Good for Nothing and Made by Many have joined forces to build a collaborative fundraising platform of 50 creative projects run by individuals and teams of makers globally to raise money for the East Africa famine. 50/ 50 launches today and the challenge runs for 50 days until Sunday October 16th - which is World Food Day.

There is a HUGE need - the UN has declared the worst famine anywhere in the world for 60 years.

The facts

A child is dying every six minutes
12 million people are seriously at risk
The United Nations has declared a state of famine in five Somali regions and said it could spread to engulf the country’s entire south
Food insecure populations are 4.8 million in Ethiopia, 3.7 million in Somalia, 3.7 million in Kenya
The scale of this is utterly frightening: five times more people are at risk than died in all the recent tsunamis and earthquakes put together (Indonesia, Haiti, Pakistan, Japan) – but less than 20% of the money needed has been raised
Save the Children said that more than 1 million children could die in Somalia alone if the funding gap isn't immediately addressed
No-one is talking about it - partly because there are few images and partly because we're preoccupied with our own economic woes, the tea party, the riots etc etc.

So... much bigger need than ever/much smaller response than normal, huge and urgent man-made catastrophe about to unfold. If we do nothing we're all going to be watching millions and millions of people dying live on TV and the Internet.

What's needed?

The UN says $2.5bn in aid is now needed for the humanitarian response, about $1.1bn more than has been committed so far. See the latest data on aid received and needed here.

Where will my money go?

Donations from 50/50 will go directly to Unicef. The money will help provide therapeutic treatment for women and children with severe malnutrition, access to clean drinking water and vaccinations to prevent deadly diseases like measles and polio. Caryl Stern, president of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF has said: