January 31, 2010

In the wake of the earthquakes, we reached out to our friends to help the community of Les Anglais prepare for potential food shortages resulting from an influx of people from Port-au-Prince and a reduction in the flow of goods to the community. The response was overwhelming!  In only one week, we raised more than $6,500, which has been sent to our our partners in the community who are coordinating relief.

Today our Les Anglais Project Manager, Carolyn Shapiro, had a chance to talk to Etienne Francois who is coordinating the use of donated money in Les Anglais.  The news is quite encouraging!  Read more here.

It continues to remain uncertain how long it will be before our team can make it back to Les Anglais to continue the water treatment phase of our program.  The team is currently using this "down time" to catch up on scope elements that had not been prioritized before and to evaluate potential scope expansions including a sanitation project.  

We will continue to provide updates, and we encourage you to keep Haiti in your thoughts and in your discussions.  For real recovery to occur, there needs to be a sustained focus on Haiti after the immediate crisis has passed.

Concerns about food shortages in Les Anglais have been confirmed by our partners in the community.  The population of Les Anglais has swollen with internally displaced people from Port-au-Prince, and food is not reaching Les Anglais in sufficient quantities.  The situation has the potential to become dire in the coming weeks. 

Members of EWB Portland have initated a fundraising drive to help provide food aid to Les Anglais.  Please see the donation page for more details.   While EWB cannot accept donations for food aid through our non-profit certification, our members refuse to sit back and hope that other international aid finds its way to Les Anglais.  In the wake of the disastrous hurricanes in 2008, it did not.

As we keep the people of Les Anglais in our thoughts, we now have a chance to provided direct monetary support.   This support will be critical to help bring the community through this crisis and help preserve the gains our project team has made to improve health in the community.

Donations made through January 30th will be match by the generous support of an anonymous donor up to $1,500!

Please join me in donating today!

January 20, 2010

Our Haiti team has been mostly successful at contacting our partners in Port-au-Prince, and is relieved to know they are all alive and generally uninjured, though many have lost loved ones and their livelihoods. Communication has begun for how we might help  coordinate relief efforts on the ground in Haiti. We will keep our website updated with information on how to help support these efforts. Two possibilities are helping to fund phone cards to aid in communication and recruiting structural engineers for building safety inspections.

At this time, our Haiti team has delayed travel to Les Anglais until it is clear that we will be of help and not hindrance with the relief effort. This allows our team some time to consider and pursue additional engineering support for the community, such as improved sanitation facilities. We are concerned about the possibility of a food shortage in Les Anglais, as they rely heavily on supplies from Port-au-Prince.

All EWB-USA Haiti project teams have been in communication, and are identifying ways to collaborate. A few additional ways to help have been identified and include the following:

• AIDG (Appropriate Infrastructure Design Group) is looking for French-speaking engineers, especially for structural assessments. Click here for more details.
• Donate to a local hospital, affiliated with one of our contacts in Miami. Click here for more details.
• Idealist.org has identified several technology-related ways to help.

Recommended ways to donate are listed at the end of this post (please click "read below").

To our friends in Haiti and the US, you are continually in our thoughts!

January 15, 2010

We are receiving many questions about the situation in Haiti after Tuesday's devastating earthquake. Please see below for an update on the impacts of the earthquake on our contacts in Port-au-Prince and the Les Anglais community. Ways to help are also included below.

We have had some contact with our partners in Port-au-Prince and have very little information about conditions in Port-au-Prince beyond what has been reported in the news. We have received some emails out of Les Cayes and they report:  

Our hearts go out to all of our friends in Haiti and the US who are facing such hardship and loss.