We caught up with Tommy Marcus and talked about his page, life, and his fundraising initiative. He is currently raising funds for India's COVID-19 crisis and said he has managed to raise more than Rs. Marcus has witnessed his personal transformation from a meme-artist to a prolific fundraiser during this period. What started as a meme page is now is a platform that speaks out against social injustices and raises funds for burning social issues. “I was making the people laugh during a tough time,” recollected Marcus on a Zoom call with Gadgets 360 earlier this week. The goal, Ford noted, is to ferry out of the country Afghan citizens who have been targeted by the Taliban.Manhattan went into a lockdown in March last year and that's when Tommy Marcus started the Instagram meme page Quentin Quarantino which now has 654k followers. Though the deadly suicide bombing at the airport on Thursday complicated their efforts, Ford says those they are helping must have passports, a relative his group can communicate with and someone vouching for them who has passed a background check. Raven Advisory CEO Sheffield Ford told the AP that to transport the people into the airport, the US government has to be "comfortable with our organisation saying these people are okay, and that they have actually done things to help their country, to help our country". Without Operation Flyaway's quick funding, that flight wouldn't have gotten off the ground." "Their last-minute funding, along with the generous support of the Rockefeller Foundation, Schmidt Futures and other donors, was critical. "They were one of many miracles we experienced in this time," Shadian said. Shadian said he had met Operation Flyaway members on Zoom earlier in the week and in the chaos of the Kabul evacuations was thrilled they agreed to fund the flight. The company, which says it performs subcontract work for the US military, said "an all-volunteer team consisting of former Special Forces soldiers and other veterans with expertise in Afghanistan" were working with the military to coordinate their rescue efforts. Representatives from that North Carolina-based company, Raven Advisory, said they were able to pay for the mission using money raised through Marcus' GoFundMe campaign. The flight from Kabul to Entebbe, Uganda, was organised by Sayara, which advised a company working with Marcus that it knew of a plane available for Operation Flyaway. ![]() The chartered flight that left Kabul early Wednesday morning is one of several private rescue efforts organised by various groups, separately and through collaborations, to help Afghans flee. Ugandan officials said the nation would shelter up to 2000 people who are expected to be relocated elsewhere after a temporary stay in the country. We are grateful we got out as many people as we did against the greatest odds we've ever faced."Īt the request of the US government, Uganda received the evacuees, who will stay at hotels in a city outside the country's capital, Kampala. Simply put, the institutions failed, and it breaks my heart how much more we could have accomplished. "I'm so proud of our extraordinary team and what we were able to accomplish in such a short time," said Sayara CEO Scott Shadian. Officials from several nonprofit groups describe a chaotic and perilous scene at the Kabul airport as they rushed to fill private chartered flights with people who have the necessary paperwork in the limited time that they can keep their planes on the tarmac. "However, we are unable to verify the authenticity or effectiveness of these efforts," the statement said.
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