Over 300 members of the Dartmouth community gathered on Sunday night in a united response to the earthquake that struck Haiti on Jan. 12, devastating much of the country and its capital city, Port-au-Prince. As of Monday evening, Dartmouth students had raised over $32,000 for Haiti relief, more than students at any other university nationwide, according to campus organizers.
Students at Dartmouth for Haiti Relief, a group spearheaded by Student Body President Frances Vernon '10, Maura Cass '10 and Alexandra Schindler '10, has planned a series of Haiti-based fundraisers, awareness fairs and Upper Valley outreach events for the next month.
"Since the earthquake struck Haiti, the three of us have been getting together with countless individuals, groups and community members to get this effort mobilized," Vernon said at the Sunday meeting. "We've been talking to colleges and institutions of higher education across the nation. We are the most mobilized college in the country."
More than $27,000 of the funds raised by the Dartmouth community has been donated through the web site of Partners In Health, a nonprofit global-health organization co-founded by College President Jim Yong Kim. Face AIDS, which includes donations from Stanford University, has raised the second most of the participating schools and groups at $19,600 and Washington University in St. Louis has raised the third most at $1,000, according to PIH's web site.
SDHR is organizing a dinner and silent auction fundraiser called Uplift Haiti on Saturday and a benefit concert with Dartmouth and other performing groups for Jan. 30. All proceeds will benefit PIH.
"We've got to do this right, and we've got to do this quickly," said Kim, who spoke to the assembled crowd by phone from Boston.
Kim also challenged everyone in the Dartmouth community to help lead the movement for political, structural and economic change in Haiti.
"Let's educate ourselves and help lead the charge so we can help people in all of the world and show that the Dartmouth community cares about the rest of world," Kim said. "We can bring our intellect and hearts to a part of the world neglected for a very long time."
Biology professor Lee Witters encouraged those in attendance to think of the relief effort in the long term as well as the short term.
"Where will we be in two months? Four months? Six months?" Witters asked. "Are we willing to make an enduring commitment?"
Vernon told The Dartmouth on Monday that she has spoken with representatives from Stanford and Northwestern University who were amazed at the speed and size of the Dartmouth student response to the disaster. She said that Dartmouth students are demonstrating to the nation that they can match Kim's passion for global leadership and have even surprised College administrators with the effort.
"This is such a testament to the strength of the community and the caliber of our students," Vernon said. "It's so incredibly amazing to look at how quickly everyone mobilized."
Greek organizations have also begun competing to see which can raise the most money.
As part of Dartmouth's initiative to help Haiti, a team of surgeons, physicians and nurses from Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center traveled to PIH's base in Haiti Saturday morning, bringing hundreds of pounds of medical supplies with them.
A second DHMC team has been scheduled to leave for Haiti Tuesday morning.
Rajan Gupta, a member of the first team and the director of the trauma ward at DHMC, said the mission is "simply helping the people of Haiti."
PIH has pledged to fund the DHMC mission fully and to allow the use of Zanmi Lasante Sociomedical Complex, one of PIH's centers, located in Cange, Haiti., Kim said at a meeting with the DHMC team on Friday. The complex did not suffer any damage from the earthquake because of "a focus on construction with great care," he said.
"Many [physicians from ZL] have gone into the city to find family members and are now running medical care out of their homes," Kim said, also noting that the DHMC team will be able to immediately utilize now-vacant operating suites.
Kim and team members said they faced difficult choices about how many medical staffers they could send, as increasing the team's size takes away cargo space for medical supplies. Only nine seats on the Saturday plane were available for the group, which includes nurses and orthopedic, plastic and anesthetic surgeons.
The DHMC team will only operate in secure areas of the country. National media attention has focused on the violence in Port-Au-Prince, with reports of looters and armed robbers roaming freely.
PIH's facility in Cange, a rural area, will serve as the team's base of operations. The biggest security risks exist in the cities, Kim said.
The First Lady of the Dominican Republic, Margarita Cedeo de Fernndez, pledged to move the DHMC team from the Dominican Republic to Haiti safely, Kim said. The Clinton Foundation, which Kim said has helped PIH in the past, may also offer security assistance.
