Earthquake in Nepal: how the world collected help, and Facebook and Apple launched a donation system

How to help in an emergency? How to make a donation? Leading publications warn of fraudulent organizations, and Facebook and Apple allow users to make a donation in one click.

At the end of April 2015, a strong earthquake occurred in Nepal, as a result of which thousands of people died and were wounded, and the city of Kathmandu was almost completely destroyed.

These tragic events affected many people and caused a desire to help in eliminating the consequences of the disaster.

But in such large -scale emergency situations it is not always clear how it is best to help - what type of donations will be as useful as possible and through which organization this donation is to carry out?

It is best to help, as Time advises , with money.

It may seem that sending blankets, clothes and food to the scene is a good thing, but in reality this is not a very effective way to help: the postal service may not have access to the scene of the incident, and the distribution of parcels requires a lot of human resources.

In addition, those organizations that can engage in food distribution, as a rule, already have agreements with companies that put water and other essential items to them.

The second question is much more complicated, especially for people who have never encountered charity and do not quite imagine how it is done. What is even worse, as is often the case with good intentions, those who want to use the desire to help for their benefit appear.

Huffington Post, along with many other leading publications, warns its audience so that they carefully choose the organization for donations: avoid phone calls from non -existent NGOs, emails with a request for help and investments, as well as dubious links in social media.

How to sacrifice the money and be sure that they will go to where you need? Time advises to conduct a little study: to choose with the help of resources such as Charity Navigator , organizations that are most effective and sacrifice money through them.

You can also use information from an authoritative source, for example, New York Times has published a list of organizations that help transfer money to Nepal.

Facebook did not stand aside and Apple - companies simplified the donation process as much as possible for its users, adding a button with a donation to the main page of the social network and in iTunes, respectively.

The Facebook donation button turned out to be an incredibly effective tool - in a week users of the social network raised $ 15 million to support the activities of the International Medical Corps organization, and Facebook itself added $ 2 million.

This is not the first time that a donation button appears on Facebook - in November 2014, with its help, Facebook collected donations to combat Ebola virus , and in 2013 to eliminate the consequences of typhoon in the Philippines .

At the same time, Apple began in iTunes a collection of funds for the Red Cross.

By visiting a special page on iTunes, users can choose and automatically make a donation for the specified amount. The entire amount of payment will go to the red cross, and Apple promises not to disclose your personal information, this means that the donation will be anonymous.

On the one hand, thus, it is guaranteed that you will not receive from the Red Cross or other NPOs of undesirable mailings and proposals to make another donation; On the other hand, since this transaction is considered a purchase with iTunes Store, users will not be able to receive a tax return receipt (if such a receipt is needed, Apple advises to make a donation directly through a red cross).

Apple did not publish information about how many funds were collected in this way. In addition, some users critically reacted to this initiative, since the company itself did not make donations.