£25,000 raised by Imperial College PhD student for cyclone-hit Vanuatu

A PhD student of the Department of Chemistry has raised more than £13,000 since Sunday 15th March for relief efforts in the cyclone-hit island nation Vanuatu, after previously raising £12,000 to build a library for a school on one of the remote islands.

The Republic of Vanuatu is an archipelago in the South Pacific Ocean. A state of emergency was declared in the country last Thursday 11th March after the region was devastated by Cyclone Pam in possibly the greatest natural disaster in the nation’s history.

Rachel Brooks, a 27 year old PhD candidate at Imperial, raised £13,000 in donations in less than a week for the islands of Tanbok and Pentecost whilst still recovering from surgery on her arm.

She first founded the Tanbok Project in 2007 after spending a gap year teaching maths and physics A level to children in remote parts of the country. “The community did a lot for me so I wanted to do a lot for the community,” she stated.

Rachel managed to raise around £12,000 to build a new library at the school where she taught during her stay on the island. The money was raised through sponsored bike rides and half marathons.

Sadly the library construction plans must now be put on hold as the cyclone has apparently devastated the school site. Rachel hopes that the funds can be redirected into rebuilding the school.

“Basically the project got started before the Cyclone hit – we’d just been trying to support the school. We’d set up all of our … building committees and communication networks and then the cyclone came and destroyed everything.

“We decided that the school’s not going to be needing a library any time soon, the school’s probably going to be needing a school – so we’ve put that on hold and decided to basically use the network we’ve already created to do some fundraising for the relief effort”.

Cyclone Pam made land contact with Vanuatu last week and caused widespread damage. 90% of the buildings in Vanuatu are understood to have been affected by the storm.

It is believed that the majority of islanders have been displaced from their homes and huge tracts of farmland have been wiped out. Up to 80% of the population engages in subsistence agriculture as a primary economic activity.

Organisations such as the Vanuatu Red Cross, UNICEF Pacific and Australian Oxfam have launched disaster relief campaigns, and a number of governments have declared aid.

Rachel explained her plans for the money raised by the Tanbok Project, including the funds collected previously for the school library: “The money that’s been coming in since Saturday night will be going specifically to hurricane repairs elsewhere on the island.

“The money that’s raised already, people donated that money believing that they were donating for this library for the school. So either way, that money will be reserved for that school”.

She also revealed plans to arrange partnerships between schools in the UK and Vanuatu. “The longer-term plan is to get schools [here] to support schools out there … to pair them up and say this is your partner school that’s had a roof blown off, and have them run events”.

The Tanbok Project hopes to use their connections in the region to reach overlooked, remote areas of Pentecost and Tanbok that larger aid organisations may struggle to reach.

They are seeking to provide clothing and food supplies, water tanks, tools and fuel to transport materials around the islands. After speaking with members of the community in Tanbok on Thursday 19th March, an emergency food response has been prioritised.

Donations for the relief efforts can be made at: http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/pentecostcyclonerelief.