Members of the Student Union and National Collegiate Volunteers led a weeklong disaster relief campaign and raised just under $5,000 for victims of Hurricanes Gustav and Ike in Cuba, Haiti and along the southeastern American coast, according to Noah Kaplan '09, a member of the National Collegiate Volunteers, and Jamie Ansorge '09, Student Union director of communications.The money raised will be donated by the end of this week to the American Red Cross and to international relief funds

"Enough people expressed an interest" in donating their time and money to providing aid, Kaplan said. "People started saying we should do something."

According to Kaplan, the aid was given in monetary donations. The relief effort was initially going to be a food or clothing drive, but both the American Red Cross and Federal Emergency Management Agency Web sites discouraged people from sending goods to stricken areas.

"Sending food is not the most efficient way to help," Kaplan said. "It's expensive, and we can't know if it actually helps."

"We reached out to Noah Kaplan and National Collegiate Volunteers about sending students to affected areas but soon realized the quickest way to make a difference was with a donation drive," Ansorge said.

"We could have found a grassroots organization without overhead," Kaplan said. This would have involved days of research, however, which would have delayed the initiative that took form overnight. "We came up with this idea early [last] week," said Kaplan. "This idea, and acting on it, has happened in a short space of time."

Ansorge called the American Red Cross of Massachusetts Bay. "By that time, Tropical Storm Hanna was pouring rain on Brandeis, and Hurricane Ike was on its way. That's when we decided to make it a larger hurricane elief project," Ansorge said.

"By the end of the weekend, we expect to have raised around $5,000, which would exceed the University's response to [Hurricane] Katrina," said Ansorge.

The Student Union and members of NCV tabled in the Shapiro Campus Center and Usdan Student Center, where students made donations from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. throughout the week. The $400 raised at these tables will be sent domestically, Kaplan said.

Pachanga, the biannual dance hosted by the International Club, regularly donates the proceeds of ticket sales to different charities. The Student Union approached the International Club to form a fundraising partnership, Kaplan said. Ansorge explained, "The International Club has a history of contributing Pachanga proceeds to philanthropic efforts."

"National Collegiate Volunteers wanted to do some tabling for hurricane relief, [so] Pachanga was the perfect opportunity," said Danielle Myers '12, a member of NCV.

According to Myers, students were asked to donate to the relief effort when they bought their Pachanga tickets. She estimated that 75 percent of students at Pachanga donated to the relief effort. "I thought it was really important to donate," said Alena Schanke-Mahl '11, a student who donated money when she purchased her ticket. "The best I could do was put my money into a good cause," she said. "People [made] small donations of $1 or $2, but [it added] up," she said. Over $4,000 raised through the ticket sales will also be donated.

In an e-mail to the Justice, Ansorge wrote, "It is my understanding that almost (if not) all of the Pachanga ticket proceeds will be donated, since the I-Club was able to cover all of the party costs from their existing funds. Because of our partnership with [the] I-Club in selling tickets, we've tentatively agreed to split the proceeds 50-50 between the Red Cross national and international relief funds respectively. We plan to hand over at least a $5,000 check to the Red Cross by the end of the week."

The money that was raised at Pachanga "will go to Haiti and Cuba, keeping with the international theme," Kaplan said.

If the campaign continues into next week in response to Hurricane Ike, it is expected that even more funds will be raised, Ansorge said.

Raising money to send to afflicted areas is incredibly helpful, said Ansorge. "Every dollar will make a big difference to an agency [that] has successfully dealt with a very active disaster season," he said.