Students donated a portion of their meal costs on Tuesday evening to the Sharewood Project, a grassroots, Tufts-affiliated medical clinic, during the Cause Dinner hosted by Dining Services.
The Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate and Dining Services hold the Cause Dinner on one evening every semester as a way to support undergraduates' charitable initiatives.
The Sharewood Project, a free medical care organization in Malden, Mass. serving a large population of mostly uninsured patients, beat out other organizations to become the beneficiary of this semester's dinner.
The project has strong ties to Tufts, started by students from Tufts University School of Medicine (TUSM) in 1999. The clinic is now predominantly managed by Tufts' medical students along with a growing constituency of undergraduate volunteers.
By the end of Tuesday night, Tim Judson, president of the undergraduate executive board for the Sharewood Project, estimated that approximately 575 students signed on to donate at the Cause Dinner, meaning a $1,293 total donation, according to Judson's initial calculation.
"This is a great opportunity for undergraduates to make a big impact on the clinic," said Judson, a senior.
The Cause Dinner is a Tufts tradition that Dining Services has held for nearly 30 years, according to Director of Dining Services Patti Klos. Each semester, several organizations affiliated with Tufts apply to receive money from the dinner, and the TCU Senate Services Committee selects one.
"The Sharewood Project was chosen because it allows Tufts students to be directly involved in helping their neighbors," TCU Senator Sam Wallis, co-chair of the Services Committee, said in an e-mail. He added that the project's work is particularly important "at a time when people are losing their jobs and, with those jobs, their healthcare."
Dining Services extracted $2.25 from the dinner cost of each student who chose to participate, directing that money to the organization, according to Klos. This figure represents the estimated cost of the actual food students eat during dinner, Klos said.
Wallis, a junior, believes the Cause Dinner presents Tufts students with a perfect chance to show tangible support for a cause.
"This is an opportunity to make a message on behalf of the student body on what we support and what we as a student body find to be important," he said.
Every Tuesday night, the Sharewood clinic is open to patients at the First Church of Malden, according to co-chair of the fundraising committee, Kevin Hoang, a sophomore.
A group of Tufts undergraduates works at the front desk and triages general patients who come seeking medical care, while students from the medical school, as well as other volunteer physicians, diagnose and treat the patients.
Junior Laura Sloan is a member of the undergraduate executive board for the Sharewood Project. "The Sharewood Project ... provides a clinic to people who normally wouldn't have health services," she said.
Judson said that the board applied to be considered for the Cause Dinner as a way to both raise funds and draw more students to the project.
In addition to the weekly visits to the clinic, Sloan said there are other ways undergraduates are getting involved in the cause, including through individual committees for publicity, public health and fundraising.
Anyone can sign up to volunteer during the spring semester at a date to be determined, Sloan said.
In addition to all the work Tufts students already do with the organization, the Cause Dinner marked the first major fundraising event where undergraduates could financially support Sharewood, Hoang said.
The project did not have precise expectations as to the amount of money it would raise at the dinner, but students expressed gratitude to both Dining Services and the Senate for a successful night.
Patti Klos was pleased that Dining Services could support student efforts in the community.
"The tradition of giving and being a good citizen is a long one at Tufts," she said. "[The Cause Dinner] is wonderful in that it's another way that students are thoughtful and want to make a difference."
