A New App Connects Donors And Refugees To Fundraise College Tuitions

Very few refugees make it to university. That's why, over recent years, different projects have emerged to solve this problem.

For example, Kiron, a social startup that provides refugees with access to quality higher education.

In this piece for Refugees Deeply, Kim Bode reports about edSeed's, a new mobile app that aims to connect donors with displaced university students.

Rama Chakaki, an impact investor from Syria, realized that, while refugees cannot afford higher studies, many tech-savvy donors want to help refugee students.

It was a quite basic issue of supply and demand.

edSeed was born.

edSeed is currently in testing phase, but it has already 500 displaced students registered, and 12,000 individual donors and three corporate donors have expressed interest, according to Chakaki.

The app will work as a social media-style profile. Working with different universities, donors will be able to select those students who they wish to support and send funds directly to the university.

The interview with Chakaki explains all the details about edSeed, which has been selected by MIT for SOLVE, the university's crowdfunding platform to solve global challenges.

The project reminds of Humanwire's project, which has already proven successful in helping refugees to start a new life.

In this case, edSeed focus only on education. Their hope is to help at-risk-youth to reduce their dependency on aid and low-income dead-end career choices.