Attend a 'bash,' support relief efforts
March 10"Where else are you gonna go? It's Friday night and it's cold!" This is the most practical reason Tufts senior and Oxfam Caf?© Purchasing Manager, Laura Gutierrez, can think of for attending Oxfam's Tsunami Relief Bash today. But by no means is that the only reason. In the spirit of the broader Oxfam mantra of "Good Food, Good Cause," the hippie chic Miller Hall eatery will host an all-day (and night) blow-out, beginning at 11:00 a.m. this morning, to fundraise for relief efforts in the Southeast Asian countries devastated by December's tsunami. As Tufts' only all-vegetarian dining facility, Oxfam will feature not only a menu of the finest meatless cuisine on campus, but two bake sales sponsored by Alpha Omega Phi and the International Club as well as dozens of raffle prizes including round-trip tickets for two to Costa Rica, two I-Pod Minis, restaurant gift certificates and bookstore gear. Of course, no good coffee house event is complete without its scruffy local music legends, and the Bash is no different. At press time, co-directors Oxfam Site Manager Anna Feldman ('08) and Pangea member Gisela Alouhan ('05) had booked nearly 10 different gigs from amongst Tufts' best and brightest independent artists to play at Oxfam beginning at 5:00 p.m. Acts include, but are not limited to experimental Latino quartet Moksha, solo acoustic rocker Jahn Sood and funkadelic up-and-comers, Timelaps. Recently, major international organizations have declared that they have received a surplus of material donations like clothing and blankets. Feldman worries that this, in turn, has lulled students into a false belief that hard-hit countries like India and Thailand are well on their way to recovery. Feldman hopes this popular sentiment will not prevent students from seeing the clear necessity of further donations. "Being at a school like Tufts, we tend to live in a bubble," she said. "We're worried about midterms and spring break and stuff like that, but if you stop to think about it, these people have had their lives ripped away from them ... they are in despair." Alouah ran into her own share of problems as she began helping Anna co-plan the event. "I received a lot of criticism from students who argued that too much attention was being focused on the tsunami and that other poverty-struck areas were in terrible need of aid," Alouah said. While both co-directors said that this was a valid point, neither was prepared to give up on the tsunami victims. Instead, in response to these concerns, the Oxfam managerial staff and Pangea coordinating committee reorganized their donation plans, allowing for an eclectic allocation of funds that should satisfy every donator's values. From 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Oxfam will operate under regular conditions and send all of its profits to Oxfam America, the local branch of the hunger relief group Oxfam International. These proceeds will be put toward programs that teach impoverished residents in Third World countries to become agriculturally and economically self-reliant. From 5:00 p.m. on, however, donation funds will be directed toward Engineers Without Borders (EWB), a four-year-old, non-profit company that concentrates on installing necessary systems, like water and sewage, in developing areas. "We were eager to find an organization that would not simply provide food and supplies but actually promote long-term, sustainable redevelopment in the region," Alouah said. "After much research, we decided that EWB was our best option because of their commitment to helping small communities that are often overlooked by other relief agencies. In addition, EWB claims to include the community in the process of reconstruction in order to attend to their personal needs." This grassroots approach is not unlike that of Oxfam Caf?© itself, and Purchasing Manager for Oxfam Laura Gutierrez expresses a wish that the Tsunami Relief Bash might also raise awareness of and support for Oxfam's day-to-day relief endeavors. Gutierrez estimates that Oxfam is able to donate roughly 60 cents to Oxfam America for every dollar spent on beverages, and said that the ratio for food purchases is even higher. This turnover rate is due mostly to the practice of fair trade, which allows Gutierrez to purchase Caf?© stock at a fair price directly from farmers and producers themselves without the high transaction fees charged by middle men. In the end, fair trade translates to better wages for laborers and Caf?© prices that are much more conducive to a college student's budget. "What we're doing ... may not earn an enormous amount of money, but we're helping out a little," Feldman said. Oxfam is more about people pitching in to help their fellow men than a simple discussion of dollars and cents would indicate. "We're just doing what we can," Feldman added. see the correction for this article here
