The fundraiser is so popular because even the smallest donation is accepted. The minimum amount is ten Kenyan shillings, the equivalent of seven euro cents. This makes it possible for poor Kenyans, such as the slum dwellers of Nairobi, to donate. “I felt enormously guilty,” says Benji Otieno, in his twenties, who lives in the slum town of Kibera in the middle of Nairobi. “I saw people dying, but what could I do? Nothing.” He has now lost count of the number of times he has texted ten shillings to the fundraiser number.
The money goes to the northern provinces of Kenya, where droughts have guatemala phone number list been occurring more and more frequently, especially in the last twenty years. In 2009, the United Nations World Food Programme provided aid to 3.5 million Kenyans. Since then, there has been little to no rain in the northeast of the country. Last year and in recent months, cattle died en masse and the population, who live from agriculture and cattle, has nothing left. According to the United Nations, ten million people in Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Sudan and Kenya now need emergency food aid. The first people officially died of hunger in early August.
Until now, the Kenyans have been able to do little. The media do not hold large collection campaigns like the TV campaigns in the Netherlands after the tsunami and the earthquake in Haiti, and there are also no giro numbers of collaborating aid organizations, such as Giro 555. "The traditional media have blinkers on," says Kangoingoi. "They focus mainly on politics, and do not see that they can use their position to help the population."