#TurkishAirlinesHelpSomalia Social Media Campaign
There has been a social media campaign that started on March 15 with the hashtag #TurkishAirlinesHelpSomalia. This hashtag is referring to the people of Somalia that are currently experiencing a life-threatening famine and now this social media campaign is raising awareness to the issue. According to the UN humanitarian office, around six million people are in need of humanitarian assistance. The hashtag #TurkishAirlinesHelpSomalia started trending on Twitter this week after being shared by several celebrities like Collin Kaepernick and Ben Stiller. These celebrities like “Ben Stiller, Jérôme Jarre, and Colin Kaepernick have all posted videos explaining the cause. They say that as an airline that flies to Somalia, Turkish Airlines could fill a plane with food, water, and other supplies and bring relief to starving Somalis”.
Actor Jerome Jarre is the person who started this social media campaign
According to reports “the gap to a calamity is closing fast, as hundreds of thousands desperate Somalis are in food crisis and pastoralist families continue to be robbed of their only source of income while fleeing an imminent famine with their dying herds to areas that promise food for their vulnerable children and flocks, warns World Vision International Somalia. The looming famine that is ravaging Somalia is causing family livelihoods to crumble, threatening lives of hundreds of thousands of children and their families who cannot access food, thus worsening malnutrition rates in the country”.
Actor Ben Stiller joining the social media campaign
On Ben Stiller’s twitter video he explains that there are about 6 million people (which is about half of the country’s population) who are in danger of dying, in addition, another 20 million people in the region who are severely affected by the famine. On the actor’s video, he also gives credit to Jérôme Jarre’s social media campaign idea (the two were in Zoolander 2 together), and that he came up with the hashtag #TurkishAirlinesHelpSomalia. This hashtag has seemed to get more and more recognition, as well as more and more people, are creating their own video and trying to spread the message out to everybody. Other social media users have shared similar videos urging followers to spread the word and to encourage Turkish Airlines, the only commercial air carrier that flies to Somalia, to donate a plane. According to the United Nations, “the world is facing the largest humanitarian crisis since the establishment of the global organization in 1945, with over 20 million people on the brink of starvation. While the UN estimates that 4.4 billion dollars are necessary by the end of March to prevent catastrophe in east Africa, only 90 million dollars has been raised. The lives of about 1.4 million children are threatened by malnutrition in the region, UNICEF warned”.
American football player and activist Collin Kaepernick joins the Social media campaign
According to reports, Turkey is the second largest humanitarian assistance donor to Somalia and has provided over $121.9 million since 2011 through the Prime Ministry’s Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (AFAD), the Turkish Red Crescent and the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet).
If you want to join this movement upload a video or picture on Instagram using the hashtag #TurkishAirlinesHelpSomali. Also if you would like to donate any kind of sum towards this cause go to this links down below.
https://donate.worldconcern.org/drought
https://donate.worldvision.org/somalia-disaster-relief-fund-2
Turkey’s deputy prime minister, Bekir Bozdag, right, with Somalia’s president, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, after the maiden flight from Istanbul to Mogadishu. Photograph: Mohamed Abdiwahab
The AsiaN Media Intern 
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