SkyRaise is a Social Fundraising and Promotions Website. With SkyRaise, you can create a "Cause Page," about any issue or item that's important to you. Spread the link around, and people from all over the world, can donate money to your cause, through your page! We then send that money to you! It's that easy.
You can make a Cause Page about anything – serious or silly, public or personal, a local issue or a global one, a small private need, or movement to change the world.
Users who do not have a Cause Page can create an "Activist Page" to take part in the SkyRaise community. SkyRaise "Activists" can edit profile details about themselves, create "alliances" with Causes or other Activists, send messages to other users, take part in forum discussions on Cause Pages, and even have the option of leaving a "donor comment" along with each donation, which appears in the cause page.
In the Winter of late 2004 when I was still in college at the University of Southern California, I took part in a small humanitarian expedition to the sub-Saharan African nation of Zambia. I joined expedition, founded by my brother, and sponsored by Tufts University, as a logistics assistant and documentarian. Over several weeks, our team visited orphanages of children who lost their parents to HIV/AIDS, and/or were infected with the disease themselves.
Needless to say it was a life changing experience. I knew I was going to witness extraordinary cases of tremendous hardship and suffering, but expectations meant nothing once I was submerged in that environment. Zambia itself is extremely poor, with 50% unemployment, over 15% rate of HIV/AIDS, with little current hope of lifting out of these crises.
One orphanage we visited in particular, gave me a tingling of inspiration. This orphanage was in the middle of nowhere. To get to it, we drove off-road, along a dirt path, outside the city of Lusaka, for about an hour. With nothing in site but baron plains for miles and miles, eventually we saw a tiny square, and within it a collection of make shift homes and stores. Entering the area all I could see was junk/trash. Filthy with garbage stacked up to the size of climbable hills, laid a fortress foundation for the tiny village. All I could think was, "...no one should live like this." Traveling through the dirt road and past the junk piles we found the orphanage.
For a day orphanage, in such conditions, it was well run, with dedicated and educated workers administrating operations. To top off their living conditions, half the children were HIV/AIDS infected. Feeling down about the situation, something then caught my ears.
One of the administrators had mentioned that a previous expedition team had created a website for the orphanage, with an online fundraising platform integrated into the site. I thought, "...that's amazing!" No matter how cut off from society this little junkyard village was, they were connected to the world in terms of foreign aid! And from then it's just a matter of getting the word out to the people. This idea kept swimming in my head over the next few weeks, but it took more submergence into seeing the needs and the potential of the people before it grew into what would eventually inspire me.
As sad as it is, virtually every one we had met wanted to leave the country and move to the west or South Africa. Most Zambians I met were truly very educated, and had great ambition — it's just that the opportunity was not there for them. After having met a few individuals in particular who had endured some of the most painful experiences we could have ever imagined, we personally wished we could have done something to help their lives in particular.
One boy, we'll call him Henry, had an awful upbringing. The oldest boy at the orphanage, past the age of legal adulthood, had lost his mother and sister to AIDS, then ran away from home to escape his abusive father. To keep alive he had to resort to some unthinkable measures in his life on the street before finally landing in the orphanage. He practically begged us to help him leave the country so he could find an education, employment, and a decent life.
We knew we couldn't help him directly, but then I had an idea. I talked to another member of our expedition team, who was also interested in helping Henry. I suggested, "why not create an online fundraiser." He said, "Yeah! Lets do it!...do you know how to start one." I thought about it and said, "...no...do you?" He said, "...no..." Then just like that, the online fundraiser idea fell apart.
This frustrated me. I didn't see why that junkyard orphanage could have an online fundraiser so easily assembled, but we couldn't start one for Henry. This was also the time when Social Networking Websites, and other Web 2.0 applications started to become popular. Then it hit me!
I thought, "...why not have a website, where people could make a page instantly like on social networking websites...and an online fundraiser for their unique page was automatically integrated?" I tried to find one already in existence and couldn't. I knew then that it was something I wanted to create, and with that the idea for SkyRaise.com was born! ...the rest is history
I see a future where grassroots movements begin with an idea on SkyRaise, and end up changing the world. I hope you all enjoy SkyRaise, and make the most of it.
