In recognition of the growing problems facing Africa today, Hopkins students in the Student Movement for International Relief (SMIR) have launched a $10 relief campaign to improve education in South Africa.
The $10 relief campaign, organized by SMIR President Saul Garlick, allows students to give ten dollars to help fund the development of several schools in rural South Africa.
"The campaign has already raised $12,000, but has another $23,000," Garlick said. SMIR has been raising money for the last three years and has already contributed funds toward the building of three classrooms in a school.
"We would also like to build a library," Garlick said, and then noted that the schools have very poor furniture. "For example, children sit on cinder blocks and have no choice."
The basis of the $10 relief campaign is to appeal to Hopkins students in hopes that they will donate. Each SMIR member has a package and they directly appeal to peers and friends to contribute $10 each.
For donating money, donors receive a bracelet as a memento. SMIR members hope to get 1,000 students to give$10. SMIR has raised $500 within the last week.
To raise awareness and money, SMIR has cosponsored events on campus, including a club night at the beginning of the year.
They hope to bring a former ambassador for Sudan from the United Nations to give a talk about the problems facing Africans related to illness and education.
According to Garlick, one of the main motives for the project was the dire need for improved educational programs in the rural South African school, where several children suffer from a poor curriculum.
He also commented on the major problems related to orphaned, neglected and abandoned children.
"These kids need a place to go and be after school. Kids are basically raising themselves," Garlick said.
Through the $10 relief campaign, SMIR hopes to fund programs that will teach these children basic skills and proper information about AIDS prevention and health issues.
The campaign has received help from companies such as the Busselshouk Trust Organization to build schools. SMIR also worked with Johns Hopkins African Student Association to raise money on campus.
The Lilly Foundation, a pharmaceutical company, will also eventually send premed students to work in South African clinics.
Garlick and other SMIR members are planning to visit the school in Africa next summer, two years after their first visit when the school was just constructed.
Garlic encouraged interested students to donate any money they could to a SMIR member. "People can easily give online," Garlic stressed
"The one thing I'd like to stress is that this $10 campaign is essentially our way of fundraising our general campaign of fighting AIDS through education because South Africa has the highest rate of AIDS in the world," Garlick added.
SMIR will continue accepting donations at the Web site http://www.studentmovementusa.org and through members on campus.
