Student group events, benefits raise funds for Haiti
By Sophie Rane
Jan. 20, 2010 10:27 p.m.
Haiti may be 3,000 miles away, but the UCLA campus community is responding to last week’s devastating earthquake in Port-au-Prince as though it happened in a neighboring city.
A number of fundraising efforts and benefit events will take place on campus in the next few weeks aimed at benefiting those affected by the 7.0 quake.
On Friday, a number of student groups are collaborating to put on an all-day series of benefit events known collectively as Help Haiti.
“It’s easy to feel powerless, but I think that the events on Friday will give people a chance to get involved,” said former Daily Bruin Sports editor Bobby Gordon, outreach and project coordinator for the Art | Global Health Center, a nonprofit in the department of World Arts and Culture which is one of the event’s major organizers.
The day’s events will open with hip-hop and dance classes open to students, as well as a performance by electro-country-punk band RESTAVRANT in Bruin Plaza, Gordon said.
There will also be a teach-in featuring faculty members and grad students with ties to Haiti, like Professor Don Cosentino, who has been traveling to Haiti for the last 20 years and teaches courses on the nation’s history and culture.
“Haiti is one of the most complicated cultures in the world and it has a complicated history of interaction with the United States. “¦ I hope that the students will understand how important it is that we do the right thing in helping them recover from this catastrophe,” said Consentino of the teach-in.
In the evening, Help Haiti will feature an event organized by the Office of Residential Life called Karnival: A Bruin Benefit for Haiti.
Karnival will feature speakers like medical students and faculty members who have worked in Haiti in the past, as well as activities such as face painting, mask decorating and performances highlighting Haitian culture, said Shuchita Vandra, a resident assistant for Hedrick Summit who came up with the idea for the event.
“We’re trying to celebrate the culture while responding quickly,” Vandra said.
Though organizers only had a week to put together the Karnival event, Vandra said planning efforts have gone very smoothly due to an outpouring of student interest.
Donations earned from the Karnival benefit, along with the rest of Friday’s Help Haiti events, will go to the organization Partners in Health, the largest rural health care provider in Haiti, she said, adding that Hedrick Summit has a long history of working with Partners in Health.
Vandra said students could donate either at the door or in advance at tables set up outside dining halls on the Hill all this week as well as to an online donation page on the event’s Facebook listing.
After the Karnival event, the music group Killsonic will lead a procession to Royce Hall for the opening of Arts Happening Weekend, a three-day event which will now serve as a benefit for Haiti, Gordon said.
“Learning about Haitian culture helps understand what we can do to address the physical and psychic suffering caused by the epidemic,” said David Gere, director of the Art | Global Health Center and one of the central organizers of Help Haiti day.
Outside of Friday’s Help Haiti events, a number of other campus organizations are staging their own efforts to contribute to the relief effort.
Next week, the African Activists Association will host a spoken word benefit in honor of the crisis in Haiti, said Cassandra Tesch, a graduate student in African studies and the group’s co-chair.
The event will feature at least 10 spoken-word performers, as well as performances from dancers, singers, comedians and storytellers, Tesch said.
“It would be a shame if we didn’t do something about it as activists … and we can use our art to help people,” said Tesch, who said she would be performing at the benefit herself.
The event is donation-based and will benefit the organization Population Services International, who will use the funds to provide food, water and medical attention to Haitian citizens affected by the earthquake, Tesch said.
However, Tesch added that she would encourage students to attend the event even if they could not afford to make a donation.
“No one will be turned away for lack of funds. … We want everyone to come and give their physical support,” she said.
For its part, the UCLA chapter of CALPIRG is organizing a dodgeball tournament whose proceeds will benefit the relief effort, said Sarah Dobjensky, board member of CALPIRG at UCLA.
Dobjensky said the idea came up because the group hosted a similar tournament several years ago to provide relief for victims of the 2004 tsunami in Indonesia and was successful in raising a significant amount of funds.
The idea of the event, Dobjensky said, is to generate funds by charging a fee for each team entering the tournament, and also charging a small fee for students to watch.
Corine Harmon, another CALPIRG board member, said the group has also been flyering on Bruinwalk to inform students of a program that allows people to donate $10 to the American Red Cross by texting HAITI to the designated number 90999.
Harmon said most students who stopped to hear about the program were willing to send the message.
“Students want to be doing something about the crisis in Haiti. … We feel that it is sort of our duty,” Dobjensky said.
