It’s hard to conceive of the amount of damage Hurricane Helene did to the western part of North Carolina as well as parts of nearby states, but a lot of people have been racing to help those who have lost everything.  For instance, on Thursday, Oct. 3 the Guilford County Sheriff’s Office took a truckload of relief supplies to the disaster area, and, many other groups, including High Point University and the university’s “family” have been doing all that it can as well.

This week, the High Point University’s Student Government Association – as well as other units across campus – have been leading efforts to provide much-needed support to those communities in western North Carolina that were impacted by Hurricane Helene and will be for a long time.

The student government, working with the university’s Offices of Student Life and Chapel and Religious Life, has been collecting monetary donations and needed items such as bottles of water and non-perishable food to deliver to people affected by last week’s Category 4 hurricane.

Also, several schools and departments are collecting donations to help the hurricane victims, including the Department of Psychology, the Fred Wilson School of Pharmacy and the Kenneth F. Kahn School of Law.

“People are excited to give back. We announced the initiative yesterday, and people were already showing up with bags and bags of stuff,” said Student Government Association President Benjamin Niehaus, an honors scholar and finance major from Chattanooga, Tennessee. “Professors have come by and donated money. We’ve been on the phone with parents and other people tied to the university who are just excited to give, and I think it’s that excitement that is just really a breath of fresh air, especially during midterms. You would think everyone is focused on their classes and getting through these hard tests and papers and projects, but they’re running out to Walmart and Food Lion and filling up grocery carts full of supplies to donate to their neighbors in western North Carolina.”

The university’s students and their families are being encouraged to support these campus-wide efforts in any way they can. All physical and monetary donations will be delivered to communities in western North Carolina with the goal of helping as many hurricane victims as possible.

Here are some ways students and others have been helping…

  • Students are giving monetary donations in cash or through the general funds in their HPU Passport Card accounts.
  • Students have been bringing physical and monetary donations to the Philanthropy table inside the Slane Student Center.
  • They’ve also been leaving donations in the lobby of Hayworth Chapel.
  • HPU Students have been bringing any items they don’t need due to the upcoming Fall Break to the lobby of their residence halls – where donation drop-off stations are provided.

The HPU community has already started providing resources to hurricane victims in other ways as well. Here’s a glimpse of their efforts so far.

  • HPU Dining donated more than 3,000 bottles of water to hurricane victims in two cities in western North Carolina – Morganton and Boone.
  • To help with the effort, a group of HPU dining staff members loaded a pallet of bottled water into a moving truck on Wednesday at the Nido and Mariana Qubein Arena and Conference Center. The truck then transported the more than 1,500 bottles of water to a local organization that planned to deliver the water to Morganton.

Khara Mungo, HPU’s catering director, said the experience of helping others has been moving.

“People are in need and actually in desperation, and it’s nice that we’re able to donate at all,” Mungo said. “I think it’s great and shows that we’re supporting the community.”

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