Victims of recent flooding in Pakistan will soon sport Ducks gear thanks to a two-day outerwear clothing drive coordinated by St. Vincent de Paul in partnership with O Heroes and the Holden Leadership Center.
The clothing drive, dubbed Parkas for Pakistan, kicked off Tuesday at the Moshofsky Center near Autzen Stadium when a SVDP collection truck pulled up to the athletic center’s outside loading dock at 9 a.m. Before lunch, the truck’s three jumbo cardboard boxes were well on their way to being filled despite the relatively slow morning.
Jonathan Sayre, who has worked for SVDP for nearly a year, stood under the loading dock’s overhang yesterday, gratefully accepting clear plastic bags full of clothes and blankets. Sayre, not discouraged by the meandering rate of donations, said that most donors expressed their gratitude for his community service work, which was his motivation for getting involved with SVDP in the first place.
“Their reactions have been mostly joyful,” Sayre said. “This is the reason I work for this company: because they do this sort of stuff.”
University international studies professor Anita Weiss spearheaded the clothing drive, and has spent much of her career studying and travelling to the central Asian country. During her travels, Weiss has seen how a string of natural disasters has left many Pakistanis without basic necessities to survive the harsh winters.
“The floods in Pakistan have directly affected 20 million out of the country’s total population of 175 million,” Weiss said in a University press release. “Winter is on its way and clothing and blankets are in desperate need.”
O Heroes, the University athletic department’s non-profit community service organization staffed by student athletes, accepted donations yesterday and will hand off the clothing drive today to students from the Holden Leadership Center working outside McArthur Court. Spokespersons for both O Heroes and the leadership center have said student involvement has been critical to the drive.
“Thus far, UO students have responded with enthusiasm,” Holden’s spokesperson Sinclair Ceasar said. “(Students have) been diligent in taking an active role in the international community and desire to take an active lead in this humanitarian effort.”
Matt Geschke, a second-year sports marketing masters student and graduate teaching fellow for O Heroes, helped to organize the drive and was amazed at the willingness of the various University groups involved to collaborate.
“It’s really been a bunch of people from the U of O community that have come together on this,” Geschke said.
Geschke chose to focus his master’s degree on what he calls “sports for social change,” which is utilizing the publicity power of athletes to support humanitarian efforts, of which Parkas for Pakistan is a prime example.
“I think there is a lot of power that athletes hold in the community, and it could do a lot of good if harnessed in the right way,” he said.
SVDP spokesperson Rebecca Larson thinks that Eugene community members are great potential donors for the drive because they understand how threatening winter weather can be.
“We have a generous community here,” Larson said. “People here understand what it’s like to be cold and wet.”
To sweeten the deal for donors, O Heroes was able to procure a stack of ticket vouchers to the University women’s basketball game versus Willamette University tonight at 7 p.m., which will be given in return for donations.
For potential philanthropists who miss this week’s collections, SVDP officials have stated that they can mark any outerwear donations in the near future “for Pakistan” and drop them off at SVDP donations centers all over town.
After today, the collected clothing items will be compiled in California’s Bay Area and will be transported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) via container ships to Pakistan in December.
The clothing drive will continue today and will accept donations ranging from jackets to blankets to sleeping bags from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. south of Mac Court near Howe Field.
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