Activities for the reconstruction of Kobanê are gaining momentum in Europe. Following the conference in the European Parliament on July 1st, mobilization of NGOs and activists reached a much organized level. As such, the first international crowdfunding campaign FirefundKobane was launched on July 19, the anniversary of the Rojava Revolution.

Firefund is a Copenhagen based non-profit initiative providing secured and anonymous crowdfunding for the purpose of economic support and direct solidarity between activists and movements across the world. The project has been under construction for a year and a half and launched with the first crowdfunding campaign, Rebuild Kobanê , on July 19th. Firefund consists of a team of 10 activists but hopes to expand after the launch.

This campaign is endorsed by the Kobanê Reconstruction Board and is currently run by a team of people from the board, Firefund and volunteering activists.

About their first campaign, Mikkel Thydal and Karl Kristiansen from Firefund says: “The struggle in Kobanê has gained a lot of attention within the last year, and a lot of expressions of solidarity from all over the world. We know for a fact that a lot of communities, unions, interest groups and individuals have already created decentralized fundraisers and sent money from many different places. There were demonstrations in citys all over the world in November last year in solidarity with Kobanê, people are even travelling there to help the fight against Da’esh (ISIS). There is no doubt that the cause of Kobanê has a huge group of people standing behind them who want to help out, and we expect this to be expressed through the crowdfunding campaign as well -the world stands behind Kobanê.”

The campaign which is running till August 20th aims to accept donations for the cleaning of rubble from Kobanê following the war. The donations will help essential and urgently needed construction machinery and equipment to clean up Kobanê and kick-start the rebuilding process. The removal of post-war debris is not perceived as an urgent need by many NGOs, which is why this crowd funding campaign is essential.

On the website, www.firefund.net, donations can be pledged till August 20th. The campaign is shared using the hashtag #FireFundKobane