Two of Drake’s student organizations, Hillel and the Middle East Peace and Prosperity alliance, are working together to support Drake students. Through fundraisers, collaboration and mutual support, these groups are dedicated to showing that they’re not enemies and helping the campus community in the face of ongoing conflict in the Middle East.
MEPPA has been hosting events to promote education and activism. MEPPA President Rachel Kaiser said that the organization’s primary mission is to “educate the Drake campus about the Middle East and advocate for human rights.”
More often than not, MEPPA doesn’t do this work alone. One of the organizations they work with is Hillel. Hillel is the Jewish student organization on Drake’s campus and is connected to Hillel International.
“We’ve done a few fundraisers,” said Sydney Dvorak, who has served as president of Hillel for the past year. In the spring semester, she will pass the position to Lauren Dragon. “We have our current one now, and we did one last year with MEPPA.”
Hillel and MEPPA recently worked together to raise money for the Des Moines Refugee Support group. The fundraiser was active from Nov. 6 until Nov. 22. According to Drake Hillel’s Instagram post, the donations they received will help provide financial support, community engagement, empowerment tools and local connections to refugees.
“It goes back to our previous fundraiser with Hillel last year when we raised funds for World Center Kitchen,” Kaiser said. “Macy Gardner [of Hillel] reached out to me and pitched organizations Hillel wanted to fundraise for. We settled on Des Moines Refugee Support.”
Kaiser said the organization connected well with MEPPA’s mission.
“It’s a good way for MEPPA to do more for the community,” Kaiser said. “Many refugees come to Des Moines from the Middle East.”
Gardner was the person primarily responsible for organizing the fundraiser and communicating with MEPPA. She hopes that because it’s a local organization, students will be able to recognize the impact.
The fundraiser isn’t the only way that MEPPA and Hillel have been working together recently.
“We’ve been working with the library to create a guide and to get students reliable resources on the Middle East,” Dvorak said. “There’s a lot of misinformation, but it’s been a very solid collaboration since January.”
Planning these events and fundraisers on joint issues requires collaboration between the two organizations.
“Rachel [Kaiser] is so incredible and a great person to work with,” Dvorak said. “We both really want to do these things together and show [that] we’re not enemies.”
The organizations also openly communicate about the events they hold.
“Another part of our collaboration is just to talk to each other about events,” Dvorak said. “We’re doing a lot [of events], so MEPPA lets us know if they’re doing something related or if it will affect us, and we work with them to make sure misinformation isn’t spread.”
Kaiser, Dvorak and Gardner also spoke about their future outlooks for their respective organizations and for the conflict in the Middle East as a whole.
Kaiser focused on MEPPA’s upcoming events and the organization’s focus on current affairs.
“We have a collaboration with MSA [Muslim Student Association] in the works, and we’ve talked about collaborating with other organizations,” Kaiser said. “We go semester by semester because what we focus on shifts a lot based on current events. This time three years ago, we were doing events about the Women’s Life Freedom movement in Iran. We’ll see what happens.”
Dvorak, who will be graduating in 2025, reflected on her time as Hillel’s president and the importance of creating a safe environment for Jewish students.
“My goal when I was president was to make a space where every student felt comfortable regardless of how they felt about Israel or if they were connected,” Dvorak said. “It’s been a balancing act of making sure we’re all heard and have a safe space and still holding our own personal views. I didn’t want Hillel to be an organization that would exclude people because of how they might be related to the conflict.”
Gardner tackled the ongoing conflict in the Middle East and emphasized continued collaboration between the two organizations.
“Regardless of what side we support, we agree that it is a horrible event. We try to show that we have a good relationship so that students don’t feel isolated. Rachel is graduating this year, so it’s up to the new president of MEPPA how much they want to work with us. But I hope that relationship continues,” Gardner said.
