Help me buy body armour so I can safely do my job in Egypt
indiegogo.com
indiegogo.com
Finally, if you're really in urgent fear for you life, would you start a two-week fund-raising drive or would you suck it up an pay the cash yourself to get it pronto? The amount of cash she's asking for could be put on the average person's credit card without a problem! When your life is on the line, would you really worry about racking up a little interest? This actually sounds like a scam to me.
I am based in Cairo - this conflict is not going to end anytime soon.
War reporting freelance is not like web design freelance. You have to be in located and get shot at and in the beginning, you barely get paid because you have to build your experience.
edit: Also that being a Western Woman, she stood out in the clashes and it made her job even more dangerous.
I'm pretty sure you are welcome to buy this person a plane ticket to anywhere in the world that would be better served by their experience. Perhaps they can even use their body armor there as well. However, while they're waiting for it that ticket they might as well do something right? Maybe they should try food photography. Now there's some well paying, non superfluous work.
She's probably hitting order as we speak. She's already recouped 2/3 of the cost and will probably get all of it. Being short on money while needing to protect possible expensive equipment, yourself, and while actually documenting violent outbreaks is hardly solved by sucking it up. Now, if they're sitting in a plush hotel room asking for cash to be enticed into using their fancy camera for something useful– then your sentiment would make more sense.
In the past few days we have seen the emergence of AK-47 armed 'protesters' against the security forces. Usually protesters uses rocks and molotov cocktails to fight so journalists only have to worry about birdshots from security forces.
Egypt now ranks the 4th most dangerous place in the world fo 2013 http://www.cpj.org/killed/2013/
The country is not going to have a civil war. There is not enough support for the Islamists to wage an insurgency at least on the African side of Egypt. There is already an insurgency happening in North Sinai but that's also because that area borders Gaza and Egyptian military is not allowed to deploy significant amount of soldiers and equipment due to Camp David Peace Agreement with Israel(edit typo).
Worse case scenario for the African side of Egypt is return to the frequent terrorist attacks that plague Egypt in the 90's and return to the harsh crackdown against the Islamist.
The most likely scenario is that the current security problems will get worse but a negotiated deal will be reached between the parties involved.