Faculty, staff and student organizations joined forces after a devastating earthquake stuck Haiti on January 12. Within a week, the university had already established an Earthquake Relief Fund that enabled students to make contributions to Haitian victims by simply calling 678-839-6582 or visiting the website www.westga.edu/alumni.

Vicky Hardin, a Career Services employee, decided to help the victims of Haiti by collecting health kits from students. All of the kits she gathered on January 21 will be delivered to Haiti through the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR), a not-for-profit international humanitarian aid organization. “When I heard about the earthquake, I was horrified because I knew the people in Haiti had nothing to begin with. Now they have even less,” Hardin explained. “I decided that I had to do something.”

These health kits include basic hygiene materials like washcloths, bars of soap, toothbrushes, combs, nail clippers and band-aids. “We also encouraged students to include a dollar in the kit so that the coordinators could purchase toothpaste,” Hardin said. “They [UMCOR] thought it would be best for donors to include money so that they could purchase toothpaste in bulk. Otherwise it might expire before it arrives in Haiti.”

The UMCOR website also encouraged students to enclose an additional dollar in an envelope to ensure that the kits reach Haitian victims as soon as possible. “The extra dollar enables us to process and ship the kits extremely quickly,” Sager Brown, a UMCOR coordinator, explained.

Stania Philizaire and Jeannie Jean, two Haitian students at UWG, felt particularly compelled to provide relief for their friends and family in Haiti. They decided to organize a benefit concert, which will take place on Wednesday, January 27 at 8pm in the Campus Center. Admission for students will only be three dollars. The concert will include a speech from Philizaire about her childhood in Haiti, as well as student poetry readings, band performances, and Haitian-style dance sequences.

Philizaire and Jean reached out to other student organizations like Amnesty International and the Student Anti-Genocide Coalition (STAND) for additional support. Aside from helping coordinate the event, Amnesty and STAND also plan to financially contribute to the relief efforts on campus. Doneen Mills and Jadon Marianetti, presidents of STAND and Amnesty respectively, and Dr. Peralta, a political science professor, made arrangements with the New York Times to deliver newspapers in return for funding. All of the money they raise will be sent to people in Haiti. “All students have to do is pick up a copy of the Times,” Mills explained. “They don’t even have to pay anything for it because it’s free.”

Dr. Jeanette Diaz-LaPlante, a psychology professor who was developing a grant program in Haiti prior to the earthquake, also plans to help Philizaire and Jean by speaking at the concert. LaPlante hopes that all students become involved in the relief effort. “Haiti is an integral part of the economic and social history of our country,” she said.

Indeed, Haiti and the United States’ history have been greatly, often violently, intertwined since the Louisiana Purchase. After the Haitian slaves rebelled and successfully attained independence from France, Napoleon gave the United States France’s Louisiana territory. According to Anthony Mason at CNN, “the American Midwest as we know it would not really exist without the Haitian revolution pushing France to give up on its design for empire in the Western hemisphere.” Economically crippled by debt to France, Haiti was easily invaded and occupied by the United States from 1915 to 1934. In the 1950s, the United States supported Francois Duvalier or “Papa Doc’s” violent and corrupt regime due to fears of communism. Yet in 1986 the US government ousted Duvalier’s son, “Baby Doc”, from office after his similarly repressive regime crushed the growing tourist industry. 

Despite, or perhaps because of, this history students and faculty hope to repair the massive damage in Haiti.

“I think that as human beings we should do something. Haiti was already economically and politically in ruins. Now we are looking at the possibility of Haiti not even existing,” Vicky Hardin explained.
 

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1 comments

Bo

Fri Jan 29 2010 09:06

A lot of charities are corrupt. The US contributes a large amount each year to Haiti, your tax dollars are a charitable contribution each year. How much did Haiti send to Katrina victims? Time to start fixing our own country.

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