Last Thursday, Muslim American Society Urbana-Champaign (MASUC) hosted an open mic night for Hearts4Humanity, a campaign raising money for the Rohingya victims of mass genocide.

MASUC hosted the event in the basement of the Channing Murray Foundation. It started at six p.m. and lasted until eight. The event opened with a brief rundown of the Rohingya refugee disaster.

Following that, parents, college students, high school students, and children shared poetry and their emotions on the Rohingya crisis, and other topics relating to the themes of struggle, oppression, hope, and justice. Muslims and people of other beliefs alike presented their thoughts.

According to Al-Jazeera, a news organization, the Rohingya crisis has been ongoing since the 1970’s in the country of Myanmar. The Rohingya people were rejected from the state and were not included in the list of ethnic groups living in Myanmar. Hundreds of thousands of the Rohingya people have fled Myanmar due to prosecution and violence. Myanmar’s military has murdered thousands of the terrorized group, raped women and murdered children, and burned down hundreds of villages in the Rakhine state of Myanmar, a western coastal region where the Rohingya live.

Hearts4Humanity is a fundraiser that MAS chapters everywhere, including MASUC, have been raising money for over the last month. The donations are going to aid and support groups of the Rohingya refugees (Islamic Relief USA for example).

The Urbana-Champaign Chapter raised over three hundred fifty dollars at the Open Mic Night, and since the fundraiser began, MASUC has raised over thirty thousand dollars total. Fundraising events included the ‘Paint Nites’, a community dinner and the Open Mic Night.

Yesterday, in a facebook post, the MAS organization announced that they raised total $157,983.