Helping Haitians ‘One Peace at a Time’
Young Leader Alexandra-Jayeun Lee was recently involved in the organisation of two Auckland events staged by Architecture for Humanity (AfH) to raise money for Haiti.
Haiti was struck by a major earthquake in January 2010 with a toll of over 230,000 lives. In response to this tragedy AfH organised two global fundraisers.
A worldwide webcast took place on 20 February in partnership with the Pecha Kucha community.
The Pecha Kucha concept was devised in Tokyo in February 2003 as an event for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public. Drawing its name from the Japanese term for the sound of "chit chat", it rests on a quick-fire presentation format.
Entitled the Global Pecha Kucha Relay and aimed at raising $100,000 for the Haitian rebuilding effort, experts and other philanthropists got together to present 20 slides for 20 seconds each, with 2000 presentations involving 200,000 people in 200 cities. Alex helped organise the Auckland event. Alex outlined why the contributions from Auckland had particular significance. “Of course, Auckland being the first city to host Pecha Kucha on the dateline went first, and it was a successful night”.
The other event, held on 25 February, was a ‘mini’ Pecha Kucha followed by a pre-screening of a documentary about poverty filmed in 20 countries called One Peace At a Time.
Auckland-based Young Leader Ray Chu was one of the 200 people who attended. “One Peace at a Time was brilliant. The turnout was great. It really stands testament to the great work that YLs are involved in - such as Architecture for Humanity,” he said.
Speakers included Gary Lawson of Stevens Lawson Architecture who is involved in the ‘People Valuing People Project in Orakei’, Makereta a Humanitarian Volunteer and Nicholas Rayner who is engaged in Auckland AfH projects.
Young Leader Divya Dhar, who volunteers for the Global Poverty Project and the P3 Foundation, also spoke. She recently named Young New Zealander of the Year. The topic of Divya’s presentation was My journey so far and her theme for the presentation was ‘Anything is possible if you put your heart into it’.
Divya said she was ‘thrilled and humbled’ to help out with the fundraiser. After reading the book Mountains Beyond Mountains about a doctor who devoted his life to helping the people of Haiti, Divya said she felt an intimacy towards the people there.
Alex points out that Architecture for Humanity has been working in Haiti for a number of years prior to the earthquake. She was involved in coordinating a parallel design studio with AfH at Auckland University to modify shipping containers for deployment in disaster affected areas around the world, some of which have since been shipped to Haiti.
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Donations to this worthy cause can be made via the AfH website
Image sourced in Wikimedia Commons
