Tonee's Email to the ECF Network list:

Jambo from Kenya,

I need your advice on funding sources for Wazimba website development. This will help us attract and involve Kenyan youth in sharing their stories on political issues in Kenya as part of a political education and engagement process leading up to the next national elections.

Those of you at ECF09 will know some of the work we've been doing in Kenya both around the violence here last year and in using bluetooth to engage people in political and social issues.  Our wazimba.org (organisational) and wazimba.net (social network) websites are working to engage Kenyan youth in political issues and provide a safe space for them to speak out through sharing their stories. This is important in a place where what you say can end up getting you in various measures of trouble (Kenya).

Over the next three weeks before Kenyan schools open (24 April) we are running a large number of social events where we are promoting the sites to attract them to the websites. To do this, we need £1,000 GBP (about €1,100 Euros or $1,500 US dollars) to fund site improvements. Do you know of any grants or funding sources for this type of work?

Since a fibre optic cable will be connected to Kenya in July, there is a huge demand from web companies to build sites with lots of video and flash. This means no pro-bono work is happening from the companies that provided the original sites.  Funding would get us on their priority list to get the work done.  It would also allow us to get our bluetooth ideas and technology (which we shared at ECF09) out there and open source it much faster.

I'm open to suggestions for getting this funding, but I'm not sure where to start looking.

Regards

Tonee

Ps. I really am related to Obama..he just doesn't call back. He owes me money.. :-)

What Happened Next...

Patrick, from Action Medical Research, then replied to the list (and via twitter) proposing everyone contribute small amount to raise the £1,000 Tonee needed:

Hey guys,

I'll put in £20 for this if four other people will do the same - email me!

Patrick

..and in less than an hour, £470 was pledged. By 11am the next day, the £1,000 goal had been reached and £1200 had been pledged.

Contributions

FairSay collected the contributions and covered both the processing fee each system below takes (up to £40 on £1,000) and the bank transfer charges to Kenya (about £33).