Many of you have called and asked me about helping with Haiti. We are fortunate that AIM has a base in the Dominican Republic. It is about 4 hours from Port Au Prince. Our base directors from the DR have been onsite for a few days and they are busy helping wherever they can.
Please see the blog below from our Founder and Executive Director Seth Barnes. You can go to his blog directly http://sethbarnes.com
Our country director on the scene, Miguel Shaul, went overland from the Dominican Republic to Jimani, on the Haitian border to deliver medicines to a hospital. He is headed for the town of Croix des Boquets east of Port-Au-Prince. Buses of people are arriving, and the hospital is overflowing. Many of the injuries are devastating and surgeries are being put on hold because of equipment problems. Medical supplies and personnel continue to be a huge need.
Miguel brought food and one of the local churches cooked a meal for 250 people at the hospital. They are looking to cook 800-900 meals tomorrow. They say, “Thank you all who are donating money!”
Here are my thoughts on the situation:
Port-au-Prince is going to be a scene of increasing misery as water shortages and disease spread.
The problem is not so much getting supplies in by air or by sea as it is distributing them from there. The infrastructure is in shambles.
Refugees will flee the capital by the thousands. There is no future for them there. They’ll go to distribution centers set up outside the capital, or flee the country entirely.
One of the best ways to get food and supplies into Haiti is overland from the Dominican Republic. AIM’s strategy will be to find outlying communities that have been devastated. If you give, $25 can buy a person’s food for a month. $4000 can get a million dollars worth of medicines there.
Expect compassion fatigue. Please remember Haiti after the media has moved on. Every few years a major calamity somewhere in the world affords the church the opportunity to demonstrate love in action. Katrina, the Tsunami, now Haiti. The church will lead the way in showing hope.
If you’d like to help make a difference, please join us. AIM has a base close to the Haitian border and we’re mobilizing to bring aid – we have a logistics team flying in next week to back up Miguel. Here are three things I recommend:
1. Get real time updates by putting your name and email address (kept confidential) in the comment section below. I’ll let you know what’s going on from a ground-level perspective. And I’ll help you learn how you or others you know can go as volunteers.
2. If you’re interested in possibly going at some point or want to commit to pray, let me know. We need to begin mobilizing people.
3. Please give. Send money through this link. We’d like to raise $4000 tomorrow to ship $1 million worth of donated medicines to Haiti. We will ensure that your money is not wasted, but goes right to those who need it most.
