Dine Out for Somalia
Over 65 restaurants and coffee shops in and around the Minneapolis area have pledged to donate 50% of their profits to the drought in Somalia on April 7, 2017. There is a website dedicated for this effort called www.dineoutsomalia.com. The goal is to raise $150,000 for the drought and the famine in Somalia. Many of the organizers think they will surpass that goal very early during the day. Mark your calendars for April 7th and dine out at one of the participating businesses and your grub can feed a family or two.
A Celebrity Social Media Campaign to Help the Somalia Drought Goes Viral
Jerome Jarr, a French social media celebrity started the hashtag, #TurkishAirlinesHelpSomalia, amid the droughts that threatened the lives of Millions living in East Africa. Soon after, several other celebrities that includes Ben Stiller, Colin Kaepernick and Casey Neistat joined the campaign. Last week Turkish Airlines took notice of the retweets and delivered a plane full of food to Somalia as they promised on their twitter account when the hashtag first started. The power of social media and the influence of celebrities is still under estimated.
Two Ambitious Somali Americans Looking to Shake Up the Water Bottle Industry
Adan Ali and Mohamed Rage are graduates of Ohio State University’s school of design. The two gym enthusiasts saw a need for a water bottle that comes with its own stirring mechanism. After hundreds of prototypes they came up with a bottle that did exactly what they wanted it to do and they named it the “Titan Mixer”. Ali and Rage are currently shipping the first round of bottles to customers in over 50 countries.
Effritin.com, the Nigerian Craigslist, Looking to Expand to the Rest of Africa
Founder Zakaria Hersi saw a market for a peer to peer sales platform that people could trust since the online business in Nigeria is very corrupt and not trusted. That is where Effiritin comes in. It’s an online platform that physically verifies a product before it goes live on the website. The site that was launched in 2014 is currently the 10th most visited site in Nigeria. The chief operating officer Mr. Navard announced this week that the company is looking to expand into other African markets in West Africa.