By: BREEN EITEL
On the first Spring semester weekend at Eckerd College, a group of students dedicated their Friday and Saturday nights to raising money for disaster relief in Haiti through the first ever Crisis Kitchen – a late night restaurant with on-campus delivery, operating from 11 PM to 3 AM.
With raw foodstuffs and a large propane grill donated by Bon Appétit (the on-campus food management company), the students worked late into the night to raise money for Partners in Health in Haiti. Crisis Kitchen’s menu was comprised of tacos, hamburgers, hot dogs, chili, chips, cookies and soda drinks and the items sold for either $1 or $2, or $5 for a combo meal. In addition, over 200 t-shirts for this event were generously donated by our Dean of Students, James Annarelli.
Eckerd’s student body response to this event was unprecedented, as the entire food donation from Bon Appétit ran out by 2:15 AM on Friday night and over $1,000 was raised. Delighted but distraught with our situation, I informed Dean Annarelli the next day that we had no food to sell that night. His response? “Go shopping.” 
With about $300 donated from the college to purchase food from the local grocery stores, we were ready for that Saturday night, and we managed to raise another sum in excess of $1,000. The remarkable thing about this event was that every dollar raised went DIRECTLY and UNTOUCHED to Partners in Health, a medical relief agency founded in Haiti over 20 years ago; this was possible because of the generosity of Bon Appétit and Dean Annarelli, such that we had no supply cost to dock from our total.
Tired but inspired, I felt this couldn’t be the only Crisis Kitchen at Eckerd College and I decided to turn the Kitchen into a monthly tradition; therefore, on the first weekend of March we opened our doors once more. Busy as any Dean could be, Dr. Annarelli nonetheless helped me draft letters to petition the local community around the college to help support the cause, and from that came a donation of 20 pizzas and a portable heating oven from the nearby Westshore Pizza. By the weekend’s end, we had raised over $1,600.
All together, roughly $1,700 worth of materials (food & shirts) was donated to raise $4,365 in 4 nights, and The Stone and Holt Weeks Foundation graciously donated an additional $1,000 to this total for Partners in Health. Crisis Kitchen’s 5th and final night raised over $773 - making our total for the year $6,138. 
