A handful of Penn students literally came face-to-face with victims of the recent tsunami in South Asia this week.
On the disaster's one-month anniversary Wednesday, students interacted via video conference with survivors of the tragedy and leaders of the recovery efforts in Sri Lanka.
Survivor Savitri Goonesekere's described the encounter that changed her life.
Goonesekere described the tsunami, which began as a "loud noise the likes of which I had never heard in my life ... a huge wave, twice or thrice my height I sighted ... I felt I was floating ... and I lost all feeling," she said.
Goonesekere spent approximately 10 minutes describing the disaster.
"We carried our little children, holding them by hand as we moved inland. I heard shouting and calls from the villages, telling us to keep moving still farther in," Goonesekere said.
Only 10 people attended the event, four of which were from Penn. The others were from nearby schools.
Also participating in the conference were students from 11 other schools, including Georgetown, Northwestern, Rutgers, Yale and Oxford universities, as well as the London School of Economics.
Each school began with a summary of its involvement with tsunami relief. Most listed dances and entertainment events not unlike the ones held at Penn, though Oxford students raised 12,000 British pounds in one evening.
The conference began at 8 a.m. and lasted for two hours.
College senior and conference organizer Danielle Dougherty attributed Penn students' attendance, which was the lowest of all the participating schools, to this early start time.
However, schools in Texas and Indiana had better turnouts despite an even earlier start time.
"Perhaps there's a high level of [academic] stress at Penn that prohibits people from participating in political and other organizations as much as they would like," Dougherty said.
She added that she had received many enthusiastic e-mails regarding the event in the past weeks.
Students wanted to know the most effective ways to channel funds raised on their campuses to the disaster area. Officials present said they were concerned with corruption, as the Sri Lankan government has not made public its plans for recovery. It is possible that only 30 percent of the aid donated actually reaches its supposed beneficiaries.
After Indonesia, Sri Lanka is the country worst-hit by the tsunamis. The majority of people there depend on tourism and fishing for their livelihoods, and these two industries were devastated by the disaster.
