Student Club Hosts Concert for Haiti

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Student Club, Started by Brother and Sister, Hosts Campus Concert for Haiti

--Parents, Nurse and Doctor, Offer Earthquake Victims Medical Help--

Contact:
Gwen O’Brien
Director of Media Relations
Saint Mary's College
(574) 284-4579

January 26, 2010 (Notre Dame, Ind.)—The Saint Mary’s College/University of Notre Dame student chapter of Friends of the Orphans (FOTO) will host a Haiti Relief Concert at 8 p.m. on Wednesday, January 27, in the La Fortune Ballroom at the University of Notre Dame. Siblings Tricia Daly, SMC ’10, and Michael Daly, ND ’11, (pictured) brought FOTO, an international organization, to the campuses last semester to raise awareness about Nuestros Pequenos Hermanos (NPH) orphanages. There are nine NPH orphanages in Latin America and the Caribbean. (Nuestros Pequenos Hermanos is Spanish for Our Little Brothers and Sisters.)

Tricia, a nursing major, and Michael, who plans to go to medical school, have volunteered with their parents at the NPH orphanage in Honduras for several years. Their mother, Florence “Lulu” Romano Daly, SMC ‘82, is a nurse, and Peter Daly, ND ‘82, is an orthopedic surgeon. Dr. and Mrs. Daly are currently in Haiti offering trauma and surgical assistance. Tricia says following the earthquake the director of the NPH orphanage in Haiti asked her parents, who live in St. Paul, Minnesota, to come to Haiti. They did not hesitate and brought two more orthopedic surgeons with them as part of a medical brigade.

“While they are working out of a pediatric hospital, they are treating adults and children alike. The operating room is in use twenty-four hours a day,” said Tricia, who gets daily text or phone updates from her parents. “Surgeons are mostly performing amputations. When they are not scheduled for a shift in the hospital, they go to the slums to provide care for the people who cannot get to the hospital. My mom says you cannot even imagine the devastation and destruction. It's exhausting and the needs are endless.”

The FOTO chapter has been involved in fundraising for Haiti since the earthquake and has already helped raise more than $2,000 for the FOTO Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund. The $4 admission to the concert, which is open to Saint Mary's and Notre Dame students, will go to the same fund. “The money will be used for medical supplies and the basic necessities of life, (like) food and clean water,” Michael told the student newspaper The Observer.

For information on how to donate to Haiti through FOTO, click here. To read more about the Dalys and their work with FOTO and NPH, click here and here.

About Saint Mary’s College: Saint Mary’s College, Notre Dame, Ind., is a four-year, Catholic, women’s institution offering five bachelor’s degrees and more than 30 major areas of study. Saint Mary’s College has six nationally accredited academic programs: social work, art, music, teacher education, chemistry and nursing. Saint Mary's College ranks among the nation's top 100 liberal arts colleges in U.S. News & World Report's 2010 annual survey. Founded in 1844, Saint Mary’s is a pioneer in the education of women, and is sponsored by the Sisters of the Holy Cross.