Students and staff launch appeal to help refugees – and they want your help
In just 15 hours, a total of DKK 34,000 was collected on behalf of the Danish Refugee Council. You can help them by making a donation – and by helping to spread the word.
Two associate professors and two students from Arts yesterday set-up the appeal AU#Refugees-welcome to help refugees both in Denmark and in hotspots around the world. They have therefore joined forces with the Danish Refugee Council and started a digital appeal for donations among AU's students and staff.
"The background for the initiative is a sense of frustration seeing the largest refugee disaster in Europe since World War II taking place right in front of us," says Christina Fiig, associate professor in gender and European policy at European Studies at the School of Culture and Society. She continues:
"Inspiration came via Twitter from some Norwegian colleagues, who started a similar appeal and invited their Nordic colleagues to do the same."
DKK 34,000 in 15 hours
After a few tweets, among others via the Twitter account AUforsker (AU researcher, ed.), where Christina Fiig is administrator this week, the appeal really began to take off yesterday. A matter of 15 hours later and there is now DKK 34,000 in the digital collection box.
"It’s just amazing! Now it's a question of spreading the message to as many people as possible. After all, there are 40,000 students here, plus a lot of staff and it’s all the little donations that make the difference. People can really help us by sharing the message on social media. We really want to get the students involved because there are so many of them."
No idea everything would happen so quickly
The organisers originally had a modest target of raising DKK 40,000 , but that target has now been increased to DKK 100,000.
"We had no idea everything would happen so quickly," says Christina Fiig, who carries out research in the field of gender, democracy and the general public. The digital appeal and mobilisation via social media therefore also rouses her professional curiosity.
"It's fantastic to see how civil society and the general public can mobilise and act quickly by virtue of social media. There is definitively momentum."
In addition to Christina Fiig, the other people behind the appeal are Associate Professor Sara Dybris McQuaid and the two students Caroline Lundqvist and Alice Sahinkuye.