At the Blogapalooza event I attended last October, I encountered Habitat for Humanity Philippines and was told about the Online Champions Race to 200k – a crowd funding campaign to build a core housing for the Yolanda (Typhoon Haiyan) victims.
Why Php200,00 you ask? Well that’s the amount it takes to provide one family a core house. Habitat for Humanity through their crowdfunding website was able to promote Rebuild Philippines, a disaster housing response project for affected families and communities of Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) which aims to solve the shelter needs of affected communities such as in Cebu, Palawan, Iloilo, Samar and Leyte as quickly as possible through the distribution of Shelter Pair Kits for 30,000 families and building 30,000 core houses.
Through the website as well, the foundation was able to generate funds that has risen up to 25 million with 3114 donor from individuals and groups starting July 2013 to June 17, 2014 with 143 support pages managed by the online fundraising volunteers.
Through their online fundraising efforts, Habitat was able to provide 4,730 Emergency Shelter Kits (ESK’s), 16, 062 Shelter Repair Kits (SKR’s), 90 pump boats, 40 trisikad, 1, 978 solar lamps, 450 Clean Up Kits and built 15 classrooms and started building core houses in Cebu and Leyte.
It’s been a year since the Super Typhoon happened but there are still a lot of affected families and communities who need our support. That’s why they re-launched their Rebuild Philippines “Online Champion, Race to 200k” campaign again with the primary objective of gathering more individuals and groups to create their own give2habitat support page and help raise funds for at least one core house amounting P200, 000.
So when Habitat for Humanity invited me to join the campaign, I immediately said “Yes.” I’m always online and very much active on my social media sites so I thought to myself, why not use my blog and social media platforms for a very good cause? I don’t have family living in the typhoon stricken parts of the Philippines but the things I’ve read online about the disaster and the survivors, it really tugged on my heart strings. And earlier this year, I attended my first TweetUp event at Commune Cafe where they featured storm chaser Jim Edds who shared his firsthand experience of the Super Typhoon in Leyte. The documentary I saw of the typhoon’s aftermath, it truly was devastating.
A shelter is every human being’s basic need. Everyone deserves to have a good and decent home so here I am, spreading the word to all of you, my dear blog readers and asking you to also help.
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| My pledge of commitment as an online champion of Habitat for Humanity |
