WASHINGTON — As Syrian refugees continue to flee the violence at home, President Obama is turning to the modern tools of Silicon Valley entrepreneurship as a supplement to the more traditional means of humanitarian relief.
At the request of officials from the White House Office of Digital Strategy, the crowdfunding website Kickstarter has begun its first social service campaign aimed at raising money for the United Nations refugee agency on behalf of Syrian refugees.
Visitors to the site, which is better known for helping inventors and filmmakers, can contribute $15 to buy a sleeping bag, $70 for an emergency rescue kit, or $160, which the site says could pay for a refugee’s shelter in a “well-built group tent, complete with sleeping bag and mat.”
The weeklong campaign, which began Tuesday, had raised more than $550,000 as of that night for a nonprofit organization that supports the United Nations refugee agency, an amount the site said had already helped more than 2,000 people.
In a blog post on the White House website, Joshua Miller, an official in the digital strategy office, wrote that the Kickstarter effort — along with a similar one with Instacart, an online grocery delivery service — is an effort to follow up on Mr. Obama’s plea for Americans to do their part on behalf of the refugees.
White House officials said the online fund-raising would not replace the government’s efforts or other programs to help manage the refugee crisis. The administration has said it plans to increase by 10,000 the number of Syrian refugees admitted into the United States in the next year and to further expand the number of refugees admitted from other countries.
The administration has said it will also continue to contribute money to help confront the crisis overseas. Officials said the United States was the largest single donor of humanitarian assistance, having given about $4.5 billion to support those escaping the violence.
The refugee agency’s appeals for money for the Syria crisis have raised less than half what is needed. Appeals for other refugee crises, including those in Darfur and Central African Republic, which receive far less media attention and are not part of the Kickstarter campaign, face a worse predicament.
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White House officials noted that in 1885, hundreds of thousands of Americans donated small sums to pay for a $2.5 million base for the Statue of Liberty. “Just like we banded together in 1885, we can join together to provide shelter, food and medical assistance to these people in need,” Mr. Miller wrote in his blog post. “It’s the American thing to do.”
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