read his content daily. In 2010, Acuff garnered attention after he used his blog, Twitter and Facebook to raise $60,000, enough to build two kindergartens in Vietnam. His daughter saw a picture on the internet of an impoverished boy that shocked her, and he decided to post about needing $30,000 for a kindergarten in Vietnam as a result. He anticipated that it would take six weeks to raise the money. Through the power of social media, however, he managed to raise the money in a mere 18 hours, showing how powerful social media can be to spread awareness and help reduce global poverty.

Catapult

In 2012, Maz Kessler launched Catapult, the first crowdfunding platform for projects aimed at women and girls. Crowdfunding is when people fund a project by raising small amounts of money many people via the Internet. As the Guardian reports, “Catapult connects supporters to projects through social sharing, encouraging users to donate and track the progress of their donations.” Donations help women and girls living in global poverty around the world—from money going to building birth waiting homes for mothers in Sierra Leone to many global initiatives in Africa. So far, 432 projects have received crowdfunding and close to two million girls and women have received support. Catapult has a large following on social media with over 32,000 followers on Twitter, which shows how big of an impact crowdfunding through social media and the Internet can really have to make an impact to change the lives of those living in global poverty.

#ministermondays

In 2011, Dr. Agnes Binagwaho, Rwanda’s minister of health from 2011-2016, announced Monday with the Minister, or #ministermondays. This announcement meant that Rwandans would have the opportunity to ask Binagwaho and the Ministry of Health directly every other Monday and get responses about health programs in Rwanda. This hashtag serves as an example of how social media can be effective as a tool to educate and inform others about poverty happening around the world and in their own countries.

Omran Daqneesh

In 2016, a picture of a 5-year-old boy with his face drenched in blood and covered head to toe in a thick layer of dust surfaced online. This picture was of Omran Daqneesh, who had escaped a building in Aleppo that an airstrike hit. The Aleppo Media Center posted a YouTube video that contained the image and millions of people on social media quickly viewed, posted and shared it. The attention that the photo garnered on social media led to major news companies, such as NPR, picking up the story and sharing it. This picture raised awareness for the Syrian Civil War and how brutal the conditions were for innocent people and children living in Syria. This likely would not have happened without social media.

Global Citizen

Global Citizen is a movement with the goal to eradicate extreme poverty by 2030. On its website and social media platforms, Global Citizen supporters, called Global Citizens, can learn about the causes of extreme poverty and take action by tweeting or sharing global issues happening in the present. By sharing and helping the global poverty cause, Global Citizens in return earn rewards, such as tickets to concerts or shows. So far, Global Citizen has impacted 650 million people worldwide, showing truly how social media can make an impact on causes such as global poverty.

These are just a few examples of how social media affected global poverty in a positive way. In today’s world, thanks to modern technology, people have the power to help others like never before.

– Natalie Chen
Photo: Flickr

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Growing Together: Agri-tech innovations in Africa

Agri-tech innovations in AfricaAfrican agri-tech is in a major growth period, totaling $19 million in investment over the past two years, resulting in the number of start-ups to double. With 65 percent of the world’s remaining arable land located in Africa, many African countries have major potential to become not only agriculturally self-sufficient but also major food exporters.

In 2017, African countries spent over $65 billion importing food. Current and future agri-tech innovations in Africa will play a large roll in reducing this trade deficit and improving the lives of small scale farmers in the process.

A Boom in Agri-tech

Kenya, Nigeria, and Ghana are leading agri-tech markets, accounting for over 60 percent of active startups in the sector. The agricultural industry has consistently been a crucial component of economic systems throughout Africa, but until recently has been untouched by technological innovation.

Over 80 percent of Nigerian farmers are smallholder farmers, producing 90 percent of domestic output. Nearly half of all working Nigerians are engaged in small-hold farming and account for the poorest 40 percent of the population. This level of poverty among smallholder farmers can be attributed to the low use of mechanized tools, inadequate market information, and lack of access to credit and financing options.

This is changing in recent years, following an increase of 121 percent in fundraising for agri-tech from 2016 to 2017. Nearly a third of all agri-tech startups are e-commerce agricultural focused platforms, connecting farmers with investors, markets, training and mechanized tools. These platforms help to lift many small scale farmers out of poverty while also mitigating food insecurity in local communities.

The Benefits of Crowdfunding

Given the massive potential for growth, crowdfunding has the possibility of ushering the African agricultural industry to the forefront of the world market. There is a public perception issue with smallholder farmers, as many people associate this brand of agriculture with poverty. Crowdfunding, however, can change how people throughout Africa look at farming.

The average age of a farmer is currently 60 years old. This in large part is due to younger people’s inability to secure financing for farming as well as a lack of willingness to participate in the sector. The rise of these crowdfunding agri-tech innovations in Africa is providing young Africans with financial support, technical training and improved mechanical tools needed succeed.

The Startups Making a Difference

Nigeria’s first digital platform for agricultural crowdfunding, Farmcrowdy, launched in September 2016. This platform connects Nigerian smallholder farmers with investors who select the farms they want to invest in. Farmcrowdy then uses the accrued funds to hire additional farmers, lease land, and provide valuable inputs to farms, such as fertilizer, seeds and technical support from sowing through harvest.

Agri-tech solutions such as Farmcrowdy have introduced Nigerians to a trusted platform used to pool resources and support small scale farmers in an effort to alleviate poverty and expand food production capacity. Farm supporters using the Farmcrowdy platform can invest in farms producing rice, maize, poultry, cassava and soya beans. The return on investment typically ranges anywhere from six percent to 25 percent. This allows urban Nigerians to invest directly in the livelihood of their fellow communities and the future of their food security.

Local farmers are appreciative of Farmcrowdy’s advanced training in modern farming practices and the use of mechanization to increase productivity. As a result of this training, many farmers have seen an increase in yield by over a third. These agricultural goods are even selling at a higher price due to access to more stable markets and reputable buyers.

Agri-tech innovations in Africa, such as the rise of crowdfunding, have linked different aspects of the agriculture value chain, improving efficiency and food security in local communities. This is just the beginning of what crowdfunding can do for the agriculture industry. African countries such as Nigeria have massive untapped potential when it comes to food production. The introduction of financing and new farming technologies to small scale farmers can unlock this potential and make a massive impact on the lives of impoverished farmers throughout Africa and potentially the world.

– Peter Trousdale
Photo: Flickr

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How Crowdfarming is Optimizing Livestock Production in Ghana

livestock production in ghana
With adequate rainfall, plentiful vegetation and a low pest population, Ghana’s Northern Savannah Ecological Zone is an optimal environment for cattle production. Despite this prime landscape, livestock production in Ghana has remained low. Insufficient or otherwise absent livestock policies, uninformed ranching practices and lack of funding are among the many factors responsible for underperforming livestock production in Ghana.

Limitations of Meat Access

Over the years, the domestic meat industry has become so problematic that it became cheaper for Ghana to import its meat from South America and Europe. Furthermore, poor cattle production has contributed to nationwide nutrition issues. According to USAID, about 1.2 million Ghanains face food insecurity, and anemia and iron deficiency afflict much of the population.

Recognizing meat access limitations, nutrition deficiencies and cattle mortality in the country, Kamal-Deen Yakub, Damian Brennan and Luis Grolez came together to find an innovative solution to such a persisting problem. In 2013, the trio launched Farmable, a “crowdfarming” platform that connects investors to smallholder cattle farmers in the country.

Crowdsourced funding enables farmers to take better care of their cattle, receive education in agricultural best practices and business development and sell in the domestic market, ultimately improving livestock production in Ghana over time.

Here’s How it Works:

  1. Investors visit Farmable to select a farm in Ghana and start a new cow, which they can name and give certain attributes. Popular funded cows include Borat Cow, Moochacho and Moominator. Alternatively, crowdfunders can invest in a cow that’s already on it’s way to becoming fully funded.
  2. Once a cow has 20 investors, it is linked to a real cow on the farm of the investor’s initial choosing.
  3. Farmhands tag the cow, and investors can track the cow’s health and progress online through preparation for sale in the domestic meat market.
  4. After the meat sells, the investor can reap profits. Investments help continue farmer education, production and marketing efforts.

Since launching, Farmable has helped to revolutionize the cattle ranching industry for participating farmers. “The company has succeeded in bringing together 7,500 cows owned by 600 smallholder farmers. We have sold about 1100 cows through the platform direct from the farms,” cofounder Kamal-Deen Yakub told The Borgen Project.

Education and Optimization

In light of these successes, Farmable has had to put the crowdfarming platform on a temporary hold as it gears up for its next phase. The company is focusing on educating farmers and optimizing production in the interim: “We engage farmers through partnership with existing incubators working to build capacities of smallholder farmers,” Yakub explained.

Farmable recruits subject-matter experts from the University of Ghana, local veterinary officers and experienced farmers to provide training for participants.

Livestock Production in Ghana

Over the next few years, Farmable plans to establish renewable energy cattle ranches in Ghana to promote sustainable practices and cut down on costs. The company will use dung and agricultural waste to produce manure and biogas respectively to sustain these renewable energy ranches for free. Yakub encourages potential donors to stay tuned for this important next step.

The crowdfunding platform will go live again in the coming future, and Yakub hopes investors “are ready to participate in the crowdfarming and become cow backers.”

– Chantel Baul

Photo: Flickr

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New Crowdfunding App for Refugees

Crowdfunding App for Refugees

EdSeed, a new crowdfunding app for refugees, connects education facilities, donors and displaced university students on mobile phones. The app offers refugee students an opportunity to raise the money they need to attend an acclaimed university. It also provides an accessible and reliable method for people and corporations to donate to refugees in a way that will help them become self-reliant.

There is an estimation that, of the 65 million refugees in the world, only 1 percent have access to higher education. At least 200,000 Syrians had their post-secondary education interrupted when they had to flee their home country. No longer on the path to a degree, most of these previous students now find themselves struggling economically in a world that values educated workers.

The app gives students a social media-style profile where they supply details such as degree, university, career aspirations, past academic performance and personalized videos and pictures. Donors can filter their search to find the type of students they wish to support. Individuals can choose between $10 to $100 donations, while corporations can donate from $10,000.

Students can share their edSeed profiles on other social media sites, and the app will also campaign for specific profiles monthly who aren’t receiving as much attention. The students can also monitor their funding process and amounts.

EdSeed partners with universities and scholarship foundations who will verify student profiles and will receive the funds directly, providing a trustworthy platform for donors. The app hopes to raise 6,000 scholarships within three years.

Since its start in April, 500 students have already signed up and 12,000 individual and 3 corporate donors have expressed interest. However, edSeed hopes to accelerate its growth to handle more traffic.

EdSeed hopes to expand beyond higher education and provide funding for apprenticeships, mentoring organizations and other types of degrees that will provide refugees with a quicker route to economic independence. This crowdfunding app for refugees is on its way to help thousands of students worldwide.

– Hannah Kaiser

Photo: Flickr

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Watsi Changes Healthcare Through Crowdfunding

Watsi
What do a Kenyan mother of four, a Cambodian grandfather and an eight-year-old Tanzanian boy have in common?

Each is having their treatment funded, and their life changed, on Watsi.

Watsi describes itself as “a global crowdfunding platform that enables anyone to donate as little as $5 to directly fund life-changing healthcare for people around the world.” By using the crowdfunding model to fund healthcare for those in need, Watsi allows people around the world to change the lives of individuals.

The operations funded by Watsi tend to be one-time operations with relatively high rates of success. Procedures range from repairing 63-year-old Alice’s ankle fracture to treating four-year-old Veronica’s hydrocephalus. Each of these procedures brings crowdfunded healthcare to the developing world.

Along with supporters for individual patients, Watsi has attracted many major supporters toward its general goal. Rotten Tomatoes CEO Joe Greenstein, Kholsa Ventures co-founder Vinod Kholsa and many others have supported the goal of crowdfunding the healthcare of the global poor. Changing lives through funding health, it seems, is a goal that unites both large-scale funders and the various microfinancers who have decided to assist patients through funding.

In addition to providing a platform where people can change lives for as little as $5, Watsi is also devoted to transparency, distancing itself from the criticisms that other micro-lending platforms often face. In an interview with The New York Times, Watsi founder Chase Adam described transparency as benefiting both donors and the organization, claiming that “by being transparent, we’re actually crowdsourcing a lot of our work.” The organization describes itself as “radically transparent” and provides access to a Google document on its website, which displays financial data, details on individual patients and partners, and various other pieces of information that give crowdsourcers background on the platform. In the Internet age, where skepticism reigns supreme, this is an important step for nonprofits.

The power to crowdfund healthcare around the world is an amazing reality in the technological age. It creates a personal connection between charitable individuals and the poor and sick, and changes live for those without a voice on the global stage. Additionally, it puts a face to the many lives changed by global charity. By taking advantage of the crowdfunding model to promote healthcare, Watsi both innovates and changes lives, allowing the platform to become a new and powerful voice for the global poor.

– Haley Luce

Sources: Watsi 1, Watsi 2, Watsi 3, New York Times, Tech Crunch
Photo: CrunchBase

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Crowdfunding for Development

crowdfunding
In 2014, the space-based video game ‘Star Citizen’ raised almost 40 million dollars via crowdsourcing, earning it a Guinness World Record for the largest single amount ever raised through crowdfunding. To put this in context, funding for all of the specialized agencies of the U.N., including WHO, UNICEF and UNDP, totalled about 20 billion dollars in 2011, only 500 times the amount raised for a single video game.

Crowdfunding, the raising of funds for a particular venture or project directly from the population through the internet, has been gaining considerable steam in recent years. Worldwide crowdfunding volume in 2011 was over one billion dollars. In the U.S. alone, there are over 190 platforms for crowdsourcing.

In 2012, social causes made up 30 percent of all crowdfunded projects. This statistic reveals that it is possible to enthuse the public about socially beneficial projects, consequently reducing the burden on the government.

Floating Doctors is just one example of such a project. The organization aims to provide free medical care and deliver medical supplies to isolated populations of Central America. The unique approach of this project is that they voyage by ships to reach these populations and their ships are completely self-sustained in their ability to serve as a doctor’s office. They do not require the existence of a permanent hospital building in the locations they serve. In 30 days, they have been able to raise 3,000 U.S. dollars on KickStarter, a crowdfunding platform.

Another example is Energy for Old Fadama. It is trying to provide solar energy to a large urban slum in Ghana. In 18 months, the organization has equipped 20 community buildings with solar energy and are also trying to empower women in the community by providing them the opportunity to be small solar system entrepreneurs. So far, Energy for Old Fadama has raised 17,000 euros from 59 backers.

Several platforms dedicated specifically to civic projects are starting to appear. According to Deutsche Welle, one such platform, Germany-based nonprofit BetterPlace.org, has collected 10 million euros for 5,000 projects in 147 countries since its launch in 2007.

StartSomeGood is another example. This platform, as the name suggests, supports projects focussed on social good. The platform generates revenue for itself only if a project on its platform meets its fundraising goal. Start Some Good also asks fundraisers to decide on a “tipping-point goal”, an amount required to launch all projects. Donations are only processed if a campaign raises enough to meet its tipping-point. In this way, donors are assured that their money is going toward a goal that will be realized.

Like any good investor, a donor should also be able to evaluate a project for its merit. BetterPlace accommodates this by allowing donors to rate projects and ask questions to project organizers. Incorporating more approaches like donor questions and tipping-point goals will give crowdfunding campaigns more credibility.

Crowdfunding allows for innovations for development to be realized. As it grows, crowdfunding might well become another mainstream approach, just like aid from governmental and intergovernmental sources, to secure funding for civic projects.

– Mithila Rajagopal

Sources: Daily Crowd Source, Deutsche Welle, Guinness World Records, Statista, Start Some Good, World Watch
Photo: Flickr

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Zach Braff’s Wish I Was Here

zach_braff_wish_i_was_here
“I can’t do this all on my own” are the familiar musical lyrics that introduced each episode of “Scrubs” during it’s nine season run.  Though “Scrubs“ turned actor Zach Braff into a television and indie star, his new film project certainly shows how Braff cannot achieve his artistic goals “on [his] own.”

“Wish I Was Here” is a film written, directed and starring Zach Braff, picking up on the themes he first explored in his well-received debut film “Garden State” back in 2004.  The film follows a thirty-something actor, played by Braff, searching for a purpose in life and struggling to make ends meet for his two young children.

Other actors featured in the film include Kate Hudson, Anna Kendrick, Jim Parsons and “Scrubs” co-star Donald Faison. The film premiered to a standing ovation at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival.

What makes “Wish I Was Here” unique, however, is the fact that fans independently financed the film.  Braff, moreover, launched a Kickstarter campaign with a stated goal of $2 million since, according to the film’s Kickstarter page, Braff rejected traditional funding methods to avoid “signing away all artistic control.”

Braff also saw an opportunity for his fans to have a direct impact on the filmmaking process.

Incentives for donating to the film range from a production diary at $10 and a meet and greet with Braff for $600 to being cast in the film as a featured extra for $7,500.  These incentives, matched with the originality of the fundraiser, led to a final total of $3,105,473 donated by 46,520 individuals.

Though a $10 donation to Zach Braff’s film garners a production diary, 80% of the world’s population live off of less than $10 a day, with 660 million living on less than $2 a day.

What could you buy for the fight against global poverty with a $10 donation?

With $3, you could buy a bed net to protect one of the 18,000 children who die daily from mosquitos carrying deadly diseases while for $8.50, you could feed an entire family in a developing nation.  Though Braff’s film is no doubt an artistic achievement, it is easy to wonder what kind of impact his 46,520 backers could have made for global development.

– Taylor Diamond

Sources: Kickstarter, UNICEF, Global Issues
Photo: Bustle

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Crowdfunding Site Used to Provide Solar Lights to India

India_Solar_Crowdfunding
Australian crowdfunding site, ChipIn, is being used to raise money to provide rural Indian slums with solar powered lights. ChipIn has joined forces with Pollinate Energy, an NGO dedicated to providing sustainable and renewable energy sources to rid India of energy poverty. Pollinate Energy’s goal is to crowdsource funds to support the purchase of five franchises that will sell solar lamp kits for tent slums in Bangalore, India.

Pollinate Energy’s goal is to provide the community members with a month-long training program, initial hardware, and continuing support systems to ensure long-term success – as opposed to simply providing members of the community with solar lamps.

Crowdfunding has rapidly gained in popularity in recent years, and has become an efficient way to fund renewable energy projects in supporting energy-poor communities in developing countries. Pollinate Energy says that the funding is needed, as they found nearly “3,400 families without power in a 6-mile radius.” Information released by the government backs up these numbers, with a recent report citing that 1 out of every 6 urban Indian lives in a slum, a majority of which are not even connected to the power grid at all.

– Christina Kindlon

Source: Clean Technica

Crowdfunding Pushes Philanthropy and Development

Crowdfunding Pushes Philanthropy and Development

Crowdfunding is an approach to raising money for new projects and businesses by soliciting contributions from large numbers of ordinary people – online. In 2011 alone, this industry raised $1.5 billion dollars, both in for-profit and non-profit ventures. Due to new regulations, some estimate the trend could grow to $500 billion annually. This could mean huge changes and development through social-venture enterprises; more start-ups and funding for projects that have a beneficial social impact.

The money raised through crowdfunding falls into three different categories: 1. Philanthropy, where there is no expected return for the donation, 2. Lending, where the money is paid back, or some other gift (usually the business product) is given as a reward, or 3. Investment, in exchange for profit or revenue sharing (equity).

Much to industry surprise, the category that received the most funding was philanthropic which equaled 49 percent of all funds raised; despite the fact that most funding sites are for lending or investing.  A few sites, like Crowdrise.com and Causes.com, are exclusively for 501 registered charities. North America is the largest contributor, $837.2 million, over half of the global total, and also the fastest-growing region.

The dramatic news is that earlier this year new legislation was submitted to the SEC, allowing for even greater investment to be made through crowdfunding. So, if the current trends prevail, projects benefiting social causes could start to receive massive amounts of capital. The average equity-based campaign is aiming to raise about $85,000, compared to just $700 for donations. When the new regulations are approved, more funding is expected to flood into “impact investing.”

Jonathan Blanchard, founder of WeSparkt a crowdfunding platform focusing on social-entrepreneurship, believes investing will start to focus on a “double bottom line – profit and social good – to raise equity.” Blanchard sites a Monitor study suggesting that crowdfunding will reach $500 billion annually.  His site will target impact investors hoping to create social change.

You can participate right now, get in with the crowd – fund a project for the global poor!

– Mary Purcell

Source: Forbes, Forbes
Photo: Hong Kiat