May 3, 2005: Headlines: COS - India: Tsunami: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Kevin Griffith, a former Peace Corps volunteer, founded the Tsunami Assistance Project and quickly recruited Kevin Fleming, a fellow student at the H.J. Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management, to help him. They solicited friends and friends of friends and anyone else they could think of, turning TAP into a well-oiled fund-raising machine that so far has collected more than $50,000.
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May 3, 2005: Headlines: COS - India: Tsunami: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Kevin Griffith, a former Peace Corps volunteer, founded the Tsunami Assistance Project and quickly recruited Kevin Fleming, a fellow student at the H.J. Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management, to help him. They solicited friends and friends of friends and anyone else they could think of, turning TAP into a well-oiled fund-raising machine that so far has collected more than $50,000.
Kevin Griffith, a former Peace Corps volunteer, founded the Tsunami Assistance Project and quickly recruited Kevin Fleming, a fellow student at the H.J. Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management, to help him. They solicited friends and friends of friends and anyone else they could think of, turning TAP into a well-oiled fund-raising machine that so far has collected more than $50,000.
Kevin Griffith, a former Peace Corps volunteer, founded the Tsunami Assistance Project and quickly recruited Kevin Fleming, a fellow student at the H.J. Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management, to help him. They solicited friends and friends of friends and anyone else they could think of, turning TAP into a well-oiled fund-raising machine that so far has collected more than $50,000.
Students Reaching Out To Tsunami Victims
By Alana Semeuls
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
May 3, 2005
[Excerpt]
In the meantime, two Kevins from CMU had started organizing their own relief efforts within hours of seeing the tsunami crash ashore on their TV sets.
Kevin Griffith, a former Peace Corps volunteer, founded the Tsunami Assistance Project and quickly recruited Kevin Fleming, a fellow student at the H.J. Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management, to help him.
The Kevins solicited friends and friends of friends and anyone else they could think of, turning TAP into a well-oiled fund-raising machine that so far has collected more than $50,000.
Griffith took a leave of absence from the Heinz school and flew to India three short weeks after the tsunami. He was joined by two other former Peace Corps volunteers while Fleming stayed in Pittsburgh to organize a team of five graduate students to keep raising money.Griffith traveled up and down the coast of India looking for an appropriate village where TAP could focus its efforts.
He settled on Nagappattinam, a small village near Karaikal. The team in India wants to organize small-scale reconstruction projects while bringing the story of Nagappattinam's revival back to the United States. They've set up a partnership with an Indian organization and hope to build a community center for children.
Back in Pittsburgh, Fleming heard about Rajakumar and her plans to visit India from a mutual acquaintance at CMU. They met, and he showed her where TAP planned to begin its work -- very near to where she had been born.
Griffith and his TAP colleagues in India then hooked up with Rajakumar and her group in Nagappattinam last month.
Like Rajakumar, they want not only to provide short-term help for the people of Nagappattiam, where they now reside, they also want to connect them with donors in the United States. They have set up a user-friendly Web site, www.tapindia.org, where the team in India writes an online journal on their progress.
"We're trying to use technology as a way to put a face to the people receiving aid," said Fleming. "We feel like that's a connection that's often missed."
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Story Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - India; Tsunami
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