MEDIA CONTACT:Barbara T. Conte

  561-297-3189, conte@fau.edu

FAU Students Participate in Bike2Belarus

Fundraising Event to Raise Money for Children Affected by Chernobyl

            BOCA RATON, FL (April 20, 2006) – Three students from Florida Atlantic University’s College of Business’ Delta Sigma Pi Business Fraternity will participate in a major humanitarian event in Eastern Europe called “Bike2Belarus,” which will take place this summer from June 4 to June 12.  FAU students Nathan Powers, Christina Rodrigues and Geno Roefaro will join university students from all over Europe to raise money for children’s projects in post-Chernobyl Belarus.

            Belarus is located east of Poland and west of Russia.  Before dawn on April 26, 1986, the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant’s number four reactor exploded, contaminating tens of thousands of square miles, with 70% of the radioactive material landing on Belarusian soil.  The fallout, causing 400 times more radioactivity than was released by Hiroshima and an epidemic of cancer in the children of southern Belarus, was the worst nuclear accident and the worst environmental disaster in the history of mankind.

            The Bike2Belarus event is being held by the Students 10K, an organization of students from colleges and universities in Ireland.  Since it began in 2000, the humanitarian organization has built a solarium at a Belarusian orphanage, provided buses, ambulances, radiation monitoring equipment, medical support, and built a sensory garden and kitchens at Belarusian orphanages.  The goal of this year’s event is to raise enough funds to create a hospice program, including buildings, medical and support staff, transport vehicles, home support services and bereavement counseling, for the entire territories bordering the Chernobyl Radiation Zone.

            “This will truly be a once-in-a-lifetime, life-changing event for these students,” said Barbara Conte, chapter advisor for Delta Sigma Pi.  “We believe understanding of, and participation in, international events by our students is increasingly important in the world, and it also instills in them the importance of helping others.  I am especially looking forward to the workshop the students will hold upon their return to share their experiences.”

            The FAU team, which will also include faculty member Dr. Mike Mullen, FAU’s Fulbright Scholar to Ireland, and former M.B.A. student Robert Keller, will bike from Minsk, the capital of Belarus, to Gomel, which is located near the contaminated zone, and also visit the projects already funded by the Students 10K.  The FAU students are members of the Zeta Phi Chapter of Delta Sigma Pi, the nation’s largest professional business fraternity.  Each student must raise enough funds to cover all expenses and to make a significant donation to the hospice program. 

            For more information, contact Barbara Conte at 561-297-3189, conte@fau.edu, or visit www.bike2belarus.com.   To make a donation to Delta Sigma Pi, contact Barbara Conte and send to 201 Fleming Hall, FAU College of Business, Boca Raton, Florida, 33431.

-FAU-

FAU’s College of Business is the only college in its seven county service area that is accredited at any level by the nation's preeminent accrediting agency for business schools, the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) International.  The College of Business is one of the largest colleges at FAU and one of the largest AACSB accredited colleges of business in the nation.