IIT - Inventing the Future

It’s hard to believe that less than a year ago a team of us were driving through the streets of Port-Au-Prince, Haiti. The buildings were intact and the poverty, already devastating. It seems Nature is operating in a rather cruel way in order to give the poorest country in the Western hemisphere the attention it deserves. I still cannot wrap my mind around the gravity of the situation. It’s impossible to fathom the depletion of their already minimally available resources. People who are lucky to eat three meals a week, now have nothing. Children who thirsted after a drop of water, now have nothing. The nation of Haiti, which once had nothing, has been reduced to less than that.

Through the gloom and desolate situation, IIT students have risen above and beyond the call to action. As being part of EWB we immediately felt a strong connection and desire to help the victims in Haiti. We held a general body meeting last Tuesday that brought over 70 students. The meeting gathered members of the IIT community including students from various organizations and esteemed faculty in order to discuss points of action in providing immediate relief down there. Thus far, EWB-IIT has collected donations through our website, http://mypages.iit.edu/~haiti, and by collecting donations at our student center during meal times. We have collected over $3,000. Our upcoming events are; Kappa Phi Delta bake sale, Sigma Phi Epsilon soccer tournament and Strikeforce bowling tournament.

Our goal is to not only provide immediate relief, but to create projects to provide sustainable solutions in the areas in need of disaster relief in our various engineering as well as non-engineering departments. With the overwhelming response from the IIT community, I am confident we can help make a difference in Haiti.

-Dhara Shah, IIT President of Engineers Without Borders/Haiti Outreach