Lending a Hand: The Positive Environment at Brown Helps Students Look to the Needs of Others

by Patrick Gerard Healy

Knitting. Biking. Bench-pressing ... Brown students are as creative about finding ways to lend a hand as they are about pursuing their academic passions.

The consensus for this? "I think it's the type of student Brown lets in," says David Bloom '08, who organized The Brown Sanctuary Stitchers to knit blankets for homeless children. "I think a lot of college students are willing to get involved, and Brown gives a lot of support to such activities."

"Most of the students here are extremely socially conscious," adds Mark Glennon '07, who will participate in a cross-country bike ride to benefit Habitat for Humanity. "It's an amazing place to be, and a great place to do this kind of thing."

"There's something about this environment that's so positive," says Thilakshani Dias '05, who is helping people in her native Sri Lanka rebuild homes devastated by December's tsunami. "It's got this do-something mentality that I find very calming and inspiring."

Here are the latest examples of Brown students helping others - whether they are down the street or halfway across the world.

Providence-to-Seattle Bike & Build

More than a dozen Brown students have signed on for Providence-to-Seattle Bike & Build, a nine-week cycling trip across thirteen states to raise funds for affordable housing.

Participation requires each student to raise $4,000, the majority of which will finance construction of a student-built Habitat for Humanity home in Providence during the 2005-06 academic year. Although cyclists will average seventy miles each day, they will stop along the way for about eight days to help build other Habitat for Humanity houses.

Josh Champagne '05 (left) started Bike & Build last year because it was "a great way to combine service and adventure." Participants "had an awesome summer, but more importantly we helped spread awareness about the affordable housing crisis."

Austin Vandergon '07, a trip coordinator this year, looks forward to a summer unlike any other.

"I've worked the same desk job every summer since I was 14, so I went for it," he says.

Zachary Auger '07 has a similar ethic.

"I hope for two results from doing Bike & Build: that I will feel good about helping others out and see how I can make a difference in the world, and that I will actually get to know more about this country. ... College is about experiences, and this is one heck of an experience."

Mark Glennon '07 daydreamed about Bike & Build through an entire day of classes and decided he couldn't pass up the opportunity.

"The way I see it," he says, "what could be a better way to spend my summer than to embark on a crusade for affordable housing?"

Housing for fellow Sri Lankans

Senior class co-president Thilakshani Dias '05 (left) also is raising money to build houses, but in a different part of the world.

Dias saw firsthand the devastation December's tsunami wreaked upon her homeland of Sri Lanka. Her house was unaffected, but she helped in the initial relief effort and knew she wanted to do something that had a longer-lasting impact.

One morning while eating breakfast at a hotel in the southern part of Sri Lanka, Dias encountered Iresh Kodithuwakku, a waiter who lost his father in the tsunami. His mother and sister survived, and his workplace was unaffected, but his house was ruined. Dias says he fits the profile of someone who could easily slip through the cracks.

"If I am a government public policy person and I see a landowner who has a job, his need will definitely be secondary in my mind to somebody with no land, no job, and nothing in the world except themselves," she says.

But that doesn't mean that the landowner needs no assistance. Kodithuwakku's father was the other breadwinner, says Dias, and he now has to support a family of three on a waiter's salary and build a house, too.

Whenever she described Kodithuwakku's story to friends and acquaintances, Dias also spoke about people who donated money toward tsunami relief. Donors rarely got to see where their dollars went, she said.

It was during these discussions that Dias devised a plan: She would match donors in Rhode Island to specific victims in Sri Lanka. The first beneficiary would be Kodithuwakku. To break down the barrier of anonymity, he sends the donors police reports, photos - anything of interest relating to the rebuilding.

After graduation, Dias will work at Morgan Stanley in New York City, but first she will return to Sri Lanka.

"That's when I want to bring the project full circle, and take pictures" of the completed houses to let the donors "know their money was spent well."

So far Dias has raised enough money for three 20-by-16-foot iron-frame houses. Each costs about $1,600 to construct.

Gridders unite to benefit teammate

This past fall, the Brown football team raised $25,000 in a one-day "bench-a-thon" to help cover the medical costs of team captain Lawrence Rubida '05, who was battling bone cancer. After the disease defeated Rubida in January, his teammates set up a trust in his name to fund further research to fight the disease.

Throughout the summer, team members obtained sponsors who pledged money for every pound lifted at the pre-season weight training test.

Offensive lineman Alex Jury '06 reached a new personal bench-press record Рan achievement that "was a combination of being up here for the summer and being inspired by Lawrence and his struggle."

Head Coach Phil Estes said Rubida brought the team together.

"You talk about being a family, and sometimes you don't realize that you are a family until something happens and ... you just react.

"We all gained strength from Lawrence," Estes says, then relays an anecdote about how Rubida was heartened to learn he had a fifteen percent chance of beating the disease.

"He said he only had a nine percent chance of getting into Brown, so he figured those odds were pretty good."

Brown Sanctuary Stitchers

David Bloom '08 hopes to change the world by knitting. He has organized The Brown Sanctuary Stitchers, volunteers who make blankets for children in need.

Bloom imported the idea from Brooklyn, where his mother, the assistant director of volunteer services at the Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services, started a similar program about six months ago.

"She was telling me on the phone about how successful the program has been, and I thought that Brown would be a good place to start a group," he said.

Bloom's volunteers knit as many seven-by-nine-inch rectangles as they care to. When Bloom has forty-nine squares, he stitches them together to create a blanket that will be given to a homeless child.

"It's a volunteer program where you don't feel any pressure to do any huge thing. Your one square is going to make a difference, and you can put a little personality into it," he says. "The great thing about the Sanctuary Stitchers program is that individuals can participate on their own, on their own time."

Champagne photo courtesy of Josh Champagne; Dias photo courtesy of the Providence Journal