Members of the Puerto Rican Student Association organize and package donations to send to Puerto Rico on Oct. 2 in the Union. Credit: Ris Twigg | Assistant Photo Editor

The Puerto Rican Student Association held an event Monday in the Ohio Union to collect supplies and money for hurricane relief efforts.

The event, United for Puerto Rico Fundraiser and Supply Drive, took its name from the United for Puerto Rico initiative started by the first lady of Puerto Rico, Beatriz Rossello, in response to the devastation the island suffered from Hurricane Irma and Hurricane Maria.

“A lot of us, if not most of us, have family in Puerto Rico, a lot of us were born and raised in Puerto Rico, so all of our family is back there,” said Liane Davila-Martin, president of PRSA and graduate student in the college of public health. “That’s why doing this donation drive and fundraiser gives us a little bit more of a feeling that we can actually help our families and friends back home.”

Students in PRSA said it is difficult to have family in Puerto Rico and not be able to communicate with them due to power outages and the subsequent inability to reach people via phone or Internet.

Frances Avila-Soto, a second-year in biomedical sciences, said she knew her family was initially safe, but it’s hard to keep up with their day-to-day well-being.

“I have a grandpa who has diabetes, who needs to take insulin which is refrigerated, so if they don’t have power they can’t refrigerate the insulin,” she said. “So that’s been pretty rough. We’ve just been trying to do everything we can here.”

Puerto Rico has been scrambling to recover after Hurricane Maria hit the island on Sept. 20, shortly after Hurricane Irma ran its course. Davila-Martin said Puerto Ricans are in need of everything and any donations are helpful, except clothes and footwear, which FEMA does not accept.

She said everything brought in Monday will be shipped to FEMA Tuesday and go directly to Puerto Rico.

PRSA members started collecting donations at 9 a.m. Monday, and by 10 a.m. were impressed with the response they had received.

“It has only been a little over an hour and I am kind of amazed by how much we’ve already collected,” Avila-Soto said at the time. “It’s amazing, honestly.”

The coverage of the relief efforts became political over the weekend when President Donald Trump and the mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico’s capital, Carmen Yulin Cruz, exchanged words about the lack of relief efforts and support from the federal government. Avila-Soto said the group paid not attention to the controversy.

“We as students and as people who are thinking about our family in Puerto Rico are trying not to get into the politics of it,” she said. “This is a situation where people need help and we need to do everything we can to help them.”

Davila-Martin said the group hopes to hold more events in the future to support the hurricane relief efforts.

“This was planned in just a few days so we are lucky that the Ohio Union had a space for us and people have been very responsive and very, very helpful,” Davila-Martin said. “We hope to do more but it is not guaranteed since it depends on the university and the support from the rest of the campus.”

Whether or not the group has more physical events, students can use Venmo to help the group with monetary contributions at venmo.com/PRSAOSU.

Davila-Martin said the situation on the island is devastating and she hopes the work they’re doing can help.

“It feels like we’re in a third-world country when it really shouldn’t be this bad,” she said. “The people in Puerto Rico, if they’re good about something, it is being resilient and being very hard workers.”