Contact: Meredith Amor
Director of Communications
PR@Barry.edu
(305) 899-7810
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 28, 2020
Barry University Students and Faculty Heading to the Bahamas for Hurricane Relief Over Spring Break
(MIAMI, FL) Two groups of Barry University students and faculty will travel to the Bahamas for Hurricane Dorian relief efforts over spring break, providing much needed educational support and medical treatment. The trips are supported by a generous grant from Operation Helping Hands, a partnership among United Way of Miami-Dade, the Miami Herald/el Nuevo Herald, and Univision 23 to respond to disasters and other emergency situations.
As part of the Education Project, students and faculty from Barry’s Adrian Dominican School of Education will travel to the hard-hit island of Abaco. In the aftermath of Hurricane Dorian, high school students receive remote instruction from teachers in Nassau. Lessons are projected on the wall from shared laptop computers powered by generators in the schools only two functional classrooms. The Barry team will help clean up and prepare primary and secondary school classrooms for reopening and teach lessons and lead educational activities with students.
Doctors and medical students from the Barry University School of Podiatric Medicine will travel to Nassau for a week-long medical mission, conducting outreach and clinical care in the country that only has four podiatrists treating the entire population. They anticipate serving individuals displaced by Hurricane Dorian and those whose conditions may have been exacerbated by lack of treatment after the storm.
Both trips are consistent with Barry University’s commitment to social justice by serving the local and global community and promoting the common good.
More on Operation Helping Hands:
Operation Helping Hands is a partnership between United Way of Miami-Dade, the Miami Herald/el Nuevo Herald, and Univision 23 that was originally created in 1998 in the aftermath of devastating hurricanes Mitch and Georges, to provide the people of South Florida a way to extend a helping hand to their neighbors in need. Since then, it has been reactivated numerous times in response to disasters and other emergency situations. Most recently, the program was activated to support the response, relief and recovery efforts in the areas affected by Hurricane Dorian in the Bahamas and surrounding areas impacted by this powerful storm.