Throughout the past week, Instagram users may have noticed when they logged into their accounts the mass amounts of friends, family members, coworkers, and celebrities’ profile pictures that have been changed to blue. The reason for this being to show support/solidarity for the citizens of Sudan as they fight to survive the slaughtering and terrorization by their own military. In combination with the current environment in Sudan, there is also a telecommunications blackout resulting in very little information about the situation being able to get out. Thus, the blue profile pics are used as an effort to get people asking questions so that more people are aware that this humanitarian crisis is even happening to generate a larger informed audience to be able to make a change.

In addition to the blue profile pic wave that has taken off, many new accounts started popping up promising to donate one meal to Sudan for every like, comment, story share, follow that the post or account acquired. These accounts were able to gain attention from thousands upon thousands of people in a matter of days before new posts started to go viral that called out many of these “Sudan meal project” pages for being a scam. These accusations turned out to be correct with hundreds of duplicate pages with similar handles equipped with no website, no proof of plan execution, no information on funding sources, along with an absence of verification checks. These pages were created by people attempting to exploit the humanitarian crisis in Sudan for their own personal gain.

If the creators of pages such as these really cared and had the resources to legitimately help starving Sudanese children then ethically, they should do so without having to gain a certain amount of attention on a social media platform.

https://www.instagram.com/p/ByziUd9gSX1/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

So with all of this fake information flying around many people are left wondering how they can actually make a difference to help those suffering in Sudan.

Option one:

Donating! If possible for you, financial donations to reliable organizations such as “Save the Children” (an organization started in 1984 to help families in Sudan whose lives have been disrupted by conflict) can help to provide shelter, education, along with food and water to people in Sudan who do not have access to these basic necessities needed in order to live a healthy and fulfilling life.

Option two:

If you aren’t financially able to support, you can research petitions such as this one from change.org created so that people can demand the United Nations to investigate the human rights violations in Sudan by the military. Scroll down to the bottom of the web page to see what people have shared about why they are signing.

Option three:

Contact your members of Congress and urge them to work to help the people of Sudan! Use this website to find your local representative by using your zip code and click their name to find their email. If texting is more your style then feel free to use ResistBot by texting “RESIST” to 50409 as an alternative way to contact your congressman (click on the link to learn more about how your message will be delivered).