Al-Youm Al-Sabaa TV provided special coverage about the girl Ruqayya, who suffers from muscular dystrophy, and a sum of donations of about 45 million pounds was collected for her.
The founder Hussein El-Gohary and the owner of the fundraising initiative through Live on Facebook said that he did not expect the amount to be collected so quickly, noting that the announced amount of donation is 45 million pounds, but more than 50 million pounds were collected within about 35 hours.
He added, during the coverage prepared by Huda Abu Bakr and presented by Raghda Bakr, on how to carry out this campaign and succeed in collecting donations, “The campaign started when Ruqayya’s mother went to a page on the social media, and they started talking about the topic of Ruqaya, and then the topic spread on the social media, and the people in charge of the page are my friends. So, I suggested that they do a live job to collect the amount, we actually did that and we sat for 3 days in an abode on Facebook, like what happened in the Emirates before, and we were afraid that we were not collecting the money, but we were surprised after that by the numbers on the live.
Hussein El-Gohary continued, “We started life with 20 million, and we started telling people to save Ruqayyah, and all the people joined forces and supported Ruqayyah.”
El-Gohary said, “I believe the number on the screen, we went live at 9 again on the day at 11 at night, we collected the amount, there was coordination with Fawry, who was updating every little bit with the amounts donated.”
For her part, Nourhan, the mother of the child, Ruqayya, said during an intervention in the coverage, “What happened is a great achievement. All people are stunned by what happened, because it is the first time something like this has happened in Egypt, and I hope that it gets long and complete, there are many children in need of treatment, like the twins on high. Farida, I am the first one to support them, and I hope we make them live and collect donations for them.”
And about the post that was circulated on Facebook regarding the escape of the child’s family, Ruqayya, abroad with money, the girl’s mother, Ruqayya, said, “When the post came out, we were in the hospital. Under the supervision of the Ministry of Solidarity, there is nothing in our hands.”