A campaign started by a former Vine star to use a Turkish Airlines plane to help famine victims in Somalia went viral over the weekend, reaching its goal of $2 million today, with contributions from people from around the globe and notable backing from Hollywood and sports celebrities.
The campaign, which began with the widely shared hashtag #TurkishAirlinesHelpSomalia, received support from users around the world.
On Friday, Turkish Airlines responded to the campaign on its official Twitter account, announcing that it is making available a full cargo flight to send 60 tons of humanitarian aid to Somalia.
The crowd-funded GoFundMe campaign went viral over the weekend, reaching $1.4 million in 24 hours.
As of today, the campaign reached its goal of $2 million with contributions from 75,000 individual donors.
Ben Stiller, Hollywood actor and one of the organizers, spoke on the phone with presidential spokesman İbrahim Kalın, who expressed support for the initiative, and later shared a link to the aid campaign on his official Twitter account, with the accompanying message: "Great and gracious work by [Ben Stiller] and his friends for the people of Somalia. We are ready to help," which was later widely retweeted by Stiller's followers.
According to the United Nations, around 6.2 million people are currently in need of humanitarian help in Somalia, which amounts to almost half of the country's total population.
