Puerto Rican students have mobilized at Northeastern to collect monetary donations and necessary supplies to aid relief efforts on the island after it was devastated by Hurricane Maria Sept. 20.

The coalition of Northeastern students, led by fourth-year marketing and interactive media combined major Laura Camila Rivera, is spearheading an effort by students at nearby universities to raise money through a national GoFundMe page and gather sanitary supplies, batteries, food, water and other provisions to send to Puerto Rico.

“When you give people a way to help, they’re going to do it,” Rivera said.

Students at Simmons College, Boston University, Boston College, Tufts University, Massachusetts College of Art and Design and Bowdoin College have worked together toward the cause. Northeastern has served as the hub of the city-wide effort, and Rivera said so far the group has filled four Northeastern move-in carts worth of supplies in the Latino/a Student Cultural Center.

The students will end their initial collection Friday, at which point they will pack the items into plastic boxes and transport them to Puerto Rico.

The cause hits home for many of the organizers. Rivera, who is from the Puerto Rican town of Humacao, said the church where her parents are pastors has been reduced to three walls. Much of the music equipment in the church was destroyed.

“It’s hit my father particularly hard,” Rivera said.“He got the church from his father and it’s been there for 70 years.”

Ana Vazquez-Pagan, a fourth-year biology major who is also working on the campaign, is from San Juan — the capital of Puerto Rico and its largest city. She said her home and family are fine, but her neighborhood was affected.

“My neighborhood was flooded, but luckily my street wasn’t flooded,” she said. “But it’s still hard to see that.”

Vazquez-Pagan said she has been briefing her family with news on the island. While she has been able to speak with her family, it is very difficult for people on the island to communicate with one another.

The national Students with Puerto Rico GoFundMe page was founded in part by Beatrice Martinez-Godas, a student at Fordham University and one of Rivera’s closest friends from high school.

Rivera said Students with Puerto Rico originally hoped to raise $15,000. As of print time, the page had collected nearly $170,000, including a $20,000 donation from late night talk show host Jimmy Fallon.

The Northeastern group has donated $1,000 to Students with Puerto Rico, Rivera said. The rest of their funds — including more than $700 raised through a bake sale Monday and funds to be raised at a Thursday UNO Pizzeria and Grill fundraiser — will be donated to ComPRometidos and Vive Mas, two organizations working to address the crisis.

Sarai Prieto, a first-year sociology and English double major at Simmons College who lives in Puerto Rico, was introduced to the city-wide effort when she was added to a group chat by a friend at Tufts University. She worked with friends over the past week to collect pads and tampons, ramen noodles, canned beans and vegetables.

She said water, water purification tablets and water filters are in high demand.

“I’ve been communicating with my loved ones back home and it seems the thing they need the most is water,” Prieto said “There’s no drinkable water.”

Prieto said the donations she has collected at Simmons have filled 25 shipping boxes.

Mayor Martin J. Walsh and the Boston Foundation, a philanthropic organization, announced the creation of the Massachusetts United for Puerto Rico Fund, according to a Sept. 29 press release.

“Our thoughts and prayers continue to be with the Puerto Rican people, those who live here and those who are on the island, as they recover from the devastating impacts of Hurricane Maria,” Walsh said in a press release.

Vazquez-Pagan expects that the recovery process for Puerto Rico will be long.

“I know my island will flourish and I know it will get back on its feet,” she said.