Jun 4, 2010 8:54:57 AM

The Division III Student-Athlete Advisory Committee announced that it already has exceeded its fund-raising goal to assist relief efforts in Haiti after a massive earthquake in January devastated the country.

Dozens of Student-Athlete Advisory Committees at Division III institutions have worked quickly to meet a $100,000 challenge the Division III SAAC made shortly after the tragedy. SAAC members said that despite having met the benchmark, they will continue to encourage their peers at the grass-roots level to keep raising funds through the previously identified deadline of December 1, 2010.

Baldwin-Wallace student-athletes Jamie Shipley, Zac Gaydosh, Russ Mika and Nate Smith got more than they expected with their soccer-ball initiative.

The challenge was in addition to a $300,000 gift the NCAA made to UNICEF to help with that organization's relief efforts in Haiti in the weeks after the natural disaster. While the gift represented $100,000 from each division, the Division III governance leadership (the Presidents and Management Councils and the Division III SAAC) challenged SAACs at the campus and conference levels to match the division's portion of the gift.

"In that moment of tragedy there was opportunity to live out the values of Division III, which include citizenship," said Division III SAAC chair Isaiah Goodman, a former basketball student-athlete at Washington and Lee University. "The division's newly created strategic-positioning platform emphasizes the educational opportunities provided to student athletes in the classroom, in competition and in the community. One of the key focuses for our division is citizenship, and we thought a Division III-specific response to the situation in Haiti was warranted."

The response has been immediate and significant. So far, more than 70 Division III SAACs have donated a total of $107,199 in monetary gifts and another $20,500 in goods and services.

Presidents Council chair Jim Harris from Widener University said he is not surprised by the fact that student-athletes met the challenge, but he is amazed it happened so fast.

"Our Division III SAAC reacted so well to this challenge that I knew it would be carried out with the kind of enthusiasm and commitment that we've come to expect from our student-athletes," he said. "But to surpass a year-long goal in only few months is truly remarkable."

"This is a great testament to the citizenship, leadership and commitment of our DIII SAACs and student-athletes," said Division III Vice President Dan Dutcher. "This collaborative effort reinforces the good work that goes on regularly at Division III campuses that many people aren't aware of. It also goes to show that as large as the division is, when it bonds together as a team, the results can be especially significant."

Also evident was the creativity in the commitment. One of the more innovative concepts came from a handful of Baldwin-Wallace soccer student-athletes whose idea of collecting a couple of hundred soccer balls for Haitian children turned into more than 1,300.

The Mount Aloysius SAAC collected more than $1,000 worth of medical supplies at two basketball games in January and gave them to the school's campus ministry office, which in turn gave the goods to a priest who does mission work in Haiti.

And two of the oldest rivals in college sports – Williams and Amherst – extended their competition to a fund-raising battle at the schools' February 12 men's basketball game. That effort produced $18,000.

Division III SAAC chair Goodman said that creativity was an active multiplier in the initiative.

"There are more than 160,000 student-athletes participating in Division III. Calling this group to action to meet the challenge can accomplish critical humanitarian relief and reinforce the educational values of such an effort that are at the core of the student-athlete experience," Goodman said.

So far, donations from all NCAA members have contributed to the following achievements:

• More than 500,000 children have been immunized. 
• Therapeutic feeding centers for acute malnutrition and packaged nutritional interventions have been established that will cover youth nutritional needs for 12 months. 
• Orphaned children or children who have been separated from their families have been registered in camps and residential facilities. Caseworkers have been trained on child registration and family tracing. 
• More than 55,000 children have been provided with psychosocial support through the establishment of child-friendly spaces. 
• Residential child care centers hosting 25,500 children are being assessed for quality.
• UNICEF has acquired 200,000 education kits containing essential school supplies designed to encourage enrollment and attendance, with 520,000 more kits on the way. It has also distributed School-in-a-Box kits, Early Childhood Development kits, Recreation kits and school tents for temporary classrooms to support the education, protection and development of 170,000 children.