kyu Collective raises over $89,000 for Giving Tuesday to support design in Nairobi
In honor of Giving Tuesday, the kyu Collective came together in a two-part campaign — first, to share highlights of our collective’s social impact work, and second, to support IDEO.org’s Nairobi studio through a fundraising initiative.
The latter, which ran from Giving Tuesday on November 27th until December 7th, raised over $89,000 for IDEO.org.
“It’s hard to put into words just how blown away we are by the support we’ve received over the past two weeks,” said IDEO.org’s CEO Jocelyn Wyatt. “It’s incredible.”
Every dollar donated went towards providing additional training and mentorship opportunities for Nairobi’s emerging designers in an effort to build its next generation of creative leaders. It was a wonderful opportunity to support a cause near and dear to the collective, while also sharing more on the impact of IDEO.org’s work.
We are thrilled to say 100% of our member companies participated, with donors from as far as London, Paris, and Tokyo sending their contributions. The campaign launched with a goal of $15,000, but after surpassing that goal in just a few days, we went on to raise more than $40,000. With kyu’s pledge to match each donation, every donor’s impact was doubled – bringing the grand total to over $89,000 raised to support the growth of Nairobi’s design community and the work of IDEO.org.
Throughout the two-week campaign, kyu members posted “unselfies” on Slack to share their support and their reasons for donating. Some of the inspiring and even funny notes IDEO.org received included:
• “I want to see design active in all parts of the world.” -N.E
• “Positive holiday juju.” -K.L.
• “Couldn’t be prouder of the accomplishments made by the IDEO.org team. Keep up the amazing work and looking forward to even greater impact in the years to come.” -M.P.
To further connect our donors with the cause, every donor was entered into a raffle to win a 3-day inspiration tour to Nairobi. Alex Gallafent from IDEO was the lucky winner! The trip — hosted by IDEO.org— will give Alex the chance to experience Kenya’s emerging design scene and see the impact of the kyu Collective’s contribution up close.
Alex will get to visit locations such as the Village Creative (pictured above), a community and work space that will be a home to IDEO.org starting in the summer of 2019, and the Nairobi Design Institute,
We will hear more from Alex’s trip in 2019, but for now, we couldn’t be proud of our collective for coming together around such an inspiring and important cause.