over the next few days I’ll be uploading various interviews where I managed to pull participants aside from the workshops and ask them a few questions about their work. Some parts of these will later appear in a nicely edited wrap-up video, but here’s the raw material.
Meet @Boris Kiknadze from WeHelp in Tbilisi, Georgia.
As a summary, here’s the TL;DW (Too Long, Didn’t Watch)
What is WeHelp?
WeHelp is online crowdfunding for people in medical need. They use online banking and mobile banking to make it easier to donate. Their mission is to make the process transparent, easy and accessible. They provide videos, documentation and follow-ups to show the public that their money goes where it is supposed to.
Challenges:
Currently there is not much of a culture of this kind of charity in Georgia - with traditional organisations, nobody knew who needed help, where the money went, or what happened after a donation. WeHelp are trying to break that stereotype.
One of their challenges is a lack of publicity outside the country, and they also need more volunteers to put time into the project.
Everybody at WeHelp works voluntarily, they believe that the beneficiaries of the platform truly need the money so 100% of donations go directly to them.
WeHelp are trying to find a way to make their project sustainable, popular, and to raise awareness of charity culture in Georgia.
Ways you can help: first of all, please donate to people in need on WeHelp! and secondly spreading the word to more people (internationally and within Georgia) is vital to their success.
A couple of questions I would like to add for the Edgeryders community - who do we know within the crowdfunding or charity sector who might be able to provide their insight and experience?
One of the issues we struggled with in the workshop was that documentation and transparency about the people in need is necessary to overcome widespread skepticism about giving to opaque, unaccountable organisations.
But at the same time, medical issues are a very personal matter, and in addition, some necessary medical procedures may be stigmatising in certain cultures and communities.
Currently WeHelp’s dials are set to full transparency, but how can they best ensure accountaility and trust in the platform while still providing a level of privacy for their users? Any ideas or precedents?
