Web creativity brings aid to Darfur

SEATTLE – With $500 start-up cash, a few bowls of cereal and a MySpace account, Jonah Burke hopes to change the world. Or, if not change it, then at least help out a bit.

Two months ago, Burke, a 25-year-old self-proclaimed “tech geek” from Seattle, started a Web site called Darfurwall.org to raise money for humanitarian aid in Darfur, Sudan. The idea was simple: By networking through MySpace.com and asking each visitor for a very small donation – $1 does the trick – Burke plans to raise a total of $400,000.

Since its launch nine weeks ago, the grass-roots site has already raised nearly $30,000, averaging a few thousand hits a week.

“We need to get the word out and let people know what’s going on over there,” Burke says. “It’s not like the Web site is a huge end-all solution. It’s a small step. If everyone gives a little bit, then a few more people get medical attention or food. That’s worth a lot.”

Burke was inspired to start the site when his father, a member of Massachusetts-based Darfur Action Group, was able to raise a significant amount of money at a very small community-based event.

“I realized it’s all about doing what you can,” Burke explains. “People think, ‘I can’t give a million dollars,’ so they don’t give anything. But the truth is, you don’t have to do a lot to make a difference.”

Footing the roughly $500 start-up cost himself, Burke created the site from his apartment in Capitol Hill, surviving off coffee and bowls of Special K for the two weeks it took to design.

The site itself shares an eerie aesthetic with the Vietnam War Memorial, featuring an enormous list of gray numbers, 1 through 400,000. Each number represents one person who has died (in a conservative estimate) in the genocide in Darfur thus far.

When visitors to the site click on a gray number and donate $1, they “adopt” a nameless victim and make a number “glow” white. The goal is to make the whole site glow. One-hundred percent of the proceeds will be divided evenly among four strictly-aid organizations: Save the Children, Save Darfur, Doctors Without Borders and Sudan Aid Fund.

Although the site has only raised 7 percent of the goal, Burke is not daunted.

“We’ve been really successful already,” Burke says. “Half the project is about promoting awareness of the crisis in Darfur, so every hit we get is a positive step.”