MIT student making sleeping bags for refugees

COLLIN BINKLEY

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — It wasn’t enough to send warm wishes to refugees in Syria. Vick Liu wanted to send them actual warmth.

The sophomore at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is creating a new line of sleeping bags designed for refugees who have few other options to keep warm during harsh winters in the Middle East. An avid backpacker in his youth, Liu came up with the idea last year after reading about Syrian families who were struggling to survive freezing temperatures after fleeing the country’s civil war.

“The only way for them to create heat is through fire and through blankets,” said Liu, a 19-year-old finance and political science student. “It’s tough to stay warm at 15 degrees Fahrenheit (-9 C) with a couple blankets.”

Freezing temperatures in Syria and surrounding countries have been blamed for causing hypothermia and some refugee deaths in recent years.

The United Nations says up to 4 million refugees in the Middle East face “extreme risk” this winter, but that only a quarter are expected to get assistance preparing for the cold.

To help, Liu and a team of five classmates recently raised $17,000 to manufacture 250 bedrolls and send them to resettlement areas in northwest Syria.

They’ll be distributed in December by Nu Day Syria, a non-profit group based in New Hampshire that provides medical supplies and everyday items to refugees in Syria.

The group partnered with Liu after hearing from families who feared a repeat of last year’s winter, one of the worst in recent history.

Workers say even a sleeping bag can make a major difference for refugees who had to flee home without warm clothing and who can’t afford fuel for gas heaters.

“We have 8-year-old children saying, ‘I don’t want my brother to die,’ ” said Huda Alawa, grants and logistics co-ordinator for the group. “It’s a very tangible fear because it’s something they’ve seen happen already.”

The project joins other efforts to help refugees through the winter, including programs by the UN and other nonprofits that distribute blankets and warm clothing.

Liu’s work began last year in his dorm room, where the Los Angeles native crafted a prototype using a sewing machine and materials stashed under his bed.

His final product is called the TravlerPack, a lightweight sleeping bag that’s filled with duck down insulation and can handle temperatures as low as -9 C. Each one costs about $50 to make and distribute.

BERLIN — Scientists say thousands of chicks from an Adelie penguin colony in the eastern Antarctic died of starvation last summer — the second such die-off in over 40 years.

Yan Ropert-Coudert, a marine ecologist with the French science agency CNRS who led the research, said Sunday that the “catastrophic breeding failure” occurred because unusually large amounts of sea ice forced penguin parents to travel farther to search for food.

By the time they returned, only two chicks had survived.

The environmental group WWF, which supported the research, is urging governments meeting in Hobart, Australia, this week to approve a marine protection area off East Antarctica.

Ropert-Coudert says such a protection zone wouldn’t prevent larger-than-usual sea ice, but it might ease the pressure on penguins from tourism and over-fishing. The Associated Press