Three Mobile to donate leftover data as money to support aid work in Syria

24 Feb 2016 News

Three Mobile is trialling a project in Sweden whereby its customers can transform their unused mobile data into a cash donation for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees' work with refugees in Syria.

Three Mobile is trialling a project in Sweden whereby its customers can transform their unused mobile data into a cash donation for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees' work with refugees in Syria.

The project, called #datadonate, is currently being trialled by Three in Sweden but a representative of the operator said that it hopes that “others will follow its example”. To that end, Three has “developed an open-source solution for  #datadonate, allowing other mobile operators and data service providers to be inspired and use it freely”.

Three customers can use #datadonate by logging into their  account and stating how much of their leftover mobile data they can spare.

In the trial phase individual users can donate as much as Swedish Krona 50 (£4.22) to UNHCR, which the charity will use to provide clean water, food and temporary lodging for refugees displaced by the ongoing civil war in Syria.

Nicholas Högberg, chief executive of Three Sweden, said: “For us, this is a new way of donating to charity, and as so the opening stages of the project will be a bit of an experiment, to be further developed – in an open-ended project.

“We also hope to inspire other companies and organizations to do the same. Therefore, we have developed a process enabling us to share all the knowledge that we’ve gathered in this project with other interested organizations and companies.”

#Datadonate launched in Sweden yesterday. 

Three UK has been approached by Civil Society News to comment on whether or not it will provide its customers with the ability to use #datadonate.