LET US PRAY FOR HAITI!!

To you all out there. lets us pray for the people of Haiti. This has happen close to Home,God's a great God, and we need to pray that lives will be saved, and God will grant unto them peace in the time of storm. It's now 9:46 P.M. And one can imagine the fear on those folks at this time of the night. This is not a nice picture to look at. We all know of the situation there, and the way these folks suffer many different situation.

PLEASE LET US PRAY

Yes Rosie, our thoughts and prayers are with all of those who have been affected by the earthquake.

I was just listening to the news and it is the anniversary of the 1907 earthquake which devestated Kingston reminding us all of how this could have been us.

The following is an excerpt from The Gleaner letting us know Jamaica did feel the quake, however, thankfully no damage done.

Jamaica feels big Haitian quake

Jamaicans living in coastal areas across the island were put on high alert last night after a magnitude 7.0 earthquake rocked neighbouring Haiti hours earlier, triggering a tsunami watch for four Caribbean nations.

Prime Minister Bruce Golding was briefed on the developments by director general of the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management, Ronald Jackson.

He said the prime minister instructed the agency look at ways in which it could support Haiti.

The Earthquake Unit at the Mona campus of the University of the West Indies reported that two aftershocks, measuring magnitude 5.5 and 5.9, were felt in sections of the Corporate Area, St Thomas, St Mary and Portland.

The magnitude 7.0 earthquake was reportedly felt near the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince at 4:53 p.m.

This led the Pacific Warning Centre to issue a tsunami watch for Haiti, Cuba, the Dominican Republic and the Bahamas. It was lifted late last night.

I am praying.

A PRAYER FOR HAITI.

Almighty God, today I come before you, humble as I bowed. God I'm here on the behalf of this nation of Haiti. Oh God, we know you rule the Universe. We know You are our shelter in time of storm. Oh God, I ask you to look down on this nation that's in great distress. Hear them oh God as they cry out to you, have mercy upon them. Lord, there are many that is crying buried under rubble, hear them oh God, and comfort their hearts until help can reach them. God, I give you thanks that you had held the Ocean from coming ashore on other Islands. God, you're a Mighty God, and I know that Mighty God can do mighty things.Heavenly Father, there was a voice saying" This is the end of the World" But God help us to be ready for that final Judgement day, when this world shall pass away...God I thank you for the lives that were saved, and I pray that lives that were lost, the souls will have peace with you. Amen

What terrible news. Those of you who went through Ivan or Dean (or Charley or Wilma, etc, etc), and those like me who watched form the sidelines while our loved ones experienced it, know how devastating natural disasters can be and how vital assistance is to the survivors.

To that end, I'd like to pass along this email I received from the American Red Cross today. If you are able, consider donating to their relief efforts. And please send the link to others who can help.

Tonight, a disaster struck the capital of Haiti and surrounding areas where 2 million people live. We’ve been in touch with Red Cross staff on the ground, who report collapsing buildings and aftershocks that have forced terrified people into the streets. The people of Haiti need our help.

We’ve immediately pledged an initial $200,000 from our International Response Fund to provide food, water and other relief to people impacted by this earthquake, knowing the first 48 hours are absolutely critical to save lives.

Please make a donation now to the International Response Fund to help victims of countless crises like the earthquake in Haiti. Your gift will provide immediate relief and long-term support through supplies, technical assistance and other support to help those in need.

We must be prepared to take further action as local responders assess the situation. Red Cross volunteers will work throughout the night to reach survivors trapped in their homes. And based on the needs they find, the American Red Cross will provide additional support, including relief supplies from our global warehouses.

Your donation of any size could help save the day by providing food, water, temporary shelter, medical services and emotional support to someone in need.

Help provide hope amidst destruction and give the gift that saves the day:

http://american.redcross.org/haiti

Thank you again for your generous support,


David Meltzer
Senior Vice President
International Services
American Red Cross

You can also send donations via text message:

DONATING AID & COMFORT TO HAITIAN SURVIVAL

At times like these, we who sense the precariousness of life lived at the edge of the sea, accepting the fact that we live along "faults" that consumed Port Royal and devastated Kingston in 1907, the feeling of rafting along the waves even some morsel and means of shelter to our neighbours is palpable.

Here are some tried and true Relief agencies and Disaster Helpers, which might provide us a tangible way to reach out.
It is edited from a partial list assembled by the Huffington Post.

President Obama said on Tuesday that his "thoughts and prayers" were with the people of Haiti. "We are closely monitoring the situation and we stand ready to assist the people of Haiti," Obama said in a statement. The Obama administration said that the State Department, USAID and the U.S. military were working to coordinate an assessment of the situation and any possible assistance.

Huffington Post Impact is working to collect a comprehensive list of links and ways to get involved in relief efforts, detailed below.

•The American Red Cross is pledging an initial $200,000 to assist communities impacted by this earthquake. They expect to provide immediate needs for food, water, temporary shelter, medical services and emotional support. They are accepting donations through their International Response Fund

•UNICEF has issued a statement that "Children are always the most vulnerable population in any natural disaster, and UNICEF is there for them." UNICEF requests donations for relief for children in Haiti via their Haiti Earthquake Fund. You can also call 1-800-4UNICEF
.
•Donate through Wyclef Jean's foundation, Yele Haiti. Text "Yele" to 501501 and $5 will be charged to your phone bill and given to relief projects through the organization.

•Operation USA is appealing for donations of funds from the public and corporate donations in bulk of health care materials, water purification supplies and food supplements which it will ship to the region from its base in the Port of Los Angeles. Donate online at www.opusa.org, by phone at 1-800-678-7255 or, by check made out to Operation USA, 3617 Hayden Ave, Suite A, Culver City, CA 90232.

•Ben Stiller's Stillerstrong campaign will be temporarily diverting all donations to support the Haiti relief effort.

•Partners In Health reports its Port-au-Prince clinical director , Louise Ivers, has appealed for assistance: "Port-au-Prince is devastated, lot of deaths. SOS. SOS... Temporary field hospital by us at UNDP needs supplies, pain meds, bandages. Please help us." Donate to their Haiti earthquake fund.

•Doctors Without Borders is on the ground and has set up clinics to treat injured in Haiti. Donate any amount so they can keep their efforts going.

•Direct Relief is committing up to $1 million in aid for the response and is coordinating with its other in-country partners and colleague organizations. Their partners in Haiti include Partners in Health, St. Damien Children's Hospital, and the Visitation Hospital, which are particularly active in emergency response. Donate to Direct Relief online.

•Oxfam is rushing in teams from around the region to respond to the situation to provide clean water, shelter, sanitation and help people recover. Donate to Oxfam America online

•The UN World Food Programme is gathering all available resources to deliver food to the recently homeless and impoverished in Haiti. Donate now to help bring food to those affected as quickly and efficiently as possible.

•The Baptist Haiti Mission is operating an 82-bed hospital that is "overflowing with injured." Donate online to BHM and 100% of your donation will go to the relief effort.

•International Medical Corps is assembling a team of first responders and resources to provide lifesaving medical care and other emergency services to survivors of the earthquake. Donate online

•Partners in Health is on the ground, with their clinical director organizing supplies and gathering staff from the Central Plateau. They work to combat disease and poverty and already have a strong presence in Haiti. Give to Partners in Health to support these efforts.

•Donate to Catholic Relief Services

•Give to the American Jewish World Service's Earthquake Relief Fund.

•CARE is deploying emergency team members to Port-au-Prince today to assist in recovery efforts. They're focusing their efforts on rescuing children who may still be trapped in schools that collapsed. Donate to CARE

PARTNERS IN HEALTH: BACKDROP TO CONTEMPORARY HAITI

Within the bounty of prominent Relief and Aid organizations, there exists an enduring one, which captures the very existence of the tragedies in Haiti.
It is Partners in Health (http://www.pih.org/home2.html), whose inspirational founder, Paul Farmer was the subject of the book Mountain Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder

An Interview/Conversation with Tracy Kidder from Book Browse follows:

How did you meet\ Paul Farmer, and what made you want to write about him?
I met him in Haiti in 1994. I was doing a story on American soldiers sent there to reinstate the country’s democratically elected government. Farmer showed up one night at the barracks and got into an argument with the commander. I wasn’t very interested in him then, but a few weeks later I ran into him on the plane to Miami and I began to learn some of the outlines of his life, which I found very interesting.
Farmer was the second of six children, and spent most of his childhood in Florida, the whole family living on a bus and a houseboat that was moored in a bayou on the Gulf Coast. He went to Duke on a full scholarship, and then, while he was earning his M.D. and Ph.D at Harvard, he conceived and helped to build an amazing health care system in one of the poorest corners of Haiti.
Around the time when I met him, he and his small band of colleagues were about to go to war against the dominant ideologies in international health — eventually they’d actually win some significant battles.

And I was drawn to the man himself. He worked extraordinary hours. In fact, I don’t think he sleeps more than an hour or two most nights Here was a person who seemed to be practicing more than he preached, who seemed to be living, as nearly as any human being can, without hypocrisy.
A challenging person, the kind of person whose example can irritate you by making you feel you’ve never done anything as important, and yet, in his presence, those kinds of feelings tended to vanish. In the past, when I’d imagined a person with credentials like his, I’d imagined someone dour and self-righteous, but he was very friendly and irreverent, and quite funny. He seemed like someone I’d like to know, and I thought that if I did my job well, a reader would feel that way, too.

My favorite teacher once used to talk about how writers often have their best stories bestowed upon them, seemingly by accident. I felt as though, in meeting Farmer, I’d been offered a rare opportunity.

What was Farmer’s initial response to your wanting to write a book about him and his work?
I think the idea made him uncomfortable. At any rate, it took him some months to make the decision. I can’t speak for him, but I think he agreed mainly because he was persuaded by some of his closest friends that a book about his life and work might bring attention both to the issues that he cares most about and also to the little organization that he helped to create — Partners In Health.

What was involved in doing the research for this book?
A lot of time in airplanes. I traveled with Farmer to Haiti more times than I can now remember. I also went with him twice to Moscow, and to Siberia, to Peru, to Cuba, to Paris, to Chiapas in Mexico, to Montreal and New York City and, many times, to Boston. And I went to Geneva, Switzerland, with one of his closest colleagues.

I also visited his mother and some of his siblings, and the places of his childhood. I interviewed dozens of people. And I read a great deal, about medicine and public health, about the places where Farmer works, especially about Haiti.

What does the title, "Mountains Beyond Mountains", mean?
The title comes from a Haitian proverb, which is usually translated as: "Beyond the mountains, more mountains." According to Farmer, a better translation is: "Beyond mountains there are mountains."

I first heard the proverb from Farmer, and I remember that he told me, "The Haitians, of course, use it in a zillion different ways." Sometimes it’s used to express the idea that opportunities are inexhaustible, and sometimes as a way of saying that when you surmount one great obstacle you merely gain a clear view of the next one. Of course, those two meanings aren’t inconsistent, and I meant to imply both in the title. To me, the phrase expresses something fundamental about the spirit and the scale and the difficulty of Farmer’s work. The Haitian proverb, by the way, is also a pretty accurate description of the topography of a lot of Haiti, certainly as I experienced it in my hikes with Farmer through the mountains of the central plateau.

Farmer didn’t have a conventional upbringing. Tell us more about that. Do you think Farmer’s childhood was influential in the path he’s chosen?
Farmer’s father was a great big man, a ferociously competitive athlete nicknamed Elbows by people who played basketball with him, a sometime salesman and school teacher, with a lot of unconventional ideas and an absolutely pig-headed determination to have his family live by them. He took his family to a town north of Tampa, Florida, where for about five years they all lived in a bus in a campground. Then he took them to a bayou on the Gulf Coast where all eight of them lived in a leaky old 50 foot-long boat. As a boy, Farmer thrived in these unusual circumstances. He was a tall, skinny kid and he disappointed his father by not being much of an athlete, but he excelled in every intellectual department. He seems to have been precocious spiritually as well.
At 11 he was given a copy of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, which he read and then immediately re-read in the space of a few days. Then he took it to the public library and said to the woman at the desk, "I want more books like this." She gave him adventure and fantasy novels and he kept coming back and saying, "This isn’t it." Finally, she gave him Tolstoy’s War and Peace, which he devoured, at the age of 11. It wasn’t adventure or fantasy that interested him; it was the epic struggle between good and evil.
He didn’t have the words to say that then. Returning the library’s copy of War and Peace, he simply told the librarian, "This is it! This is just like Lord of the Rings."

It was a childhood full of family adventures and misadventures and completely unconventional. Farmer himself didn’t like to make too much of the connections between his background and the life he chose. At the very least, though, that childhood was good preparation for a life of travel and doctoring in difficult places like Haiti. He emerged from living on a boat in a bayou with what he called a "very compliant GI system," and from dinners of hot dog bean soup without much fussiness about food, and from years of cramped quarters with the ability to concentrate anywhere. He could sleep in a dentist’s chair, as he did at night for most of one summer in a clinic in Haiti, and consider it an improvement over other places he had slept, and I imagine that his fondness for a fine hotel and a good bottle of wine had the same origins.

There were other advantages, Farmer insisted. The kind of father who thought it reasonable to house his family in a bus, then a boat, was also the kind who saw no reason his son shouldn’t keep a large acquarium inside. Farmer insisted that he never really felt deprived throughout his childhood, though he did admit, "It was pretty strange." After living through some of his father’s very public misadventures, it was hard to feel embarrassed or shy in front of anyone. He allowed that growing up as he did also probably relieved him of a homing instinct. "I never had a sense of a home town. It was, ‘This is my campground.’ Then I got to the bottom of the barrel, and it was ‘Oh, this is my hometown.’" He meant the central plateau of Haiti.

In your travels with Farmer, what most surprised and interested you? Did you learn something from the experience?
The thing about travel with Farmer is that you don’t visit the brochure sights. His itinerary is pretty much restricted to visiting hospitals, slums, and prisons. The dreadful places of the world. I hadn’t imagined that there were so many of those, and I hadn’t known just how dreadful they were. But the trips weren’t dreary and depressing, because Farmer and his colleagues were doing something tangible, something meaningful, something that was actually improving those places. This was especially true in Haiti and Peru. I’d say that I learned two things above all. That medicine and public health are a powerful lens for looking at the world. And that a small group of determined people can actually alter some of the pictures seen through that lens.

I think that as a very young man Farmer chose to work in one of the most impoverished parts of Haiti because he was moved by the suffering he saw there. But if he’d wanted to prove a point about what is possible in public health, he couldn’t have chosen a better site. If you can do a good thing in central Haiti, it stands to reason that you can do it anywhere. And what he and his friends have done and are doing in Haiti — and elsewhere - is nothing short of remarkable.

Has your life or outlook about life changed as a result of spending time with Farmer and writing this book?
One of my favorite characters in this book is a woman named Ophelia Dahl.
She met Paul Farmer when she was 18 and he was 23. She told me that she remembered, from many years ago, deciding that Farmer was an important person to believe in. Not as a figure to watch from a distance, thinking, Oh, look, there is good in the world. Not as a comforting example, but the opposite. As proof that it was possible to put up a fight. As a goad to make others realize that if people could be kept from dying unnecessarily — from what Haitians call "stupid deaths" — then one had to act.
I don’t plan to give away all my worldly goods and go to work with Farmer in Haiti. For one thing, I’d just get in the way. But I can’t tell myself anymore that the great problems of the world, such as the AIDS and TB epidemics, are beyond all hope of amelioration, or of repair. In other words, I don’t think I can feel comfortable anymore in this world, by resigning myself to despair on behalf of billions of other people. There’s always something one can do.

It’s not my place to make a fund-raising pitch for Farmer and his organization, Partners In Health. Well, actually, I don’t know why it isn’t my place. I happened onto something remarkable and I sat down to try to describe it to others. I hope what I’ve written is artful. I believe it is at least accurate and truthful. And one true fact is that Farmer’s organization, Partners In Health, represents a real antidote to despair. A person with a little money to give away can send it to Partners In Health and be certain that it will be used well. 95 percent of the money that’s donated to Partners In Health goes to pay for direct services to people who are both destitute and sick — in Boston, in Russia, in Chiapas, in Peru, and especially in Haiti, where the poorest and the sickest people in our hemisphere reside. A donation to Partners In Health of, say, $200 will save an impoverished Haitian from dying a horrible death from tuberculosis.

How does this book differ from your other projects?
Well, for one thing this book has a pretty large geographical spread, whereas all my previous books are set in New England. And all the others are about what might be called "ordinary people." Of course, no one is ordinary. But Farmer is less ordinary than anyone I’ve ever met. This is the main reason I wrote this book in the first person, something I’d done in only one other book.
After I’d spent a lot of time with Farmer, I began to feel that altruism was plausible after all, indeed maybe even normal. But the sacrifices he’s made aren’t usual, and I knew that readers of my book would need an everyman, someone a lot less virtuous than Farmer, to interpret him and to make him believable.

Someone to testify, in effect, that this guy is for real, and someone who could register the occasional discomfort that anyone would feel in such a person’s company. Finally, although I like to think that the subjects I’ve written about in my other books are important, I don’t think there’s much question but that the subject of this book is more important. After all, what it’s about at bottom is the attempt of one small group of people to heal a sick world.

Farmer doesn’t work alone. He is surrounded by some extraordinary people. Can you tell us a little about some of them?
There are more than a thousand people working for Partners In Health these days. They range from Haitian peasants who have been trained as community health workers to extremely bright young American epidemiologists, medical students, and doctors, who have enlisted to work in places such as central Haiti and Siberia and the slums of Lima, Peru - some of them work for nothing, some earn much less than they could elsewhere and some raise their own salaries through grants.

Ophelia Dahl has been involved in Farmer’s work from the start, and she’s a crucial member of Partners In Health, the manager, the peacekeeper. She’s a warm and charming person, and she knows how to manage Farmer and Farmer’s colleague, Jim Yong Kim.
Kim is, like Farmer, a Brigham doctor. He joined up only a few months after Partners In Health was founded. He’s brilliant, an inspiring speaker, a fountain of ideas, and indefatigable.

Finally, and maybe most important, there’s a man named Tom White. He built a small family business into one of the largest heavy construction firms in Boston. He and Farmer met when Farmer was still a doctor in training. He founded Partners In Health along with Farmer and until recently provided most of the money for its projects, millions and millions of dollars over the past 20 years. White is in his eighties now, and has given away almost all of his large fortune.
He told me once, "Sometimes I think how much money I used to have before I met Paul and Jim. But that’s all right. If I go to a restaurant and they give me a steak, I can only eat half of it anymore." He plans, he told me, to leave this life without a nickel. I think it’s accurate to say that White has lifted death sentences from thousands of people, and the organization, the movement, that he helped to start may in the end save millions.

My thoughts and prayers are with the people of Haiti and all others that were there doing their humanitarian goodwill.
To the families of all I ask God to give them the strength and courage to do the work that lies ahead because it will be a long painful struggle but, there is nothing that they and God cannot handle.
I will be among the many that has and will be giving and, I know there are so many of you that will be doing the same.

May Gods Blessing be with each and everyone as we reach out to help.

NON GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS OPERATING IN HAITI

Dr Farmer Paul, founder of Partners In Health, author of "The Uses of Haiti", and currently the UN Deputy Envoy to Haiti, in a cautionary warning, had some profound things to say about NGOs in Haiti.

This comes at a time when, in anxious desperation, many wheels are spinning and lurching, and so many agencies are making appeals.

PORTION OF DR FARMER'S INTERVIEW WITH MEDIAHACKER (OCT.4, 2009)

Mediahacker: I talked to somebody ...saying that he doesn’t think a lot of the NGOs here are really accountable...

Farmer: I think that’s true. I think that’s a very very important point, is that there is not an accountability mechanism for NGOs. And so we rely on the goodwill of NGOs but that’s not enough. First of all we need proper coordination.
We’ve got 9 or 10 thousand NGOs in Haiti, you know, that’s the highest ratio per capita maybe in the world...

And as someone who works in an NGO, I just do not think we have accountability mechanisms for our work. And I could make a simple suggestion to improve it, and that is, we need to support the public sector.
Like for example, you can’t have public health without a public sector. You can’t have public education without a public sector. I don’t think you can have good water projects without the public sector. So that’s the struggle I think that NGOs can get involved in too.
Just because we’re in the private sector as non-governmental organizations doesn’t mean we have to regard the public sector as somehow competing. We’re supposed to be competing to serve the basic rights notions, and that’s not going to happen without strengthening the public sector.

You know, not to be too theoretical about it, but when you talk about rights like the right to healthcare. Well, who confers rights? It’s not NGOs, it’s not universities. It’s the government. So if we’re undermining, wittingly or unwittingly, the government we’re doing a disservice, I think, to the basic notion of rights to healthcare, education. Those are the things I know about – healthcare and education – much more than some of the other rights that are also important and fought for very hard for Haitians for over two centuries.
So that’s the, if I could say, the theoretical underpinning for having NGOs be accountable – is be accountable to the poor and people in general, whether poor or not poor, should be able to elect who they want and then have other accountability mechanisms but we need them too in the NGO sector. And you know, unfortunately, NGOs have not always been welcoming of any kind of accountability.

Mediahacker: I wonder if you would agree with the statement that some forces in general historically – foreign forces and also corporate forces have not been accountable to the people of Haiti and have undermined the government –

Farmer: I have to say that there’s a long list of people – who say forces who haven’t been accountable to the Haitian people. This started a long time ago ... Again, in the so-called private sector as well, because the private sector includes churches and NGOs and you know, we can do better.

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As we look to the future rebuilding of lives, homes and small enterprises around Port-au-Prince and environs, a favoured NGO, Architecture for Humanity and their volunteer corps will most assuredly make its presence felt.

www.architectureforhumanity.org/node/1318

In the US, unfortunately, tragedies like this are always exploited for personal gain by people who pretend to collect funds for relief, then pocket them. I want to believe that Jamaicans are more honorable---but--the list given here by Zed is a good one. Please give ONLY to legitimate organizations on this list and you'll know your hard earned help is received.

Love and sorrow for our suffering brothers and sisters.

Thanks for this great list, Zed.

Here is the list of charities suggested by MSNBC; I've done my best to add live links and telephone numbers.

• Action Against Hunger, http://www.actionagainsthunger.org/where-we-work/haiti 877-777-1420
• American Red Cross, http://www.redcross.org 800-733-2767
• American Jewish World Service, http://ajws.org 212-792-2900
• AmeriCares, 800-486-4357
• Beyond Borders, http://www.beyondborders.net/index.php 866-424-8403
• CARE, http://www.care.org 800-521-2273
• CarmaFoundation http://www.carmafoundation.org
• Catholic Relief Services, http://crs.org 800-736-3467
• Childcare Worldwide, http://www.childcareworldwide.org 800-553-2328
• Concern Worldwide, http://www.concernusa.org/Default.aspx 212-557-8000
• Cross International, http://www.crossinternational.org 800-391-8545
• Direct Relief International, http://www.directrelief.org/EmergencyResponse/2010/EarthquakeHaiti.aspx 805-964-4767
• Doctors Without Borders, http://doctorswithoutborders.org/news/allcontent.cfm?id=31 888-392-0392
• Feed My Starving Children, http://www.fmsc.org/Page.aspx?pid=398 763-504-2919
• Food for the Poor, http://www.foodforthepoor.org 800-427-9104
• Friends of WFP, http://www.friendsofwfp.org/site/c.hrKJIXPFIqE/b.5026977/k.34A2/Emergency_Relief _and_Response.htm 866-929-1694
• Haiti Children, https://www.haitichildren.com 877-424-8454
• Haiti Marycare, http://www.haitimarycare.org/index.htm 203-675-4770
• Haitian Health Foundation, http://www.haitianhealthfoundation.org 860-886-4357
• Hope for Haiti, http://www.hopeforhaiti.com 239-434-7183
• International Medical Corps, http://www.imcworldwide.org/Page.aspx?pid=183 800-481-4462 • International Rescue Committee, http://www.theirc.org 877-733-8433
• International Relief Teams, http://www.irteams.org/index.htm 619-284-7979
• Lutheran World Relief, http://www.lwr.org/index.asp 800-597-5972
• Medical Teams International, http://www.medicalteams.org/sf/Home.aspx 800-959-4325
• Meds and Food for Kids, http://mfkhaiti.org 314-420-1634
• Mennonite Central Committee, http://mcc.org/stories/news/mcc-respond-haiti-earthquake-donations-welcome 888-563-4676
• Mercy Corps, 888-256-1900 (Their website is currently down.)
• Operation Blessing, http://community.ob.org/site/PageServer 800-730-2537
• Operation USA, http://www.opusa.org 800-678-7255
• Oxfam, http://www.oxfamamerica.org 800-776-9326
• Partners in Health, http://www.pih.org/home.html 617-432-5298
• Rural Haiti Project, http://www.ruralhaitiproject.org/index.html 347-405-5552
• The Salvation Army, http://www.salvationarmyusa.org/usn/www_usn_2.nsf 800-725-2769
• Samaritan's Purse, http://www.samaritanspurse.org 828-262-1980
• Save the Children, http://www.savethechildren.org 800-728-3843
• UN Central Emergency Response Fund, http://ochaonline.un.org/cerf/CERFHome/tabid/1705/language/en-US/Default.aspx
• UNICEF, https://secure.unicefusa.org/site/Donation2?df_id=6680&6680.donation=form1 800-367-5437
• World Concern, http://www.worldconcern.org 800-755-5022
• World Hope International, https://www.worldhope.org 888-466-4673
• World Relief, http://worldrelief.org/Page.aspx?pid=192 800-535-5433
• World Vision, http://www.worldvision.org 888-511-6548
• Yele Haiti, http://www.yele.org 212-352-0552
Wyclef Jean's grassroots org
Text Yele to 501 501 to donate $5 via your cellphone

Noir, blanc, jaune et rouge. Nous sommes maintenant tous les Haïtiens.

ARCHITECTURE FOR HUMANITY:Design Like You Give A Damn

As the hard, long slough of the Haitian Relief & Restoration effort gets underway, with so much Planning, Environmental, Design- Construction & Humanity "violations" cruelly exposed, here are some
VIDEO LINKS of an NGO which really seems to get it, and listens to local wisdom.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEN_zIH2JaM

This link just happens to have a a conspiratorial commentary on a community-scaled & empowered, trickle-up design of a an athletic field in a developing country. (Try not to think "Sports Park")

www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdcqEjmuxjA


"It is highly feasible to take care of all humanity at a higher
standard of living than anyone has ever experienced or dreamt of. To do so without anybody profiting at the expense of another, so that everybody can enjoy the whole earth"
Samuel "Sambo" Mockbee...Architect, before his death, with the Rural Studio, Alabama, USA

"Today, I'm ever more conscious of social and ecological aspects of design; the intelligent use of energy, the sustainability of materials, the conditions of production. Design decisions really do play a vital role in the care of our planet.
I believe in authenticity of design; in knowing why one approach is truthful and another false, in the marriage of function, wit, culture, and value. I love the fun of discovery and innovation in collaborating with my client."
Roger ("Authentic Design") duRand

This is absolutely the talk of Jamaica as we are all feeling the pain for our neighbors. Thank you to Eric and Zed for providing this information.

There has also been bank accounts set up here for donations. I heard this on the radio as I was driving today so I was unable to take the information down. If/when I hear more I will pass the information on to all of you.

As Eric stated, we all very clearly remember what we went through during Ivan and Dean and now sympathize so much with our neighbors. I've had many a conversation today remembering how many roofs we lost, but few lost their whole house. One man said, "If I lost my house I would not be able to replace it." I thought, how true that is of so many here where we are so much more blessed than those in Haiti.

We hope and pray they will receive the same love and support we recieved from all of you during time of extreme need.

We are so blessed. Let us share some of our blessings with our Haitian neighbors.

Thanks to Miss Kennedy for posting this list, especially since she is collecting for the scholarship students of Treasure Beach.

...BUT FOR THE GRACE OF GOD, GO WE: SEISMIC SHOCK:

As more and more Donor Organizations crop up appealing for aid to Haiti, we must be aware that sympathetic and broken-hearted bystanders are vulnerable to the bandalus at the gate.

Charitable Giving Guidelines
(from WUSA9/1.13.10)

To make sure your hard earned money goes to a legitimate relief organization, the Federal Trade Commission recommends you follow these guidelines.

CHARITABLE ORGANIZATIONS
(Geared to US-based donors)

o Check out the charity before you open your checkbook.

o The Better Business Bureau, Charity Navigator and the American Institute of Philanthropy are just a few of the resources available for you to use.

o Visit the National Association of State Charity Officials to see if the charity is regulated.

o Be cautious of charities that spring up overnight related to current events or natural disasters. They may not have the infrastructure to get the donations to the affected areas or people.

o High pressure appeals are a red flag. Legitimate charities will not push you to give on the spot.

o If you are solicited for a donation, ask if the caller is a paid fundraiser, who they work for, and what percentage of your donation will go to the charity. If you the answers are vague or unclear, consider donating to a different charity.

o Scammers will create phony charities using similar sounding names of legitimate ones. If there's a slight difference in the name, call the organization you know to check it out.

o Know the difference between "tax-exempt" and "tax deductible." Tax-exempt means the organization does not have to pay taxes. Tax deductible means you can deduct your contribution on your federal income tax return. And, make sure you ask for a receipt.

o For security and tax purposes, make a check payable to the charity not the solicitor.


Here are some additional FBI Cautions on "Relief E-Mails":
(from the Huffington Post/1.13.10)

With the outpouring of generosity spawned by the earthquake in Haiti, the FBI has released a brief message cautioning donors against being scammed.

The FBI today reminds Internet users who receive appeals to donate money in the aftermath of Tuesday's earthquake in Haiti to apply a critical eye and do their due diligence before responding to those requests. Past tragedies and natural disasters have prompted individuals with criminal intent to solicit contributions purportedly for a charitable organization and/or a good cause.

Therefore, before making a donation of any kind, consumers should adhere to certain guidelines, to include the following:

•Do not respond to any unsolicited (spam) incoming e-mails, including clicking links contained within those messages.

•Be skeptical of individuals representing themselves as surviving victims or officials asking for donations via e-mail or social networking sites.

•Verify the legitimacy of nonprofit organizations by utilizing various Internet-based resources that may assist in confirming the group's existence and its nonprofit status rather than following a purported link to the site.

•Be cautious of e-mails that claim to show pictures of the disaster areas in attached files because the files may contain viruses. Only open attachments from known senders.

For a moment I was wondering if god had a purpose why this earthquake hit Haiti, I watch CNN and see the help Haiti is now getting from all over the world.. Then I asked myself was this the reason for the quake, for the world to start helping those poor people of that country? The buildings there are so weak its amazing, and then the believe of these people, voodo and stuff was that the reason. For Jamaicans its like a movie, we heard about port royal back in the days, and other places in asia but never experience it so real, Now we realize how powerfull god is, so let take note,, I still pray for Haiti they need prayer...

"MOUNTAINS BEYOND MOUNTAINS" AUTHOR TRACY KIDDER

Country Without a Net

THOSE who know a little of Haiti’s history might have watched the news last night and thought, as I did for a moment: “An earthquake? What next? Poor Haiti is cursed.”

But while earthquakes are acts of nature, extreme vulnerability to earthquakes is manmade. And the history of Haiti’s vulnerability to natural disasters — to floods and famine and disease as well as to this terrible earthquake — is long and complex, but the essence of it seems clear enough.

Haiti is a country created by former slaves, kidnapped West Africans, who, in 1804, when slavery still flourished in the United States and the Caribbean, threw off their cruel French masters and created their own republic.

Haitians have been punished ever since for claiming their freedom: by the French who, in the 1820s, demanded and received payment from the Haitians for the slave colony, impoverishing the country for years to come; by an often brutal American occupation from 1915 to 1934; by indigenous misrule that the American government aided and abetted. (In more recent years American administrations fell into a pattern of promoting and then undermining Haitian constitutional democracy.)

Hence the current state of affairs: at least 10,000 private organizations perform supposedly humanitarian missions in Haiti, yet it remains one of the world’s poorest countries.

Some of the money that private aid organizations rely on comes from the United States government, which has insisted that a great deal of the aid return to American pockets — a larger percentage than that of any other industrialized country.

But that is only part of the problem. In the arena of international aid, a great many efforts, past and present, appear to have been doomed from the start.

There are the many projects that seem designed to serve not impoverished Haitians but the interests of the people administering the projects. Most important, a lot of organizations seem to be unable — and some appear to be unwilling — to create partnerships with each other or, and this is crucial, with the public sector of the society they’re supposed to serve.

The usual excuse, that a government like Haiti’s is weak and suffers from corruption, doesn’t hold — all the more reason, indeed, to work with the government. The ultimate goal of all aid to Haiti ought to be the strengthening of Haitian institutions, infrastructure and expertise.

This week, the list of things that Haiti needs, things like jobs and food and reforestation, has suddenly grown a great deal longer.
The earthquake struck mainly the capital and its environs, the most densely populated part of the country, where organizations like the Red Cross and the United Nations have their headquarters.
A lot of the places that could have been used for disaster relief — including the central hospital, such as it was — are now themselves disaster areas.

But there are effective aid organizations working in Haiti.

At least one has not been crippled by the earthquake. Partners in Health, or in Haitian Creole Zanmi Lasante, has been the largest health care provider in rural Haiti. (I serve on this organization’s development committee.)
It operates, in partnership with the Haitian Ministry of Health, some 10 hospitals and clinics, all far from the capital and all still intact.
As a result of this calamity, Partners in Health probably just became the largest health care provider still standing in all Haiti.

Fortunately, it also offers a solid model for independence — a model where only a handful of Americans are involved in day-to-day operations, and Haitians run the show. Efforts like this could provide one way for Haiti, as it rebuilds, to renew the promise of its revolution.

( The New York Times Company/ 1.14.2010)

80 CARIBBEAN QUAKES THIS WEEK

The United States Geological Survey's website shows there have been approximately 80 earthquakes, measuring anywhere from 2.4 to 7.0, in the Caribbean within the past week.

An online in-depth map outlines the dates, times and magnitudes of the earthquakes taking place mainly in the Hispaniola and Puerto Rico regions. Along with the major earthquake that struck Haiti on Tuesday, there was a smaller one with a magnitude of 2.5 in the Mona Passage alongside Puerto Rico.

Young science

According to Lyndon Brown, research fellow at the University of West Indies Earth-quake Unit, "Earth-quakes are always happening. There are cycles in terms of when the big events will be happening. The strength is building up and it has to be released.

"It is a young science when it comes to detecting earthquakes."

The unit did not register any other earthquakes in the region aside from what took place in Haiti.

Brown said the instruments at the Earthquake Unit are designed to detect local earthquakes. However, if the earthquakes measure 6 or 7, then the instruments will detect these events as far away as the Pacific.

Unrelated activity

"We should be able to pick up Puerto Rico," he said.

Puerto Rico and Haiti's fault systems are different, according to Brown, while Puerto Rico's activity may not be related to Haiti's.

"In terms of the motions that are taking place, it doesn't show that one is contributing to the other."

However, not all earthquakes are felt in Jamaica. If they are, then the unit notifies the ODPEM immediately.

Laura Redpath, Senior Gleaner Writer (1.14.2010)