Nelson Mandela Charities Launch International SMS Campaign

To celebrate the 90th birthday of Nelson Mandela, his charitable organisations have come together to launch an international premium SMS service, allowing millions to text their own birthday message to the former South African president.

A mixture of shared and dedicated PSMS codes have been set up in over 20 countries around the world including the U.S., U.K., South Africa, Australia, Spain and Germany as well as many African nations making this one of the biggest premium SMS fundraising initiatives to be staged. Well wishers text their own message to their specific short code in country, receive a return thank you message complete with unique PIN allowing them to view their message securely online at www.happybirthdaymandela.com. The specially created birthday site also contains a raft of celebrity messages both written and filmed from Mr MandelaÃ's supporters around the world.

The campaign runs through until the 18th of July, Mr MandelaÃ's actual 90th birthday, culminating in a card being presented to him in South Africa noting the number of messages received.

46664 International Director Tim Massey said, "We are delighted to be launching this campaign allowing so many people around the world the chance to wish this extraordinary man happy birthday. A text based service allows more people to feel part of the celebrations in a very simple way and we hope will raise significant revenues to support the ongoing work of the charities that bear Mr. MandelaÃ's name and 46664.".

Managed by Nelson MandelaÃ's HIV/AIDS global awareness campaign 46664 and strategically live for 46,664 minutes all profits received from text charges will go to the Nelson Mandela Legacy Trust and other charitable organisations supported by Mr Mandela. These include The Nelson Mandela ChildrenÃ's Fund, The Nelson Mandela Foundation and the Mandela Rhodes Foundation.

Specific telecoms advice has been given to the charity in setting up the complex international campaign by Telecoms consultant Tim Williams and Naqada. Running on a system built and managed by UK based Mediadeck the campaign has been enabled by SMS aggregators Sybase 365, mBlox and Digital Services Group in South Africa. 46664 concert sponsor Zain has also assisted in switching on the campaign across its African territories. A customer care service has been provided by Mediadeck with support from Elephant Talk, Mediatel and North West Nevada Telecom.

Posted to the site on 15th June 2008