News

LCC Haiti Initiative: Inside a Beautiful Yet Unfortunate State

28 January 2010

Hundreds of thousands are dead, a million are left homeless, towns are ruined, and a nation is in despair. This is what news channels inform the rest of the world about the disastrous earthquake in Haiti and its outcomes. The world is not observing Haiti's tragedy passively - tons of humanitarian aid are being shipped to the island, and money is being donated to charities around the globe that support the rescue of Haitian people and the reconstruction of devastated towns. LCC International University takes its active part not only in helping to raise money for the people of Haiti, but also in educating its students and the rest of the community about the island that is beautiful yet very unfortunate.

Rob Wilson, a Business Administration faculty member at LCC and one of the organizers of the Haiti Initiative event series commented that over the past weeks LCC students, faculty and staff have all expressed an interest in more fully understanding the implications of this disaster on the country of Haiti and its people. They are asking questions such as what is our role as citizens of the world, how is God involved in such disasters or should we personally attempt to contribute in some meaningful way? These questions created a grassroots response that has resulted in what is being called a "Haitian Initiative" at LCC. The initiative is designed to help us understand more fully the impact of the recent earthquake on Haitian culture and lives, whether LCC as an institution should accept a role in the healing process, and how we might design a personal response to humanitarian issues in the world."

The LCC Haiti Initiative event series began on January 27th in Neufeld Hall with a candlelight vigil and videos showing Haiti's amazing nature, culture and people before the earthquake and its ruined state after the devastation. A traditional LCC Chapel on Wednesday, February 10th, will be also dedicated to Haiti as well as will the Community Dinner of February 17th. Between February 22nd and March 5th LCC's Student Business Organization will focus its activity on Haiti, too, producing and sharing traditional Haitian food and getting the community of the university to know this nation's culture. On April 1st, Rob Wilson and his spouse Carol, who is currently working as the Director of International Compliance at Viola, a cell phone company in Haiti, are going to discuss corporate social responsibility and current initiatives taken in Haiti by the corporation mentioned above.

Discussion will take place in Neufeld Hall and will be opened to all interested members of the LCC community. Finally, in April, LCC's President Dr. Kyle Usrey will close the Haiti Initiative event series in Kaminskienė Hall with a discussion about Mountains Beyond Mountains, a novel written by Tracy Kidder.

Money that will be raised by the LCC community during the next months will be donated to Lithuanian Red Cross, which is helping with Haiti's disaster relief effort.