A female African blogger known to the Internet as the “Bitcoin Ambassador” to Botswana is using her blog to raise Bitcoin donations in support of a local charity that cares for orphaned and abandoned children.

Alakanani Itireleng, a Bitcoin enthusiast from Botswana who has built an Internet following from her efforts to spread cryptocurrency awareness around the country, says she is fundraising Bitcoins for SOS Children’s Villages.

The charity provides support for parentless children, using donation money to grow food and buy groceries, school supplies, clothing, medical care, and other basic necessities in three villages across Botswana: Tlokweng, Francistown, and Serowe. SOS also works with the US Department of Labor to care for kids who have been rescued from child labor.

For Itireleng, whose mother left the family when she was a child and whose father died in her third year of university, the project is intensely personal.

“I know what it means to be without parents,” she told Cointelegraph. “Sometimes I [would] spend the whole semester with no soap to bath[e] or do laundry and was at the mercy of my friends. When I graduated I [didn’t] even pay to have graduate photos. So imagine for a primary [school] child, without parents or living in the street, how life can be for such kids.”

Fundraising for SOS, she said, will help “care for the future generation, the children will have a place to call home, a place where they will be groomed to be well-rounded citizens and responsible [adults] who will do tomorrow what I am doing today – care for others.”

“With this project I am securing the future,” Itireleng wrote.

The Bitcoin activist is specifically trying to raise money to help out the Children’s Village program in Serowe, which is in need of refurbishment to the tune of US$47,000. Since she started fundraising last April, Itireleng has raised nearly US$1,500 (2.548 BTC) from 54 donors.

Gareth Grobler and Tristan Winters, of South African Bitcoin exchange ice3x, have also linked up to the cause, setting up a Bitcoin wallet and a page on their website in support of the project after meeting Itireleng at the 2014 Bitcoin Conference in Amsterdam earlier this year.

In the future, Itireleng hopes to use her influence in the Bitcoin community to assist other charities, teaching them how to use the cryptocurrency to fundraise and receive donations in the most efficient way possible. Itireleng says:

“I think the best way to show people that something is valuable is when you validate your argument with tangible works. Bitcoin has made charity very easy and I believe Bitcoin donations can do a lot as a means to [promote] Bitcoin acceptance, and I believe [that's] the best way [for Bitcoin] to reach Africa. With Bitcoin, charities can save and be able to carry out their projects and at the same time it’s a way to [grow] the Bitcoin economy. “

Help the children of Africa and build Bitcoin awareness simultaneously by donating to Itireleng’s project here: 1MW6J3TZELNVTRBLFKN4JVR1AWPW39D79F

Litecoin donations are also accepted here: LNGBEG3RDZ8Q6QKV4YYNN2FXE8Y1JJ3FK7

Or check out the Bitcoin Ambassador to Botswana’s blog site here. 

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