Thanks for the follow-up, Andrew. I wasn't blowing smoke when I said I'd pony up some cash for him- the man is a hero. I'll email you right now...

I said I was good for $20. But I'm good for $50. Let's buy this guy his land.

Andrew,

How about interested people sending money to you via your published email address? Or the email address of one of the people in the chain leading to Yacouba?

When I read the NatGeo article, I had high hopes that somebody would find a way to help this farmer, who has accomplished so much.

This is a wonderful thing.

This type of project sounds like something Kiva (http://www.kiva.org/) might help with. I've got $25 sitting there waiting to be re-invested. Andrew, you turned me on to Kiva initially...

I'm going to second the suggestion of using PayPal for contributing. I think you'll get more donations this way, and potential contributors won't have to worry about sending/receiving sensitive information to people they don't know.

I'm good for some money though paypal.

Andrew-

I think if we can make it as easy as a paypal account we can really do this. I can set up a facebook group with the paypal info and I'd bet we'd have the 20k faster than Sarah Palin can shoot a moose.

Being able to give through Paypal would make it much easier for me too.

Maybe Kiva would work best for continuing and expanding this, lots of people would see it. Not sure if there is a local organization for Kiva to work with in Burkina Faso though.

People are right to point out that conducting the transactions this way is dodgy. Paypal takes a big cut, though, especially relative to the CFA Franc (479 XOF ~ 1 USD according to the internet at this writing).

Salon has a merchant account for processing monetary transactions securely on the Internet, via credit card. Why not have Salon set up a "product" consisting of a donation to this account?

As others have pointed out, charitable organizations like Kiva (or Heifer International) my be good honest brokers, as well.

This is a great idea. I urge you to make sure the execution is equally good.

Andrew,

I emailed you and haven't heard back.

I do agree that you, or someone else we can reasonably trust, should be the conduit for this. Using Facebook to publicize is a great idea.

Let's do this!