Ripple Helping Madonna Raise Funds for Malawi Children

The fintech company will match every dollar the Raising Malawi foundation collects in a month-long drive in honor of Madonna’s birthday.

California-based Ripple, the fintech company developing blockchain-based transaction settlement and payment solutions, has announced it is joining pop mega-star Madonna in the fundraising campaign for her foundation Raising Malawi.

Ripple said it would match all public donations made on Madonna’s Facebook page. It is not become clear whether Ripple will donate XRP tokens or fiat money, but according to the announcement for the campaign, the company will “match each dollar donated to this campaign”.

The initiative launched on July 30 and will run through August 31 in honor of Madonna’s 60th birthday, which falls on August 16. The goal is to raise $60,000, which will go directly to meals, schools, uniforms, and healthcare for the orphaned children in Malawi. Nearly one million local children have lost one or both parents to HIV/AIDS. At the time of writing, the campaign has already raised $27,639 from 584 people.

“I have an unwavering commitment to providing vulnerable children with a loving home. For my birthday, I can think of no better gift than connecting my global family with this beautiful country and the children who need our help most,” Madonna said on her Facebook page.

“We’re honored to be a part of Raising Malawi’s amazing work with some of the world’s most underserved children and are grateful to our investors at Sound Ventures for making the introduction to us and this important cause,” said Eric van Miltenburg, SVP of business operations at Ripple.

Madonna founded the Raising Malawi foundation in 2006 to provide community support, health and education programs, and scholarships for the orphans in the country. In 2017, the organization opened a children’s hospital in the second-largest city, Blantyre. This year, Raising Malawi opened 14 schools for more than 10,000 children across the country. Since 2006, Madonna has also adopted four children from Malawi.

Ripple develops several products based on its distributed open source internet protocol, including a real-time gross settlement system (RTGS), a currency exchange and remittance network, and the XRP digital asset.

Recently, the company reported that sales of XPR had halved in the second quarter of 2018, yet it remains one of the major players in the cryptocurrency industry.