The Stony Brook University chapter of The Supply will be hosting a night of awareness and fundraising on April 21 in the Student Activities Center at 7 p.m.
The Supply is a nonprofit organization that aims to educate urban slum youth Nairobi, Kenya. Its mission is to create the cities of tomorrow through a network of low-cost community secondary schools focused on service learning.
The campus event is taking place in order to raise money to build a computer lab in The Supply’s network schools in Nairobi.
“Our World Slum Day Showcase will be a night of food, raffles and performances to raise awareness about how others can join us in changing the lives of our students and making an impact in global inequality,” Gabe Vazquez, the president of the chapter of The Supply at Stony Brook, said in an email.
The performances will be by Stony Brook students and groups, and the raffles will have prizes from local restaurants and business.
Vazquez said that there will be a photo booth at the event for the global changers who wish to take that extra step and post about the event on social media and spread the word about The Supply’s mission.
“There will be a date auction, which will be a fun and easygoing way for students to get involved, cheer on their friends and donate to a great cause,” Kelly Lavan, the marketing chair for the chapter, said in an email.
The Supply established “World Slum Day” on April 20 as an international day for urban crisis awareness. The organization worked quickly to have their fundraiser during the same time period.
On World Slum Day, The Supply and its chapters across the country work together to let people know that there are 1 billion people in the world living in slum communities, and the organization details how people can help.
“This semester, our chapter has been asked to help raise money for the building of a computer lab within the Nairobi slum communities, which will work as a vocational school for graduates from The Supply network schools,” Vazquez said.
Stony Brook’s Supply chapter is currently partnered with the Society of Women Engineers, Sigma Delta Tau, Pi Delta Psi, Alpha Omega Epsilon, Sigma Alpha Mu and Order of Omega.
“The Supply has teamed up with a company called CodeHive in Berkley, CA to put together a vocational program revolving around coding and basic computer skills,” Vasquez said.
In total, there are 11 university chapters of The Supply. The organization itself was founded in 2010 by Eddo Kim, a University of Pennsylvania alum who was drawn to education and changing the lives of slum youth.
“We want to let people know about the untapped potential that lays within these slums,” Vasquez said in an email. “We believe if these slum dwellers were given the proper educational resources, they would be able to build up their slum communities and turn them into the cities of tomorrow.”
The Supply has created a curriculum called S.L.U.M.S., which stands for Student Leader Understanding My Slum.
The students are taught HIV/AIDS awareness, waste management, how to create a community garden and more.
“I believe the urban slum crisis is an extremely relevant global issue that is too often overlooked,” Lavan said. “The Supply’s unique mission of rebuilding the slums from within through a service learning program has a lot of promise and the students have already begun to positively impact their community.”
