Bob Geldof to 4 Syrian Families: Come Stay in My Homes

The drowned 3-year-old who perished as his family tried to flee Syria for safer shores has touched people around the world, including author JK Rowling, who tweeted a welcome message for refugees everywhere, the Guardian reports. "If you can't imagine yourself in one of those boats, you have something missing. They are dying for a life worth living. #refugeeswelcome," Rowling wrote in her tweet yesterday. Other celebrities have also joined the call for Europe to welcome refugees—and rock star Bob Geldof made a pretty incredible offer to house four refugee families.

Geldof said in an interview on Ireland's RTE Radio One that he and his partner, Jeanne, have "a place in Kent and a flat in London" they'd be willing to use to "put [four refugee families] up until such time as they can get going and get a purchase on their future," per Sky News. He was spurred into action by what he calls the "absolute sickening disgrace" of little Aylan Kurdi's body washing up on a Turkish shore, the Guardian notes. "I look at it with profound shame and a monstrous betrayal of who we are and what we wish to be," he said in the interview. "We are in a moment currently now that will be discussed and impacted on in 300 years' time." (An anonymous death notice in the Sydney Morning Herald also mourns Aylan.)