After tsunamis hit South Asia, the University of Ottawa community felt compelled to find ways to help.
“Several of our students, professors, support staff as well as alumni have been touched or directly affected by this disaster,” said President Gilles Patry, as he urged people to support agencies involved in the relief effort.
Geography professor Michael Sawada spent most of his holidays working for free after the Department of Foreign Affairs called on him to help in mapping the damage caused by the tsunami.
Sawada collaborated with a local mapping company, DM Solutions Group to create a massive resource, mapping a number of factors related to the tsunami and the affected region. The initiative, which they completed in about a week (“of 10-to-14-hour days,” says Sawada), was done on a completely voluntary basis.
“This is aimed at organizations working to provide relief or working to reconstruct the region,” says Sawada, whose graduate students in the LAGGISS (Laboratory for Applied Geomatics and Geographic Information Systems Science) lab will continue to populate the database.
Meanwhile, former Gee-Gees football wide receiver Jeff Beraznik is helping to provide emergency packets to displaced persons. Beraznik is president of Cutters, a sporting glove manufacturer with a factory in Sri Lanka.
He is supporting the plant's 750 employees who are assembling packets that include rice, powdered milk, sugar, lentils, biscuits, bottled water, sheets, towels, medicine, and other essentials. Cutters is contributing 500 packets at a cost of $10 each and will match contributions by its employees. Beraznik is soliciting additional donations and can be reached at jeff@cuttersgloves.com.
