Onto other matters.
I have a new profile picture on twitter and facebook that looks like this.
What is Naija 4 Haiti?It is my naive attempt to start a text donation scheme in Nigeria for Haiti. Shortly after the quake at 12am one night I read on the internet that 100,000 people may be dead. (Of course we all know know that presently 212,000 is the offical number of the dead but the number 100,000 confused me at the time.)
Lets put this into perspective. The national stadium in Abuja seats 50 thousand people. I tried to picture double the number as corpses. My mind shut down.
I thought I could donate something small via the internet and then realised what country I was in. Of course my credit card would be rejected. So I reached out to one person and by noon the next day found at least 10 people who wanted to do something.
It has been crazy trying to put together as simple as a shortcode through which anyone can send a N100 text to donate to disaster relief efforts. Is it too late? No. Relief will be needed in Haiti for years to come. But last week I gave up trying. Ok 2 weeks ago. It was too hard to get a decent portion of N100 to get to the cause. Too hard to get desicion makers to read your letters and act. Too hard to create something easy. Dont get me wrong many WANT to help but creating a simple, efficient and fair platform so they can do so is so bloody hard.
I know by now there are donate to Haiti efforts in Nigeria that involve going to a bank and depositing cash. Thats too hard. Text is easier. The amounts involved are small enough for anyone to take part and its a very transparent method. You can track the donations online as they come in. The only snag is the shortcode application has never been used here for charity to my knowledge. The percentage that comes back from the telecoms may be ok for commercial purposes but certainly not for charity. It got stuck at that point and I got tired and gave up.
All the wonderful people who came on board havent given up though. We will push on and someone may listen. We do have an awesome shortcode provider (textnigeria) on board who is probably wondering at our silence.
Interestingly I was worried that people would be angry we are trying to raise money for Haiti when we had a crisis shortly after in Jos. Then I met a chick raising funds for Jos who said people were angry she was raising money for Jos and not Haiti! We shared a laugh and wished each other luck.
I need to apologise to all who came on board for my losing heart and going AWOL. KIND, David (who did the lovely logo), Efe, Omotola, Egghead, Debbie, Chioma, Sound Sultan, 2face, Jeff, Paul, Audu... too mention a few.
Im sorry and Im back to Naija 4 Haiti. If your interested please mail me. If you work for Zain or MTN or have influence with those who call the shots please help us make it possible to make at least 80% of the money get to Haiti.
By the way did you know Haiti loves Nollywood? Check out Omotolas fan club on Haitian film site Her film Mind Game with Haitian actor Reginald Rubin.
Film maker Tude Kelani has been active in Haiti in 2008 training young film makers. The school has been lost in the earthquake
I leave you with a song by Haitian born American Wyclef Jean, and Nigeria's 2face and Sound Sultan - Im so Proud to be African
Id be prouder if we could succeed with this.
