White House thanks tech giants Kickstarter, Instacart that help Syrian refugees

Less than 24 hours after its Tuesday launch, Kickstarter and UNHCR’s joint “Aid Refugees” campaign raised almost $950,000 and counting.

As the number of refugees around the world hits an all-time high, the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the White House have partnered with crowdfunding website Kickstarter to help raise desperately needed funds.

The four-year-old civil war in Syria has displaced millions of people in the region and put a strain on neighboring countries.

“This is a complex and evolving crisis, and there are no overnight solutions”, UNHCR said.

The White House recently announced its intention to allow 85,000 refugees into the country in 2016 – a 15,000-person increase from this year.

Kickstarter has a specific rule barring people from fundraising for charity, but the crowd-funding site broke it this week to help Syrian refugees.

The White House’s latest effort to stem the funding shortfall comes as hundreds of thousands of desperate refugees fleeing Syria’s bloodshed continue to arrive on European shores. The majority of Syrian refugee children are not in school, surveys by the UNHCR found. As of Tuesday morning, more than 1,500 backers had donated more than $87,000.

The project was initiated after the Obama administration contacted the crowdfunding website to get the American public involved in the Syrian relief effort, Kickstarter’s CEO Yancey Strickler said.

Airbnb said that its platform was not designed in a way that would help refugees find housing.

The UNHCR, which is a partner in the campaign, is keen to make the point that small contributions can make a difference. For example, $15 “could provide one person with a mat and sleeping bag to rest in”, while $70 “could provide two people with a complete emergency rescue kit, including water, food, a thermal blanket, and dry clothes”. “But you do not need to be a government or Fortune 100 company to #AidRefugees”, the White House’s director of product Joshua Miller wrote in a blog post.

A syrian refugee camp in Jordan, as seen from a helicopter.

“The stark reality we are facing is that our resources are being far outstripped”, Hansford said.