UCs convene Haiti Summit to involve staff and students in island nation’s recovery
By Sarah Ravani
April 22, 2010 10:10 p.m.
On Saturday, 8 UCs, including UCLA, are gathering at UCSF’s Mission Bay campus to discuss how each university can collectively contribute and help the victims of the Jan. 12 Haitian earthquake.
The UC Haiti Summit will bring together professors and students from all the UC campuses, with the exception of UC Irvine and UC Merced, said Anna Alexandroni, UCLA Haiti Summit director.
The UC Regents will also be present to support the cause of the summit, said Alexandroni, a third-year physiological sciences student.
The summit will address a number of issues facing the country, including health care and infrastructure. Alexandroni said she hopes to involve collaborations with student engineering groups and the American Red Cross.
The summit begins the UC’s efforts to become involved with the United Nations resolution on Haiti, a plan of development within Haiti, and for UC students and faculty to actively participate in empowering the nation to rebuild, Alexandroni said.
“The need is so much greater there than you can ever fathom,” Alexandroni said.
The speakers, who are either Haitian or have a Haitian background, will be providing an assessment of the current situation, a general history and the social structure of Haiti.
The summit will also feature a dialogue and discussion so that delegations from the UCs, specifically students, can offer strategies on how to get involved, said Tak Nguyen, Undergraduate Students Association Council general representative, whose office sponsored UCLA’s participation in the summit.
Strategies may include raising money or sending students from different departments to Haiti to offer help in their areas of expertise, said Nguyen, a fourth-year cognitive science with computer specialization student.
“This way all members of the UC community can have a common goal and common cause, and work toward that same specific goal, which will be decided at the summit,” Nguyen said. “It’s ultimately going to benefit our efforts more because we are going to be united instead of working as segregated entities.”
UCLA’s School of Medicine and School of Law will be representing UCLA at the summit, in addition to about 20 students, said Nguyen,
The UC Haiti Summit was originally spearheaded by UC Berkeley to offer a global and tangible option for UC students, Alexandroni said.
“Ideally, what I’d like to see is that we walk away with five concrete project proposals, that this is what we are going to do and these are the non-profits we would like to collaborate with,” said Tu Tran, executive vice president of Associated Students of UC Berkeley.
Because of the current economic downturn and budget cuts within the UCs, Alexandroni said there are minimal funds available. However, she said she hopes that eventual plans for relief will be self-sustaining. Because no plan of action has been chosen yet, funding for the project has not been discussed.
“It’s easy to forget the millions of lives that are impacted by the earthquake,” Alexandroni said. “Don’t just be touched, be changed and moved to action.”
