In late February, the World Health Organization warned that Somalia was about to suffer through its third famine in just 25 years.
The cause? A drought that has left over six million people so far without nearly enough food to survive. That's more than half of the entire population of Somalia.
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Conditions have gotten so bad that mothers and children are forced to walk more than one hundred miles just to find food, water, and shelter. For context, most Americans worry about being active enough to reach 10,000 steps on their Fitbit.
In early March, 110 people died from hunger in just two days. Since clean water is also scarce, the risk of disease is skyrocketing -- people will turn to dirty water out of desperation, which could carry diseases like cholera.
Hospitals and NGOs are inundated with malnourished and starving people, and refugees are all but banging on the door of Ethiopia. Meanwhile, the threat of terrorist group Al-Shabaab means there are some areas agencies can't even reach due to safety concerns.
Despite this, though, the general public has been mostly unaware of the problem. It's gotten a bit of news coverage, but for the most part -- in the United States, at least -- our news cycle is dominated by the latest Trump outrage.
A former Vine star changed that in mid-March.
On March 15, Jerome Jarre posted a two minute video on his Twitter account explaining the situation and asking people to put pressure on Turkish Airlines -- the only airline flying direct to Somalia -- to help with aid.
Ben Stiller (who is co-starring with Jarre in Zoolander 2, by the way) posted a video of his own. Then Colin Kaepernick picked it up. Other social media influencers retweeted the original message to their followers.
By the end of the day, the hashtag #TurkishAirlinesHelpSomalia was trending -- and Turkish Airlines actually listened.
The airline has agreed to fly sixty tons of food to aid efforts in Somalia. Now, Jarre, Stiller, and Kaepernick are working to raise the money to buy food to send to relief organizations.
The response has been incredible -- in the first 5 hours of their GoFundMe campaign, they raised more than a quarter of a million dollars.
There's a lot of trash on social media, but this time, using Twitter got amazing results.
It's emotionally exhausting to be outraged at every injustice in the world, but this is a situation we can't afford to look away from. If you have spare change to donate, consider giving some money to relief efforts in Somalia.
It might not seem like a big deal, but the collective efforts of people across the globe produce real, life-saving results.
You can donate here.
