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A SUNY Fredonia graduate who is president of a Miami-based company doing business in Haiti has sought the help of SUNY Fredonia students in collecting toys, school supplies, and hygiene products for Haitian families. Known around the world as “Project Shoebox,” the aid program is underway now in the Williams Center.
Lance Durban, a graduate of the Class of 1970 (economics), will pay for the donations to be shipped to Haiti. There, they will be distributed by a committee of his Haitian employees to families in need. His firm, Manutech, employs 450 Haiti citizens to manufacture magnetic components for the electronics industry. While Manutech’s employees are more fortunate, he knows they are surrounded by friends, family and neighbors in much more desperate straits.
“There is no starvation here, mind you,” Mr. Durban said. “But the extreme poverty of many means only the essentials are covered.” Most people are clothed and sheltered, he noted, but everything is substandard. The situation is aggravated due to the fact that Haiti doesn’t have enough public schools to educate its poorer children. Of course, the private schools are a luxury reserved for the minority. “Toys and seasonal gifts are things that poor families can't even imagine,” Mr. Durban said. “
Mr. Durban and SUNY Fredonia officials are also discussing ways to establish educational opportunities at Fredonia for Haitian students, or international experiences in Haiti for Fredonia students. Working with him on these efforts are the President's Office and the Fredonia College Foundation.
Several SUNY Fredonia student groups have thrown their resources into “Project Shoebox,” Joyce Harvard Smith, coordinator of Volunteer and Community Services, said. Collecting donated goods and packing them into shoeboxes are members of Students taking an Active Roles in Service (S.T.A.R.S, formerly the Social Work Club), Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, Student Association, and residents of Disney Hall.
Dunkirk’s TJ Maxx is donating the shoeboxes.
Continuing through the end of March, “Project Shoebox” will accept items in three different categories: toys, school supplies and toiletries. Tables will be set up and staffed from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Thursday, March 9 and Friday, March 10 in the Williams Center. After that, call 716-673-3690 to find out where donations can be made.
Suggested gifts include small cars, balls, dolls, stuffed animals, plastic kazoos, yo-yos and Slinkys, pens, pencils and sharpeners, crayons, coloring books, paper or writing pads and solar calculators, toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap, combs, washcloths and hand towels, or hard candy, lollipops, mints, gum, sunglasses, flashlights with extra batteries, socks, hair clips and t-shirts.
“Project Shoebox” originated with the U.S. based “Kids for the Kingdom” and Germany’s CHILD-International. Over 20,000 shoeboxes have been filled with goods and donated in the last five years to families in Russia, Zambia, Nicaragua, Cambodia, Guatemala, Romania, Philippines and India.
Mr. Durban, who finished his M.B.A. at the University of Chicago after graduating from Fredonia, worked in Europe and the Middle East prior to going to Haiti as a U.N. advisor in 1979. He was named head of Manutech in the early 1980s. He likes to remind people that Haiti was the second independent country in the Western Hemisphere, after the U.S. "Everyone knows it is the poorest country in this hemisphere, but many don't realize that it is the only country in world history founded by black slaves. In 1804 they defeated French planters in a war of independance probably bloodier than our own."
