September 12, 2006
Humanitarian Website www.fighthunger.org more than triples online fund raising with GlobalCollect’s Payment Interface
The United Nations World Food Program’s (WFP) initiative, Fight Hunger: Walk the World has one goal: to end child hunger by 2015 by raising awareness and funds. By offering direct access to payment processing through an open source module and widening payment methods, GlobalCollect has helped to triple funds raised.
Amsterdam --- September 12, 2006 --- Every five seconds a child dies of hunger somewhere in the world. As unbelievable as it sounds, today there are 300 million children who are chronically hungry—hungry day in and day out. This is despite the fact that there is enough food in the world for all children to eat what they need. Unfortunately, the missing ingredients are the political will and resources needed to make sure that nutritious food gets to these children.
GlobalCollect, a leading Payment Service Provider, and Fight Hunger: Walk the World, the initiative led by the World Food Program and its partners, today announced very encouraging results after 3 months of donations and subsequent payment processing made online through their website http://www.fighthunger.org. In addition to their hugely successful annual Walk the World event -- a worldwide demonstration where hundreds of thousands of people walk to call for an end to the needless suffering of hungry children -- the organization also makes it possible for generous individuals to make donations to finance projects that assist hungry children.
Thanks to GlobalCollect’s payment processing platform and freely available open source software, Fight Hunger: Walk the World has been able to achieve these amazing 3 months of donations while saving costs. Open source is a term that describes software that is distributed under licenses allowing anybody rights to freely use, modify, and redistribute the code – at no cost.
“Using open source has a lot of benefits,” says Arlene Mitchell the WFP Division Director for Fight Hunger: Walk the World. “It reduces our costs and we can take advantage of cutting edge technology for free. Our open source payment module connects directly to GlobalCollect’s payment processing platform and cuts out the middlemen. GlobalCollect and our payment module also give us the flexibility to set up local campaigns for different countries, while using the same module for online selling.”
Jan F. Manten, CEO of GlobalCollect says: “We are proud that our payment processing solutions are able to contribute to both reduced costs and increased donations for Fight Hunger. This further demonstrates the value of our proposition for Non-Profit Organizations.”
FightHunger.org is also using other web technology to raise awareness about the global problem of child hunger. They have recently announced a viral video competition that will tap into the ever-growing pool of talent that can be found on sites like YouTube.com and Google Videos. Find out more by visiting www.FightHunger.org – and try out the open source payment module by making a donation to feed hungry children!