Carebnb imitates Airbnb to raise money for Ebola treatment
A clever fundraising campaign has taken its cues from accommodation sharing website Airbnb in a bid to raise cash to help stop Ebola.
Take a look at Carebnb – whilst at first glance it may look like a website for a particularly depressing holiday, its actually pretty clever. Browse through the “listings” and find out how it costs $150/night in Texas to treat one patient, or $10 to buy a whole tent in Liberia. Here’s how the press release describes it:
“Ranging from ‘Beautiful Liberia’ and ‘Maria’s place in Madrid, Spain,’ to ‘Texas’ and ‘Sierra Leone,’ get-away options show beautiful imagery of beaches and cowboys and entice visitors to book luxury holidays away. Unassuming visitors are then surprised to discover listing pages stripped of holiday niceties, presenting instead strong imagery of Ebola treatment wards and de-cloaking the site as an awareness and fundraising initiative. Visitors are then encouraged to ‘book a stay’ on behalf of someone with the disease – a donation of which 100% is re-granted by Carebnb to Médecins sans Frontières, a charity organisation struggling to combat the outbreak in known disease areas in West Africa.
“The site uses the listing format to introduce ratings, reviews and pictures of protective suit wearing ‘hosts,’ who present facility specifics and amenities that guests can expect on arrival. From indulgences like ‘free shuttle services’ and a ‘swimming pool’ in Texas, to the bare essentials of ‘buckets’ and ‘water’ in Liberia, amenity lists serve to surface the differences between locations. Reviews by previous ‘guests,’ inspired by quotes from real interview material, also highlight fallout such as accessibility of centres, capacity constraints, lack of information among officials and the public, and economic and social exclusion that affect outbreak zones.”
What a great idea. I wonder if next we’ll see an Ebola photo sharing website called Ebolr?
