UNICEF France is now taking donations in cryptocurrencies. On its website, the humanitarian body said it accepts donations in nine cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin BCH, as well as BTC, ETH, EOS, Stellar, LTC, XRP, DASH and XMR. The decision to finally accept cryptocurrencies was partly due to the organization's need to expand its circle of donors and sources of funding, according to UNICEF France.
The organization is also calling on its well-wishers to donate their computing power for the purpose of mining six crypto coins to directly to UNICEF France's wallets. This concept of accepting crypto donations was born after the GameChaingers campaign in February. The campaign, launched by UNICEF to help children in the war torn country of Syria, asked gamers to contribute their mining power to mine cryptocurrency as part of the initiative. Interested gamers and donors had to install the Claymore mining software to mine ETH, the chosen crypto for the project. The campaign ended last March 31, with UNICEF mining 85 ETH.
SĂ©bastien Lyon, the director of UNICEF France pointed out that while cryptocurrencies is an innovation in the fundraising sphere, it is being utilised by few organizations in the field. He noted, "Cryptocurrency and blockchain technology used for charitable purposes offer a new opportunity to appeal to the generosity of the public and continue to develop our operations with children in the countries of intervention."
UNICEF France had taken a cue from UNICEF Australia, which, in April, created an initiative where crypto mining was conducted by visiting a website, HopePage, which had been set up for the specific purpose of mining Monero. Also in May, UNICEF announced that donors could use Coinhive to offer their donations to support refugees through mining cryptocurrency. The funds raised was used to help 400,000 children in Rohingya who were affected by the violence in Myanmar.
Jennifer Tierney, director of UNICEF Australia, explained, "The HopePage allows Australians to provide help and hope to vulnerable children by simply opening the page while they are online." HopePage asks users for confirmation before using anybody's system to mine for UNICEF Australia, and users can adjust how much computing power they are willing to donate or leave the browser tab open to keep contributing to the initiative.
