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Douglas Campbell ’86 is the executive director of Hands Together, a nonprofit organization that engages volunteers in service to the poor of Haiti. Hands Together was born at Lafayette College in the mid-1980s, when the College’s Catholic chaplain, Father Tom Hagan, O.S.F.S., took a group of students to Haiti. Father Tom wanted the students to experience firsthand the suffering of the country’s impoverished people. Campbell, who was one of these students, says it changed his life.
“Like many students at the time, I was in a little cocoon. Afterward, I began to think about how I could use my life to help others and have been involved with the program ever since,” says Campbell, who earned an A.B. in economics and an M.Ed. from Springfield College in Massachusetts.
From the first student groups whose visits to Haiti involved some volunteer work but were primarily experiential, Hands Together has grown to sponsor a wide range of projects, including medical clinics and schools, water projects, care and education for street boys, and feeding the elderly. Doctors, nurses, engineers, and builders are among the volunteers who visit and work at project sites, and 220 Haitians are employed by Hands Together. The group collaborates with other organizations on some of the projects, and its work is funded entirely by donations.
“A small handful of students can make such a difference in this world,” says Campbell. “Lafayette should be proud for giving birth to Hands Together.”