Gap year traveller raising awareness of Haiti earthquake effect

People around the world should make an attempt to help the aid effort following the Haiti earthquake, according to a gap year student who had to run for cover when it struck.

Iman Amrani, 19, from Cambridge, is currently volunteering in the Dominican Republic with Project Trust, just 70 miles away from the epicentre of the devastating quake which struck in January.

"I feel a bit useless just sitting and watching knowing that literally just a couple of hours away there are still people crushed under fallen buildings and people dead, dying and lost," she told Year Out Group.

However, she said that she is offering clothes and other items which might come in useful for the aid effort, while trying to raise awareness of the problems which the country is facing to friends and family back home.

She also praised the people around her in the Dominican Republic who are perceiving it to be their duty to go into the hospitals and help with the casualties who are coming across the border.

It has now been estimated that around 230,000 people have died in the devastating earthquake, with volunteers from the UK helping in the rescue operation.

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