| IUJ Students’ Earthquake Relief for Haiti |
Public Relations
Feb. 4, 2010 |
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IUJ’s Global Concerns Forum (GCF), a student group aiming to provide a forum for the IUJ community to share views on current global issues, launched an “IUJ Relief Effort for Haiti” on January 23 and invited all IUJ students, faculty and staff to contribute to the fund. The GCF called for 300 yen per person, which barely pays for a light meal in Japan but can mean a meal for a family of six, a box of medicine that could save the life of a child, and a symbol of HOPE for Haiti to recover. The amount collected added up to 101,784 yen, which will be donated to the Japan Red Cross into a fund specifically being directed to aid Haiti.
To cap the fund-raising, the GCF and the IUJ Photography Club jointly hosted a “Special Candlelight Ceremony to Commemorate the Victims of the Haiti Earthquake” on Saturday, January 30. With help from more than 120 students from more than 20 countries, they built small igloo-type structures using snowballs, in which they placed candles on the snowfield near a student dormitory. The 150 snow structures were laid out to spell out “HAITI”. Students worked on them from 2:00 to 4:45 pm, and lit all the candles just before it got dark.
All participants were lined up in front of the candles and took a moment of silence to remember the victims of the recent earthquake in Haiti. Then the IUJ Photography Club members took pictures of the candles in the snow. Photo flashes were observed all over the site. By the time it got completely dark, students gathered around the snow candles hand in hand and chanted, “Hope for Haiti!”
Mr. Michael Frank A. Alar from the Philippines, a GCF member who was in charge of organizing the event, said, “We at the GCF always think about how we can make other students aware of global issues. We organized this event in memory of the Haiti victims in a way that would also be fun for our students. They generally like to play in the snow but we wanted them to have fun while also being part of a worthy cause.” One Chinese student, Ms. Lu Lu, shared her thoughts on this event, “There were eight members of the Chinese Peacekeeping Police who lost their lives in the Haiti Earthquake, and three of them were from Yunnan Province where I am from. When their bodies came back home, all the citizens in my hometown welcomed them. I could not be there and wanted to pay tribute to them at this candle ceremony.”
* Click here to view a 10-minute video of the candle light ceremony created by Ms. Sopheap Chak from Cambodia. |
