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BY JOAN KIM

In print | October 25, 2007

From Nov. 17-30, a group of Swarthmore students working with Amnesty International will be featuring students’ photographs in the Refuge Art Show and Silent Auction in Shane Lounge. This year’s show will be modeled after last year’s Global Citizenship Art Show and Auction, also hosted in Shane Lounge.

The auction will be raising money for the charity, Un Techo Para mi Pais (“A Roof for my Country”), which is starting an initiative to build over 300 houses in the aftermath of the Aug. 15 Peruvian earthquake that reached 7.9 on the Richter scale and was estimated to have killed more than 500 people, injured over a thousand and displaced tens of thousands.

After many tragedies, people soon become numb to news reports and statistics seen on televisions, read in newspapers and heard on radios. News of the earthquake gradually disappeared from newspapers even in Peru while the tremors of the aftershocks continued to knock down buildings and cause more casualties. “Coverage was poor in newspapers in Peru [even though it is] not something that has ended,” organizer Alfredo Chuquihuara ’10 said.

Even Peruvians found it difficult to help with the crisis.

“There was little we could do at home,” organizer Diego Garcia-Montufar ’09 said. While he could send in donations and take food to those who could transport it to needy areas, it was difficult to reach the affected areas. With the new school year approaching, Garcia-Montufar would also have run the risk of being trapped and not being able to return to Swarthmore.

Yet he, and other Swarthmore students from Peru, remained hopeful.

“We didn’t think it was too late. We felt there was something more [that we could do because] help is needed for years to come,” Montufar added.

“We had to be at Swarthmore so we wanted to do anything that we could do to help people out there,” Frances Kvietok ’10 said. “Away from home, we still wanted to do something to raise awareness.”

Instead of blindly choosing a charity to receive the proceeds, the organizers searched for a charity that would most benefit the Peruvian people.

“There has been a lot of corruption. We know there is a South American organization that builds houses,” Kvietok said.

Through research, they decided on Un Techo Para mi Pais after they found out that the homes that the organization had built in the area of the earthquake had not fallen during the disaster and that the organization had a history of working with college students in Lima. They “specifically developed a project to build over 300 houses for the thousands of families displaced in the earthquake,” Kvietok said. The organization also plans to help rebuild the 33 schools destroyed.

The students expect 40-50 photographs to be submitted in the coming weeks. The photos will be shown in Shane Lounge where spectators can bid for any photograph during the event. Before the photographs are sold, an e-mail will be sent out to bidders in case they were outbid and want another chance at a photograph.

Many of the photographs have been submitted from students who have been abroad, but photographs from within the United States are also welcome. “We want to encourage people to send photos this week. It costs nothing for them to send a picture and it’s for a good cause,” Chuquihuara said.

“Students shouldn’t be discouraged if they are not … photographer[s],” added Kvietok.

Since the proceeds are going to Un Techo Para mi Pais, it’s “important that people know that this event is contributing to a pretty concrete cause,” Montufar said.

After this event, the students are planning to sell Peruvian jewelry to “support local economies,” Kvietok said. The silent auction will be the first of several fundraisers to help the people affected by the disaster.

If you want to contribute, send a high-resolution image by e-mail to amnestyart@gmail.com or send a hard copy through campus mail to Garcia-Montufar. You can also stop by the silent auction to bid on the artwork of other students or purchase Peruvian jewelry.

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