SHOUT’s relief efforts echo across campus

Though Middlebury students are known to joke about living in a bubble, the earthquake that devastated Haiti in January was a catastrophic wake-up call. The quake, which registered at 7.0 on the Richter scale and led to the deaths of 230,000 (and the displacement of countless more) by February, clearly called for and received an immediate response.

What many do not realize is that it also calls for long-term action. According to Daniel Khan ’11, “One of the biggest problems now is a lack of interest.” That, he said, is a “tragedy” in itself.

“As with a lot of these natural disasters, there’s a huge response right away when the media’s all over it, then it sort of trickles off,” said Jessie Ortwein ’10.

Middlebury’s contributions to the “huge response” were substantial, beginning with groups of students collecting donations outside of dining halls. However, some saw the lack of organization as an impediment to further efforts.

“A lot of civic-minded students were trying to raise money, but it wasn’t coordinated at all,” said Khan, vice president of the Pan-Caribbean Student Organization (PCSO). He saw it as “only natural that [PCSO members] try to head up the initiative.”

Thus, Students for Haiti Outreach United Together (SHOUT)was born. Khan and Karl Krussell ’11 began by e-mailing friends and other potentially interested students, suggesting they meet on a regular basis.

“We talked about how it was important to keep fundraising and not let the momentum fade,” Hannah Judge ’11 said of the group’s early meetings. Judge has contributed to Haiti fundraising through both SHOUT and Middlebury’s GlobeMed chapter, which focuses on a variety of global health issues.

“We wanted to focus on raising awareness because it was in Haiti, to convey what the situation really meant and how long-lasting the implications really are for the country,” she said.

With the help of the Alliance for Civic Engagement (ACE) office, SHOUT began coordinating with international aid organizations and planning events. To begin raising awareness, students and professors, including resident Caribbean scholar Associate Professor of History Darien Davis, took part in a panel discussion in late January. In February, SHOUT partnered with the Entrepreneurs Foundation, who pledged to match all donations made at collection tables or online for a full week. This past weekend, five a cappella groups (four from the College and one from Middlebury Union High School) performed at the Memorial Baptist Church, suggesting a donation of $5 per person toward Haiti reflief.

After extensive research, SHOUT members decided to work with Partners in Health (PIH), a nonprofit organization that has been working in Haiti for over two decades.

“They do a really good job of working with the local infrastructure and government, and they focus on sustainable projects,” said Judge. The group also donates to Yéle Haiti, another non-profit started by Grammy-winning musician and Haiti native Wyclef Jean.

“It’s a grassroots organization entirely run by the Haitian population,” said Khan. “We wanted to work with both PIH and Yéle Haiti so it’s not just foreign workers pouring in.”

Meanwhile, other student organizations use SHOUT and Middlebury’s PIH account as a home base. PCSO, for example, contributed its gift fund to the pool. Alianza Latinoamericana y Caribeña fundraised independently but also transferred the proceeds to the collective fund. GlobeMed, though heavily focused on Uganda in its projects, has recently shifted focus to Haiti. Co-president Ben Zorach ‘10 worked with test-prep company Kaplan, urging them to auction off one of their courses to benefit the cause. Kaplan obliged, donating twice the winning bid to PIH. GlobeMed also helped with a Grille delivery fundraiser earlier this month.

Other students, such as Ortwein, decided to act on their own. After coming back from February break with an idea, she gathered a group of friends to assist in her first fundraising endeavor. With the help of donations from local businesses, American Flatbread was able to host (and staff, free of charge) her fundraiser featuring hors d’oeuvres, an open bar, a raffle, a silent auction and live music.

Ortwein also chose to donate to PIH without knowing that SHOUT had done the same, further underscoring its merits.

The involvement of multiple student groups and “random well-wishers,” as Judge put it, encourages all students to participate in fundraising efforts. “It wasn’t just one group that automatically stepped up,” she said.

Khan is optimistic that if properly executed, foreign aid could help to raise Haiti’s standards of living to higher than they were before the earthquake.

“This is a clean slate for them,” said Khan. “Of course, it was a terrible cost, but now they’re able to rebuild and restructure the government.” For the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, where 80 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, this could be a welcome glimmer of silver lining.

“It’s really cool that several months later, we’re still showing commitment to the cause,” said Ortwein. “There’s still such a need for volunteers, and financially, I think it’s important that people still keep at it.”

Khan explained that although the initial influx of manpower and funding was remarkable, the country is approaching a new stage of need. Houses built immediately after the earthquake were meant to last just one to two years until permanent housing could be constructed, leaving hundreds of thousands of people in buildings “just begging to fall,” especially with the onset of the rainy season.

“They need money just as much now for intermediary projects as they did immediately,” he said. For this reason, students have not donated all of their funds, hoping to stagger their support over a more logical time span.

Plans for next year are already brewing, as SHOUT is lining up guest speakers for the fall. Mike Kiernan, a local ER trauma surgeon, plans to give a presentation on the week he spent in Haiti earlier this year. Students can also expect to hear from Brian Concannon ’85, Middlebury alum and director of the U.S.-based Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti.

Additionally, graduating seniors can feel confident that their plans and ideas will not fall by the wayside after their departure.
“Faculty have expressed interest in making sure this continues after members graduate, even if SHOUT disbands, since it was sort of formed ad hoc,” Khan said.

Judge encourages students to look at SHOUT’s Facebook fan page for updates on coming events, as well as Middlebury’s PIH page at http://act.pih.org.org/page/group/Mid-MiddleburyCollege, where they can track the amount raised to date and donate online. The current figure, not including the amounts raised by the Grille delivery or the American Flatbread event, is just shy of $6,000. “It’s so important to continue the efforts and not just write it off, like, ‘Okay, that was in January. It’s over. What’s next?’” said Judge.