Tsunami fundraising effort ends

The official efforts of Tech Tsunami Relief (TTR) come to a close tomorrow Saturday, Feb. 26, exactly two months after a tsunami devastated vast regions of south and southeast Asia and eastern Africa. With a death toll in the hundreds of thousands and over five million people left homeless, the tsunami created damage on an almost unimaginable scale.

While former Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton urged the private citizens of America into action, leaders at Tech raised their own challenge in the form of TTR, a challenge to the Tech community to do its part by raising $60,000 - three dollars per student, faculty and staff member on campus.

The initial January 26 deadline was extended after a fundraising challenge was issued by UGA to compete for which school could raise the most money. According to some of the organizers, however, the UGA challenge had little effect on the extension of TTR efforts. The fact that only $15,000 had been collected at the time played a more major role.

" We looked at the money and we weren ' t happy; we just felt like we could do more, " said Paul Pearlman, a Vice-Chair of TTR. " Our goal was to raise money to help people, not to beat UGA. "

Various groups had also been planning to hold fundraisers after that initial January deadline, and organizers felt that they should be included in the final count. In fact funds will continue to be accepted throughout the semester.

According to estimates from TTR organizers, the Tech community has contributed at least $25,000 towards Tsunami charities so far. " this is the minimum, there ' s still funds coming in that we aren ' t sure of, " said Tony Le, TTR organizer.

While TTR has not reached its $60,000 goal, organizers feel that the overall effort was still a success, and Tech efforts far surpassed those of neighboring schools.

" We beat UGA, who has 32,000 students, and Emory only set their goal at $5000, " Pearlman said. " What surprises me is that something of this magnitude isn ' t raising the kind of money that the 9/11 project raised . the magnitude of what happened was . orders of magnitude higher. "

According to him, the community response in terms of funds raised is only at about two thirds of the level raised for 9/11.

" Nine-eleven was so close to home, it was in the media for a while and that ' s why they were able to raise a big amount of money in such a quick amount of time, " said TTR Chair Tony Le. It ' d be nice to reach that goal . but this is $25,000 that we ' re giving that [the victims] didn ' t have before. "

Pearlman feels that TTR was " a pretty good accomplishment for this campus. "

" I ' ve done a lot on this campus, " he said, " but I feel like my biggest accomplishment on campus has been the tsunami relief, hands-down. "

" No one was really affected on campus . it was really far away, " said Amy Phuong, undergraduate student body president. " For what the context was, I think we did really well. "

Though February is the end of official TTR efforts, more fundraising events are still being planned as organizers hope to advance Tech ' s total contributions closer to their initial goal.

Among those efforts, SGA is working on procuring tsunami bracelets to sell. Similar to Lance Armstrong " livestrong " bracelets, these tsunami bracelets were created by students from Pepperdine University. The bracelets are blue, and have the word " hope " written in eight different languages. Pepperdine is selling the bracelets at no profit to themselves to schools around the country.

According to Phuong, if the project goes through, SGA expects to receive an order of roughly five hundred bracelets sometime in March.

According to the organizers, one of the most impressive outcomes of the tsunami relief efforts was the amount of organizations that got involved, as well as collaborative efforts between those organizations. Several organizations participated in manning collection tables and collection buckets, while FAB went door to door in FE and the Ambassadors lobbied alumni for funds. Nineteen organizations are listed on TTR ' s website for their involvement, while many more contributed.

Nothin ' but Treble, and Sympathetic Vibrations, two of the smaller organizations involved in TTR held, an a cappella concert at UTC this past Monday. Though admission was free, donations were accepted. " People were giving donations as they were coming in, " said Shannon Fatehi-Sedeh, a third-year Biomedical Engineering major and member of Nothin ' but Treble. " I think that people gave more than we normally charge. "

Fatehi-Sedeh is also President of the Pre-Dental society, a group that decided to hold its own a raffle fundraiser for the tsunami relief efforts. Among the prizes raffled off were lunch with P.J. Daniels, lunch with Ms. Georgia Tech and a free tooth whitening. " Everyone who won seemed really excited about winning, " said Fatehi-Sedeh. Surprisingly though, she said, " We made the most money off of the tooth bleaching.

According to Pearlman, it was organizational efforts such as these that really added up in the tsunami relief efforts.

While some groups have donated funds to their own charities, all funds sent in to TTR will be donated to AmeriCares. " The reason we chose them is because 100 percent of the donations are going to tsunami victims, meaning there are no administrative costs, " said Le. " We know that money donated to them can be specifically used for tsunami relief, unlike some other organizations where you don ' t know which effort the money will go to. "

A big check presentation will happen at the end of this semester during the Up with the White and Gold ceremony. TTR organizers are still seeking a corporate sponsor to help Tech move closer to its $60,000 goal.