In early July, severe monsoon rains began a series of floods in Pakistan, leaving the nation in need of immediate assistance.
“Two-thirds of Pakistan is under water,” Amanda Mendez said. Mendez is a representative of Grassroots Campaigns, an organization that has recently begun asking for donations from patrons on Saint Louis University’s campus to help provide flood relief in Pakistan.
Mendez said that the flooding in Pakistan has received little attention compared to other similar disasters.
“Twenty-one million people have been affected, out of the country’s population of 126 million people,” Mendez said.
Mendez said that Pakistan’s infrastructure has disappeared with the destruction of roads and bridges, causing isolated pockets of victimized people. She said that the situation is so desperate that flood relief organizations are reportedly using mules to transport supplies to stranded flood victims.
In response to the disaster, Student Government Association created a task force to educate SLU students about the flood and to initiate flood-relief fundraising efforts through extensive campaigning and promotion.
“What I hope to gain from this experience, and what I hope that SGA would gain from this, is the understanding that we, as a governmental body, should actively commit ourselves to being a community for others,” Oscar Vazquez, SGA vice president of Diversity and Social Justice, said. “We are called to be an inclusive body, recognizing the privileges and hardships of ourselves and of others.”
Vazquez said that after hearing a Pakistani member of the SLU community discuss the impact the flood has had on his home country, SGA felt compelled to become involved with relief efforts through a task force.
“[SGA] understood the challenge that this effort would take, but it was something that I thought necessary to instill a notion of social justice,” Vazquez said. “We, as a Jesuit university, pride ourselves in our commitments to social justice, and it is through such initiatives that we can ultimately achieve that sense of being an ally for others.
SGA’s task force is seeking to collaborate with groups on and off campus, specifically the NAACP and the Residence Life staff of Marguerite Hall and Pruellage Hall to raise money for donations.
The proceeds from both of these fund raisers will be sent to a non-profit organization known as the Sindhi Association of North America (SANA), an organization Vazquez said SGA trusts.
Despite the distance, many Americans with family in Pakistan, including Arif Gilani, a student at Stanford University who has family living in the Karachi, shared the country’s pain, as well as their disdain of the mainstream media’s abandonment of the country.
However, Gilani said that his family has not been affected by the flood.
“After this disaster swept Pakistan, attention came from media sources for the preliminary days, but soon, as a flood seems rather boring compared to earthquakes and tsunamis, the media left the Pakistan issue while thousands of Pakistanis still suffer,” Gilani said.
Despite the difficulty of sending aid to affected Pakistanis, aid groups such as the Red Cross have attempted to assist the country.
“However, many efforts have not made an impact as groups are not collaborating enough,” Gilani said.
Vazquez said he hopes that students will become involved with relief efforts to aid those in Pakistan and encourages students to participate and gain cultural perspective.
“If there is anything that I could ask of the student body this year, it is to take an opportunity to challenge their world views and place themselves in an environment that is so foreign to anything that they have experienced outside of the classroom,” Vazquez said. “It is important that there be commitment to understand why they feel uncomfortable and to explore ways in which they can become more culturally competent.”