Saint Leo Community Holds Haitian Support Efforts

January 18, 2010

The Saint Leo University community continues to seek ways to support the people of Haiti in prayer and deed following the tragic earthquake there January 12.

Father Stephan Brown, assistant to the president for University Ministry, in writing to SLU employees, reflected on the depth of our collective grief over those lost in Haiti. He called for a spiritual response in character with the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whose birthday we honor on January 18.

“We have a responsibility to follow the example of Dr. King and to seek the well-being of humanity,” Brown wrote to university employees. “To see in the face of each Haitian our sisters’ and brothers’ eyes. Their tears become our tears. Their pain becomes our pain. Their task to rebuild becomes ours as well.”

Additionally, the Haitian Education Project Inc., a small non-profit run from the
University Ministry Office by SLU alumni Laude Saint-Preux, has started raising money for relief efforts. HEP has worked over the years mainly on enhancing educational opportunities at an orphanage’s school. Given the current destruction, Saint-Preux said his current goal is to raise cash for items such as multiple-person tents, sleeping bags, and bedding. “Basically, the situation there is still dire,” he said, as so many homes have been destroyed. 

The Caribbean Student Association, a club on the main campus, convened late Friday for its first meeting of the semester and agreed to help raise cash for HEP efforts. Club volunteers will collect donations outside the dining hall during meal hours this week, beginning Tuesday.
 
More information on HEP is located at its website, www.haitianeducationproject.net.

Links to websites of major disaster-relief organizations helping in Haiti can be found here: http://www.networkforgood.org/.