NU Stands with Pakistan set out to collect a dollar from every undergraduate on campus Monday as part of a two-week collection drive to raise funds for flood victims.
One dollar from each of the 8,536 undergraduates at Northwestern could feed 34,144 Pakistanis displaced by this summer’s massive floods in the south of the country, said Sahil Mehta, one of the organization’s five founders. The student group hopes to raise the $8,356 by Oct. 8, the McCormick junior said.
“One dollar could feed a family of four in Pakistan, whereas one dollar at the Norris convenience store could buy you very little food,” he said.
One of the collection booths is set up on the ground floor of Norris University Center and another outside Scott Hall.
Flooding triggered by annual monsoon rains has destroyed crops and homes across Pakistan, killing at least 2,000 and displacing millions in the last two months. According to the United Nations, it is the worst natural disaster in recent history, affecting more people than the 2004 tsunami in southeast Asia and the earthquakes in Haiti combined.
NU Stands with Pakistan began with five friends who thought there wasn’t enough being done for the cause, said one of the founders, Emerson Gordon-Marvin. The students began outreach four weeks ago, and their Facebook group now has 400 members, the Weinberg junior said.
“Basically we saw a need that no one was addressing, and we had the infrastructure to do it,” Gordon-Marvin said. “I don’t think people fundamentally understand how bad the crisis is. People don’t know and they don’t care because they don’t see it as our part of the world.”
Funds raised for Haiti outnumber those raised for Pakistan 100-to-1, largely because people see Pakistan as a failed state “unworthy of donation,” he said.
That’s why another goal of the group and the collection drive is to improve understanding of the recent tragedy as well as understanding of the country itself.
“Awareness in this situation is very important because this tragedy has come at a very interesting time in U.S. history, where we have heightened amounts of Islamophobia,” Mehta said. “But a lot of people have stopped at our table and said, ‘I don’t know what the situation is in Pakistan, tell me more.’ And they feel compelled to donate as soon as we tell them what’s going on.”
Weinberg sophomore Kaitlin Svabek was one of those students.
“I donated today because, previously, I didn’t understand what it was for,” she said. “Once I realized what the cause was, I thought it was a great thing to be contributing to.”
The money raised within the next two weeks will go to Pakistani victims through Oxfam International, a charity relief organization known for reaching out to far-flung areas such as Pakistan, said Weinberg senior and another one of the founders, Omar Khalid.
NU Stands with Pakistan has received substantial support from all over campus, Khalid said. His immediate family lives in Karachi, a large city that was not directly affected by the floods.
“We’ve reached out to a number of student organizations, performance groups, every residence hall and college,” he said. “Everyone is doing what they can to support us.”
Though many of its supporters are Pakistani, the cause is something the entire campus should be concerned with, said Medill senior Noreen Nasir, who was interning in Pakistan when the floods occurred. Nasir was in Lahore, which was not directly affected by the dangerous floods, but she observed some flooding in the streets from the monsoon rains.
“It is something that hits home for some of us, but it’s a Northwestern issue,” she said.
Mehta said the issue is “about saying we’re going to take initiative to stand forward and be the first reactors to something when it happens.”
The donation booths will be open until 3 p.m. daily.
