Pictured above are the Blue Key Heads, Co-Presidents, and Yazmine Tazi ’24.
Students and faculty came together to support and raise relief funds for Morocco, in response to the 6.8 magnitude earthquake experienced in the province of Al-Haouz, roughly 50 miles southwest of Marrakesh. The community fundraiser gathered donations for two weeks, ending on October 6 and then celebrated by pieing the Blue Key Heads and Student Body Co-Presidents in the face.
Yasmine Tazi ’24, a Senior from Casablanca, Morocco, led the two-week fundraising event, standing outside Paresky Commons daily to raise donations. She explained that the funds would be donated to a program called “Education for All,” an organization which promotes education for girls in rural Morocco.
“There’s this program called ‘Education for All’ and they basically fight against gender injustice and provide boarding schools for girls in the mountains. It’s a very rural region, and the problem is that they don’t really have schools or access to education. [The program] provides them with education because parents refuse to send their girls to the city, so this enabled them to get a highschool diploma,” said Tazi.
Tazi continued, “They had six boarding schools in the mountains, and five out of six had to be demolished because they were destroyed by the earthquake, so now they don’t even have schools to study. I’ve been working with them, and trying to raise money. All of the funds that we’ve collected throughout the two weeks are going to help them rebuild the schools, [and] provide medical care and housing.”
Adaora Mbanefo ’24, a Blue Key Head, spoke about her experience of how being pied was worth it, as it was for a good cause. She also described how the fundraiser aligned with her own values and beliefs of supporting women in education.
“The [Blue Key Heads] all understood that it was for a great cause so we [agreed that] we’re all doing it. As someone who values education and sees it as a path towards the future, especially for women and [the] youth in general, the thought of doing anything I could, little or big, to support [Yasmine’s] mission was something that I really wanted to do,” said Mbanefo.
On top of pieing, the original event was also supposed to include a faculty arm-wrestling challenge. Mika Latva-Kokko, Instructor in Physics, narrated why he originally volunteered to arm-wrestle and how he wanted to do anything he could to help.
“When I heard that there was an earthquake in Morocco, I reached out to Yasmine. Fortunately her family was fine, but when she wanted to do a fundraiser for the victims of the earthquake, I said that I would do anything to be helpful. There would have been arm-wrestling, but I believe that the majority of people wanted to do pieing of the Blue Key Head faces [instead]. For me it was just supporting my student, and supporting someone who’s been close to a natural disaster,” said Latva-Kokko.
Even for those who hadn’t entered in the raffle, the event remained appealing. Phia Cutler ’26 noted that even though she hadn’t donated, Cutler appreciated the idea of the fundraiser and decided to attend the pieing event.
“It’s really cool how they do fundraisers…to get the whole campus involved. [I didn’t buy tickets], I just wanted to watch it [because] I thought it would be fun to see our student leaders get pied in the face. I thought it was really funny [especially] when Josie [O’Rourke ’24] and Nor [DeHoog ’24] pied each other,” said Cutler.
For the organization of the event, Tazi expressed gratitude for all of the people who helped her. Tazi also noted that the donations and fundraiser, while extremely helpful, are just the first step to providing relief to the people of Morocco.
“I’m really grateful that so many people were willing to help. People that I didn’t know signed up to volunteer to help me at the tables, and even Ms. [Claudia] Scofield [, Manager of Information Services for Dean of Students Office,] and Mr. [Christopher] Capano [, Director of Student Activities,] were really helpful. [The support] was really amazing because it was a little overwhelming to be organizing it alone. Even though our contribution is great, it’s not what’s going to rebuild the houses. The earthquake happened in a couple seconds, but the consequences of the earthquake are going to last for years, so we still need a lot of support,” said Tazi.
