{"id":12617,"date":"2016-10-19T09:00:28","date_gmt":"2016-10-19T16:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=12617"},"modified":"2016-10-17T14:34:20","modified_gmt":"2016-10-17T21:34:20","slug":"camosuns-africa-calling-struggles-to-get-phone-donations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2016\/10\/19\/camosuns-africa-calling-struggles-to-get-phone-donations\/","title":{"rendered":"Camosun\u2019s Africa Calling struggles to get phone donations"},"content":{"rendered":"

Victoria is known for its vast number of charities. Camosun College is no stranger to them; Africa Calling, for example, has had a strong presence here on campus for the past seven years (indeed, the group started as a class project at Camosun).<\/p>\n

Africa Calling collects phones and distributes them to those less fortunate, but they\u2019re having a hard time doing that these days.<\/p>\n

Phone donations have been dwindling, and Africa Calling member and former Camosun student Kevin Davis is worried about the older phones being pushed out of the market.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe CDMA-type phones will soon be obsolete,\u201d says Davis. \u201cWe are basically down to one iPhone, which I just received from somebody at Camosun. Our stocks are basically depleted.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Camosun\u2019s<\/a>
Camosun\u2019s Francis Adu-Febiri is one of the co-founders of the Africa Calling charity (photo by Jill Westby\/Nexus<\/em>).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Camosun College sociology professor Francis Adu-Febiri is a co-founder of <\/b>Africa Calling; he agrees with Davis that they aren\u2019t receiving as many phones as when they first started. He says it\u2019s because of changes in technology.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we started, smartphones were new and people didn\u2019t want flip phones,\u201d he says. \u201cNow more people have smartphones and they keep them longer.\u201d<\/p>\n

The donation boxes for Africa Calling have also been an issue lately. Boxes have gone missing all across Lansdowne campus, with the only remaining one being in the cafeteria.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know what\u2019s going on there,\u201d says Davis. \u201cPeople have been taking them away, which is a little disturbing.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the things people might not realize when they see the group\u2019s name is that it isn\u2019t just localized to Africa\u2014they\u2019ve sent phones all over the world, as far as the Philippines and as close as right here in our own city. Davis thinks that more people should be aware that the group helps out everywhere, not just in Africa.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do help locally,\u201d says Davis. \u201cA large part of what we do is giving the phones to people right here in Victoria. It\u2019s not just abroad; we are also focused locally.\u201d<\/p>\n

Africa Calling operates with no budget whatsoever, but Davis says they\u2019ve managed without.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve never collected a dollar from anyone, nor do I plan to,\u201d he says. \u201cIf this is going to work, it\u2019s going to work because of something called ubuntu<\/i>, which means \u2018people are people because of other people.\u2019 When I first started this, I realized that we were going to need money to do this, and we didn\u2019t have money. So I thought, \u2018Okay, well, people are going to have to donate their time or their resources.\u2019 Seven years later, we\u2019re still going, and we\u2019ve managed to get phones all around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the challenges they\u2019re currently facing, Africa Calling means a lot to those involved. Davis says that being part of the group has changed his life.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s done a lot for me personally,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen I started doing this and going to school, the combination and the feedback I got from people just gave me a whole new outlook on the world and people. It was unknown to me when I started, but I noticed this energy that grew and how people were just drawn to it. It was very inspiring for me. It\u2019s pushed me to do more each day. And here we are. We\u2019ve set up an international charity without a penny. It\u2019s blown me away.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Victoria is known for its vast number of charities. Camosun College is no stranger to them; Africa Calling, for example, has had a strong presence here on campus for the past seven years (indeed, the group started as a class project at Camosun). Africa Calling collects phones and distributes them to those less fortunate, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12618,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,173],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus","category-october-19-2016"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12617"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12620,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12617\/revisions\/12620"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}