After a catastrophic earthquake hit China's Sichuan Province on May 12, it was not long before Elva Fan '11 began brainstorming with fellow students about how to raise funds for relief efforts. Fan has since helped to bring together several Asian student organizations to begin fundraising at Dartmouth.
"We heard the news, and we're all friends, and we decided that we wanted to do something," Fan said.
Following the disaster, Fan and Hang Qian '11 began to organize meetings for students to "discuss how to fundraise, and what's the best way to do that," Fan said.
Several Asian and Chinese student groups on campus are participating in efforts, Qian said, including the Dartmouth Asian Organization, the Chinese Student and Scholar Association, the Pan Asian Council and the Dartmouth Chinese Culture Society.
These efforts mark a rare instance of coordination between the various organizations, Dartmouth Chinese professor Justin Rudelson '83 said.
"There are different aspects of Asian culture, and there are many different objectives and issues they'd like to focus on," Rudelson said. "This earthquake has allowed a tragic opportunity to bring a lot of organizations together to raise funds in many different ways."
Efforts have largely focused on soliciting donations from students, since the earthquake happened just over a week ago, according to the coordinators.
"We wanted to do something on a large scale, but we don't have funds, we don't have time and we don't have a lot of people," Stephenie Lee '11, a representative of DAO, said.
Fan, Qian and several other students set up a booth at the College's World Food Festival, held in the McLaughlin Cluster last Saturday, where the students "sold some of our stuff and did Chinese calligraphy for donators," Qian said. The group was able to raise more than $500 from the sales. In addition, DAO plans to hold a bake sale today outside the Hanover Coop.
Lee, who organized the bake sale, emphasized the need for high participation in donating, regardless of the amounts given.
"For disasters -- a lot of people can't really understand it -- two or three dollars can seem really small, but sometimes it can be all the difference," she said. "[In Sichuan], two or three dollars can be a meal."
The CSSA, an organization for Chinese graduate students at Dartmouth, collected approximately $2,500 by soliciting outside of the Collis Center for four hours last Thursday afternoon, Qian said. CSSA also hosted a candlelight vigil for victims of the earthquake last Thursday on the Green.
"They called out the Chinese community on campus, and people held a candle in their hand to pray and keep silence for the dead," Qian said.
The student groups also hope to begin selling red wristbands, inspired by the popular LiveStrong bracelet trend, Rudelson said. The bands, which Rudelson purchased with his own money, display Chinese characters that translate to "Sichuan earthquake" and are colored red to represent both China and international aid organizations like the Red Cross. Two high schools -- Suffield Academy in Suffield, Ct., and Louisville Collegiate School in Louisville, Ky. -- have agreed to sell the wristbands at their graduations, Rudelson said.
Although the organizations would like to raise as much money as possible, the exact amount is less important than the message Dartmouth students promote, Rudelson said.
"We have the longest university-to-university program in America [for sending students to Chinese universities] -- that's amazing," Rudelson said. "It's incredibly important for us, Dartmouth, to do something very symbolic that we sympathize and understand that something is going on in China."
