The final figures are in! Oxfam America announced last week that contributions received directly from Daily Kos for the August 6-7 #48forEastAfrica action netted $7,135!
We're not stopping there! We're going for $10,000!
In other feedback from participants, Oxfam International, which wrote about the event and participated in the weekend social media action on Twitter, reports that visits to blogs.oxfam.org were double the average weekend traffic and that twitter tracking revealed between 600-700 uses of the #48forEastAfricahashtag through Monday Aug. 8.
Note: While we were unable to figure out how to track the # of tweets and RTs en toto, a Google search on the hashtag #48forEastAfrica today shows 28,000 results!
Oxfam International's Digital Campaigner Richard Casson says:
Also, in terms of donations, as OI doesn't take donations directly we don't have any figures for how much was raised or whether it went it up over the weekend. But what I would say is that normally traffic to our donation page on oxfam.org (which then refers users on to national donations pages) would drop over the weekend, but this Saturday and Sunday it stayed consistently high.
Additionally, other #48forEastAfrica participants raised $7,500 for Médecins Sans Frontières /Doctors without Borders (MSF) over the weekend of action.
Several of the #48forEastAfrica participants were guest bloggers at Daily Kos. These included:
• Samantha Bailey - 350.org's Africa coordinator, Reporting from the Frontlines
• Laura Heaton - Enough Project Interview with Somalia Expert Ken Menkhaus
• James Greyson - BlindSpot: Look both ways before you cross
• Daisy Carlson - Cool HIVE: Blogathon Makes a Difference to a Child's Life
One of the most powerful reports was written by Oxfam intern Sophie McGrath, who works in the agency's Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, headquarters: <
In 48 hours of blogging for East Africa’a personal experience of the food crisis with Oxfam in Ethiopia, Sophie describes her initial experience of the drought three months ago:
At this point, the drought there was not yet a crisis, and there was still hope that things would get better. ‘We are waiting on the rain’ said Hanura, a grandmother and carer of five. But though it did come in the end, it wasn’t long or heavy enough to change anything – for the cattle, most dead or dying, or their owners, losing their lifeline, their income to buy food, and walking half the day to get water.
On my last day, I’d just finished talking with Hanura when I heard a commotion in the distance – I thought it was a fight. But when my colleague and I approached we found an incredible sight: forty-odd women (and children) standing in a long line, clapping and swaying and chanting our names. They’d come to meet us and thank us for listening to their problems and requests. It was incredible – smiling, joyful people in bright psychedelic robes that dazzled against the pale sand and the pale sky like a vision. And then suddenly it was over, and we watched them disperse into the pale landscape.
As of August 7th, her report from Addis Ababa provides an inside look at how Oxfam switched into high gear in response to the crisis:
Three months on, I am also now helping in a more direct way: supporting Oxfam’s drought response in Ethiopia, chipping my own bit off the mountain of work that providing life-saving support on this scale requires. Here in the Addis Ababa office, I’m surrounded by people working an ungodly amount of hours seven days a week, every week, with teams on the ground across the worst-hit areas, giving life-saving assistance to those who need it most: from rural communities to Somali refugees in Dolo Ado refugee camp. Water, food vouchers, cash transfers, water-purifying tablets, latrines, refugee protection, the list goes on. I’ve watched the response gather pace with excitement: one day plans on paper, the next teams of experts arriving in the field, new boreholes meeting thousands people’s daily water needs, 600 tonnes of supplies arriving in Dolo Ado…
Do I hear $10,000?
Let's raise another $3,000 for the #48forEastAfrica campaign to support the work of Oxfam in the Horn of Africa.
Here are a few reasons why:
"Safia Adem mourns the death of her son Hamza Ali Faysal, 3, in a camp of displaced Somalis within the rubble of the Cathedral of Mogadishu on August 13, 2011 in Mogadishu, Somalia. The malnourished child died of sickness two weeks after fleeing with his family from famine and drought in far southern Somalia. The US government estimates that some 30,000 children have died in southern Somalia in the last 90 days from the crisis."
Photograph: John Moore: Gettty Images. See Time Magazine: Somalia: One Mother’s Unspeakable Loss
• Over 30,000 children have already starved to death over the past three months in East Africa.
• 3.7 million Somalians, more than 1/3 of the country's population, need emergency aid.
• In what is now being called the world's worst humanitarian crisis, over 12 million people are impacted by the worst drought in 60 years
• Although al Shabab has withdrawn from Mogadishu, they are still operating north of the capital, where drought conditions are also present.
Somalia famine predictions ignored
Eight months ago the warning signs of an impending famine in Somalia -- an escalating food crisis, ongoing drought and geopolitical instability -- were overlooked by donor agencies, an oversight which has resulted in thousands of unnecessary deaths, writes Al Jazeera's Isaiah Esipisu.
Oxfam spokesperson Anna Ridout tells Al Jazeera that the situation "would not have been this bad if there was emergency response for prevention, despite the conflicts in the country."
Currently, with famine declared in a number of southern Somalia districts, Esipisu reports that the UN estimates nearly half of Somalia's population faces the potential of famine and 310,000 of the country's children are severely malnourished. In some regions, the deaths of children under five are three times higher than what the UN Children's Fund defines as famine: (where famine equals two fatalities out of 10,000, current rates are six out of 10,000).
According to Oxfam, the UN announcement, which is the first one in the region this century, should be a wake-up call to the rest of the world.
"There has been a catastrophic breakdown of the world's collective responsibility to act. 3,500 people a day are fleeing Somalia and arriving in parts of Ethiopia and Kenya that are suffering one of the driest years in six decades. Food, water and emergency aid are desperately needed. By the time the UN calls it a famine it is already a signal of large scale loss of life," Oxfam said.
African Drought Victims Create World's Largest Refugee Camp
By LISA FRIEDMAN of ClimateWire
Valerie Amos, the United Nations' undersecretary-general for humanitarian and emergency relief, said that from Mogadishu to the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya -- now the world's largest -- it is clear that relief efforts are working, but more is needed.
Speaking upon her return from Somalia and Kenya, Amos described Dadaab as "more a city than a camp," with new arrivals from Somalia arriving, and dying, each day.
"I met one woman who had lost all four of her children on the journey from Somalia to Kenya," Amos recounted. "There's a tremendous amount of work going on in Dadaab to keep the camp and refugees in supplies. In the weeks ahead, we also need to step up our efforts to ensure the host communities in areas accepting refugees are being helped, as well."
The East African reports on A day at Dadaab: Five stages of desperation. Follow the excrutiating step-by-step process refugees face upon arrival at the camp -- from fingerprinting to nutritional screening ("This is the first time small wails can be heard from the children who up to this point have been eerily quiet. Those labelled as severely malnourished are taken to a hospital in the camp where medical attention is given to them. Here it was rare to see the face of a man.") to food distribution to wrist banding -- only to be shuffled once again to the outskirts of the camp because of space limitations.
History
Daily Kos coverage of the crisis in the Horn of Africa began through the Ecojustice Group, which launched the #48forEastAfrica initiative.
Active Participants in the weekend of action included 350.org, Oxfam International, WiserEarth, tcktcktck, DeSmogBlog, The Enough Project, BPI Campus, and Climate Change: The Next Generation
Next Steps: How you can help:
1. Donate now by clicking on the link below. REMEMBER TO ADD $.01 to your donation to enable Oxfam to keep track of all Daily Kos donations.
2. Follow the instructions below the fold to change your Daily Kos signature for a few weeks.
3. Participate in the #48forEastAfrica twitter campaign to direct traffic back to the coverage of the crisis at Daily Kos.
4. Sign up to write a diary. #48forEastAfrica hopes to publish one diary a week to continue raising awareness and funds for the crisis in East Africa. (Indicate interest/availability in comments below or drop me an internal email)
CLICK THE BELOW LINK TO MAKE A DONATION
Donate now - Donate to Oxfam America
Remember to add $.01 to your donation so it ends up being $5.01, $20.01, $50.01, $100.01, and so on. This will enable Oxfam to keep track of all Daily Kos donations.
Please read this if you live outside the United States - to make a donation, click this link and scroll down a bit to find your country. If not listed, please Google Oxfam in your country.
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Over the past few weeks, much of the news around us has not been particularly encouraging. So, you might ask, "What in the world can I do to help the situation in East Africa?" There is something that all of you can do: change (or add) your Daily Kos signature for a few weeks.
Highlighting an appeal in your signature to donate to Oxfam will publicize this urgent need to raise funds and remind others to make a donation every time you comment on Daily Kos.
Here's Another Way You Can Help
Step-by-Step Process on How to Add Your Daily Kos Signature
If you have never done so before, here is a step-by-step process through which you can easily do so:
1. When you log on to Daily Kos, click 'My Page.'
2. Next, click 'Profile.'
3. Then, click 'Edit Profile.'
4. Scroll down a bit to the section titled 'Comment Preferences' - Signature (this will be attached to your comments). Copy and paste the below in that box
48forEastAfrica - Donate to Oxfam
5. Next, you will need to add opening and closing brackets before href and after Oxfam to the above code as explained in #4. Copy the 'A' brackets before 'HREF' and after 'resume' as shown in this HTML example. Click 'Save' and you are done.
6. Your Daily Kos signature should look like this
48forEastAfrica - Donate to Oxfam
7. To ensure you did it correctly, type a sample comment in this diary and preview it. Right click your signature, click 'Open Link in New Tab' and it will take you to a donation link for Oxfam.
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Tue Aug 23, 2011 at 9:11 AM PT: as of this AM, this diary has raised $242.00 towards our goal of an additional $3,000 for Oxfam's work in the Horn of Africa. Change your sig lines, folks!!! We can do this!