The White House wants you to donate to the Syrian refugees on Kickstarter

The United States has already committed $4.5 billion to the Syrian refugee crisis, but there's still a long way to go to help the 12 million people displaced by the war. That's where you come in, says the White House, which prompted the crowdfunding website Kickstarter to launch its first social service campaign.

While Kickstarter is mostly used by musicians, filmmakers, and inventors who want to raise the funds to create their work by offering "rewards" to investors, the Kickstarter page for the Syrian crisis redirects donors to support refugees by buying them "rest," "water," "rescue," "shelter," and "education" through the UN Refugee Agency. At the time of publication, Kickstarter reports that 3,000 refugees have been helped by the campaign, which has raised over $735,000. The next goal, $1,225,000, would support 5,000 people. Six days remain in the campaign and already over 12,000 people have contributed.

Others have found ways to crowdfund aid as well — Airbnb, for example, is providing housing credits to aid workers in Greece, Serbia, and Macedonia, while in Iceland, 10,000 people have offered up their homes as temporary shelters. However, as The New York Times points out, while less than half of the funds requested by the UN Refugee Agency for the Syria crisis has been raised, "Appeals for other refugee crises, including those in Darfur and Central African Republic, which receive far less media attention and are not part of the Kickstarter campaign, face a worse predicament."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up