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Josye Davit, 11, helps rebuild his family's home alongside members of the UMW Campus Christian Community. |
RELATED: Helping Honduras.
By RUSTY DENNEN
Students Helping Honduras is $20,000 closer to its goal of raising $100,000 to benefit a poor village in Central America.
The organization, founded at the University of Mary Washington, with chapters at the College of William & Mary, the University of Virginia and Virginia Tech, has won a new philanthropic contest sponsored by Dodge. The money is a boost for SHH, which plans to hold a walkathon fundraiser next month at UMW.
The automaker offered to pitch in $20,000 to the first charitable group that could get 20,000 online votes from students supporting the project.
It's called the GrabLife GiveLife. The contest ties into Dodge's marketing slogan, "Grab Life by the Horns."
Students Helping Honduras was named winner Thursday on the contest Web site.
Only college students were eligible to vote.
SHH was far and away the biggest vote-getter among the contestants, with 20,038 votes.
A distant second, with 13,589 votes was Indiana University's "Dance Marathon: Annual Summer Golf Outing" to benefit a children's hospital in Indianapolis.
More than two dozen colleges and universities were vying for the top prize, including the "Bike to Uganda" fundraiser at the University of Virginia. That garnered 509 votes.
Second and third-place finishers will receive $5,000 and $2,500 respectively.
GrabLife GiveLife was created last year during a national student business gathering by Dodge's parent company, DaimlerChrysler.
SHH, founded by UMW senior Shin Fujiyama, is holding the Walkathon for Hope on April 21 to raise $100,000 to build permanent homes for residents in Siete de Abril, a squatter village in El Progreso, Honduras.
Philanthropist Doris Buffett pledged to match that amount from her Sunshine Lady Foundation if the students can reach the $100,000 threshold.
Including the Dodge contribution, SHH has raised about $50,000 so far.
Students here found out about the GrabLife GiveLife contest only three weeks ago.
"There was a lot of trash talking, with the bigger schools like Indiana, Tennessee and Dartmouth saying stuff like we're too small of a school to compete with them," Fujiyama said. "We handed out thousands of fliers, made announcements in classes and told all of our friends."
Students canvassed every dorm and set up banks of laptops for voting.
Jennifer Sicard of Sicard & Co., which put on the contest for Dodge, said yesterday that the win for UMW was "indeed a great accomplishment for a relatively small school."
In January, The Free Lance-Star published a four-part series of stories on efforts to aid Siete de Abril. Fujiyama, his sister, Cosmo, a senior at William & Mary, and the UMW Campus Christian Community have led the initiative.
Seventy-two families lead Spartan lives in tin-roof shacks with no electricity and parasite-infested water. Most are on the bottom rung of Honduran society. They claimed the land after they were displaced by Hurricane Mitch in 1999.
Thanks to the Fujiyamas, and others, lives in the village have been improving. A small school was built last year, and many of the shacks were repaired in January by volunteers and donations from the Fredericksburg area.
The goal now, Shin Fujiyama says, is to raise enough money to build simple, block houses for each of the residents.
That's estimated to cost around $200,000.
Rusty Dennen: 540/374-5431| UMW FUNDRAISER IS FOR HONDURAS
For more information about leading a team or raising money for the Walkathon for Hope, contact the Web site, studentshelpinghonduras.org
To make a tax-deductible contribution, write a check to CCC Village Fund and mail it to Campus Christian Community, 1213 Dandridge St., Fredericksburg, Va., 22401. |
