Niagara College students Amy Cain, Crystal Smalldon and Bailey Churchill offer their time to take donations for Haiti relief efforts. The fundraiser collected $2,378.76 at Niagara-on-the-Lake. The donation table was available to students at the Welland campus on Monday. Photo by Emily Yates

Niagara College and the Red Cross have raised $2,378.76 for Haiti relief efforts in one week at the Niagara-on-the-Lake campus.“It’s a humanitarian cause,” says Shazia Khan, president of the International Club at Niagara College. 

“If humans don’t help humans, who else will help us, right?” Amy Cain, member of ACE Niagara and a student in the Business Administration program, decided to get involved with the cause when she was watching the news, then flooded with constant updates and coverage from Haiti.

“I thought to myself, ‘There has to be something that we can do.’” Cain searched for programs and fundraisers that she could help with and found nothing. Instead, she called the Red Cross to see how she could help.

“I had to sign a third-party agreement with the Red Cross to confirm that we were raising funds from them, and then we started advertising,” says Cain. On the first day, $800 was donated at NOTL.

By Friday night, the campus had raised over half of its $3,500 goal. Khan says that, thanks to the “incredible” success of the fundraising in its first week, the International Club is hoping to raise its goal to between $4,000 to $5,000. Fundraising began in Welland at 9 a.m. Monday.

“The first guy that showed up donated $80, and when I asked him if he wanted a tax receipt, he said, ‘No thanks.’ He just wanted to donate,” says Crystal Smalldon, a Niagara College student in the Social Service Worker program. As of Wednesday morning, the Welland campus raised $456.47. Students are able to donate until Friday afternoon.