UAlbany aids disaster-ridden nations

 It seems that 2010 is turning into the year of the earthquake. While the quakes in the Solomon Islands, California, Japan, Argentina and Taiwan have received scant media attention the 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Haiti on Jan. 12 and the 8.1 magnitude earthquake in Chile on Feb. 27 have elicited reactions worldwide.

   Those reactions have differed greatly, however: Chile has provoked a wellspring of charitable actions and donations, but even promises of relief from foreign government don’t crack the $10 million mark, whereas Haiti has seen over $500 million.

   The relief efforts (or lack thereof) echo the real need of each country, however.

   Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, and a lack of preparedness and poor building codes and enforcement led to a high death toll (over 200,000) and widespread destruction.

   Chile, with such disasters in the country’s recent history, was better prepared and saw less devastation and considerably smaller death tolls (approximately 1,000). Chile’s economy is also strong enough (in spite of the earthquake, growth is still expected to be about 8 percent this year, and a good credit rating and a low inflation rate of 1.5 percent means it will be easy to get loans) that the government there should be able to finance relief efforts without foreign donations.

   The response to Haiti here at the University of Albany has been substantial: after seven weeks of fundraising, the student body has donated $26,429 to UAlbany’s Haiti Relief Fund, with the University Auxiliary Services matching one-for-one to raise a total of $52,859 disbursed over three charities: The Clinton Bush Fund, Yéle Haiti and Partners in Health.

   On the second week of the campaign, as students returned to campus for the spring semester, $10,277 was donated. Other drives on campus have aimed at collecting tents and clothing for the impoverished Caribbean nation. Fundraising will officially continue through June, promising that efforts to collect aid for Haiti will continue. In contrast to this success and charitable spirit, nothing organized or widespread is being done at UAlbany to gather donations to Chile.

   It’s not a case of charity fatigue or oversight, though. As the Executive Director of the University Auxiliary Services J. Eric Smith explains, it’s because there isn’t a sizable or organized group of students with immediate ties to quake-struck Chile.

   There are nineteen Haitian nationals and approximately fifty students on campus with relatives in Haiti. It was these students for whom and because of whom the university pulled together; had concerned students not gone to the UAS looking for support, the charity drive may not have had such success.

   Despite the involvement of university “bureaucracy,” efforts to provide aid to disaster-struck areas, or any other charitable actions, start and end with the student body.