The White House has taken the novel step of starting a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign to help raise funds for Syrian refugees. In partnership with the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the Prez has gone on Kickstarter with an appeal to the American people: please send money.

We’re sure that our readers are well aware that we live at a time of uncertainty, and in a world in which conflict seems to be constant. Scenes of the displacement of innocent civilians, especially women and children, into refugee camps, in Darfur, Iraq, the Sudan, and Afghanistan, are ever-present on the news. It’s extremely heartening, then, to hear about Google and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) jointly making available the Google Earth Outreach project, to raise global awareness of the almost 33 million displaced people that the UNHCR is today helping.