IslamicFinance.de

The Obama administration has launched its first-ever crowdfunding campaign this week to raise money for Syria’s growing refugee crisis, in a bid to draw the American public into supplementing the U.N. refugee agency’s strained budget. The initiative is also a first of its kind for Silicon Valley crowdfunding platform Kickstarter. As of Wednesday, the second full day of the campaign, donors had raised over $800,000 for the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) — enough to cover immediate necessities and a place to sleep for 3,000 people in need, the campaign page says. However, the UNHCR has only received $1.8 billion of the $4.5 billion it has requested from foreign governments for Syrian refugees in 2015.