Giving Them Shelter

I wrote this post late last night, before another quake hit Haiti.
It seems even more necessary now.

I was visiting BOBBIE’S blog this morning and saw a reference to a post from PAZ about helping Haiti through an organization called SHELTER BOX. I clicked over and then, to be brutally honest, I glazed over from all the desperation and pain and need.

Just now I was reading a tune post at LINDA’S and for the first time ever decided to click over to the host of the tune project. What popped open? A wonderfully detailed post about Shelter Box. What it is. How it works. How it helps.

And how we can make it happen.

You can read the post at DURWARD DISCUSSION – on her sidebar there is a link to a group of her friends who have gotten together to donate a shelter box for Haiti.

Or you can visit SHELTER BOX directly.

OK universe – I got past my glazed over period.

There is power in the blogging community and I am grateful to be able to pass on information.


a mom and her newborn waiting for help


shelter box response teams arrive in Haiti


a shelter box up and running in Haiti

photos from shelter box site

News Of My Friend In Haiti

She is OK. Her sons are OK.

Her cousin here in the states works for a Haitian charity and has been working around the clock to locate them and many others. A phone chain was set-up to pass the news along, I got the call early this morning.

Her Mom had a heart attack shortly after the earthquake and did not survive. She was elderly and in poor health, that is why my friend was there - to move her to a better place.

Without proper healthcare the very old and the very young are at risk. This was the story in Haiti even before the earthquake.

The link to Doctors Without Borders is at the top of the sidebar.

"Poverty is like punishment for a crime you did not commit" ~ Eli Khamarov



photo from time.com

Haiti

After 9/11 and Katrina I began to seriously question how relief organizations work and how they use the money people like us donate. Too much goes to administration. Outside contractors made fortunes during Katrina while the people who lived there begged for jobs. I have done work for several large groups – The Red Cross and Catholic Charities to name two and I hated the way they operated.

Sarah van Gelder wrote a piece for YES! Magazine that recommends several organizations that can be trusted to use your donations wisely …

PARTNERS IN HEALTH

OXFAM

GRASSROOTS INTERNATIONAL

ACTION AID

DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS

THE WALKING MAN left a link in comments for YELE HAITI. You can donate $5 from your cell phone or click the donate button if you can do more.

You can see Sarah’s article, as it was reprinted by Huffington Post, HERE

The article describes what each organization does.

I donated to Doctors Without Borders – Haiti’s medical capabilities appear to have been completely destroyed. Doctors Without Borders was already there when the quake hit and they have been working feverishly to save as many as they can.

When I was in Brooklyn at Christmas I ran into a woman I had worked with many years before. She and her sons were about to go back to Haiti to care for her elderly Mom. Her face was beaming as she told me how “kind and blessed” her life had become. They had put together enough money to move her mother to a decent home. I was so happy to see her and to see how happy she was. We had worked together under difficult circumstances and I remember her as always pushing people forward. Always talking about blessings and gratitude. Always offering to pray for someone as well as offering a piece of whatever little she had.

I spent all day today calling around. I finally found a mutual friend who said they are still in Haiti. A cousin here is trying to find out more.

I picture her standing there in a Brooklyn bakery on Christmas Eve and I close my eyes and hold my breath and ask the universe to please return her kindness.

“Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children. And we are all mortal” ~ John Kennedy