UNITED STATES: Help for Haiti

Global Citizen Corps Leader, Dina Y. was quick to act when she found out about the devastation in Haiti. Two days after the quake, she called an emergency meeting with fellow students at school to brainstorm ideas. They quickly came up with a simple fundraising idea, a dollar a student = a huge impact. Dina spoke at spirit assembly on Friday to get the word out.

Dina spoke to her 1,400 fellow high school students at the assembly, asking them each to donate one dollar to Mercy Corps to support relief efforts in Haiti. She explained how $1 might not seem like much, but if every student donated, it would be huge. To collect funds, students held boxes that said "Help for Haiti" at the assembly and at the doorways to the gymnasium after her speech. Students began carrying these boxes with them to their classrooms, and they set up a donation table at lunch time. On the first day, they were able to collect $325.. The next week they used the same routine of classroom collections and coined their lunchtime donation site "Lunch Change for Haiti".

One week after their initial announcement at the assembly, almost every student had donated a dollar – they had raised over $1,000.

Dina is still working on collecting funds for Haiti and is planning an awareness project for World Water Day on March 22nd. Her fundraising work for Haiti caught national attention, and she is featured in a New York Times article about the success of small group fundraising.