A group of students in the Education for Public Inquiry and International Citizenship (EPIIC) class last month formed a task force in response to the current famine in Somalia and other countries located in the Horn of Africa.
The Horn of Africa includes the countries of Eritrea, Djibouti and Ethiopia, in addition to Somalia. Task Force Co-Chair Agree Ahmed, a freshman, said that the group aims to increase awareness of the famine in the area and to raise money to support relief efforts.
"We felt that the Somalia issue was being under-covered at the Tufts campus, and so we wanted to both increase awareness of it on campus and possibly help mobilize so that we could actually raise some funds to support the famine relief efforts," Ahmed said.
The task force has already raised funds through this semester's Cause Dinner, which took place last week.
The Cause Dinner is a charity event that Tufts University Dining Services hosts every semester, in which $2.50 from every meal swiped that night is donated to a designated group selected by the Tufts Community Union Senate Services Committee.
The task force, the recipient of this year's funds, raised an estimated two to three times the largest amount of money a Cause Dinner has ever raised, according to Institute for Global Leadership Director Sherman Teichman, who teaches the EPIIC class.
"I challenged the class to coalesce and think about how they could become constructively engaged in thinking about these issues and to conceptualize how they might do that," Teichman said.
Based on advice from experts on situations in the Horn of Africa, task force members chose to donate all funds raised directly to United Nations Children's Fund Somalia, according to Co-Chair Amy Calfas, a junior.
"They're the organization with the most access to Somalia," Ahmed said.
Co-Chair Rebecca Dewey emphasized, however, that fundraising was not the task force's primary goal.
"I don't want the education piece of this to get lost because I think that's really key for us," Dewey, a freshman, said.
Task Force Somalia members chose to feature maps of the region on the flyers handed out at the Cause Dinner instead of pictures of starving Somalis, which Dewey explained would have emphasized sentimentalism over understanding.
"We want it to be emotional, we want people to have compassion, but we also want them to know that it's part of a greater narrative," Calfas said.
As part of its educational goals, the group hopes to host "power-hour" lunch discussions about the root issues underlying the famine.
"The social structures in Somalia have compounded the problem, and I think that's really what we want the focal point of these next months to be with Task Force Somalia," Ahmed said.
Ahmed also explained the group's plans for an event in the spring, where students would walk a distance comparable to that Somalis must walk each day to get water.
A Somali food festival might accompany the walk as a means of showing students that the country is not just in need of saving, but worth saving, Calfas said.
"Instead of just showing the weaknesses in this failed state of Somalia, what we have to look at is actually what's working now," she said, citing the country's powerful financial system and advanced cell phone networks as tools that aid workers can use to help the people of Somalia.
Calfas explained that inspiration for the task force came from Dan and Ayan Holmberg, two international humanitarian aid workers who spoke at EPIIC's Outward Bound trip.
Ahmed added that Teichman has played a big role in assisting the students with Task Force Somalia. In particular, Teichman said that he introduced the co-chairs to experts in the field who could help them better understand the issue.
"They've educated themselves, working with Alex De Waal, who's head of the World Peace Foundation which is here right now at [The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy], and working with the Feinstein [International] Famine Center experts," he said.
The task force currently consists solely of EPIIC class members, Calfas said. The fourth co-chair is Amy Ouellette, a senior.
Still, Calfas added that the group hopes to open participation up to the rest of the Tufts community.
"We're really excited to get the rest of the Tufts campus involved," Calfas said. "We really want to be conscious about making this a Tufts-wide effort, and hopefully even … expand to other schools within Boston, and make it like a student movement."
