Photographing environmental issues for a sustainable future.
Posts Tagged ‘Haiti’
Helping Haiti from the Streets of Taiwan
Timberland Earthkeepers in Taiwan took to the streets last weekend with their “Help Haiti Road Show,” designed to raise support for relief efforts in Haiti. A team of models dressed in Timberland Yele Haiti gear paraded along streets in Taipei, accompanied by Janet Hsieh – actress, musician, designer and host of the travel show “Fun Taiwan.”
Minister Mario Chouloute, the Haitian representative to Taiwan, was also on hand to give a status update on recovery efforts in Haiti:
Our thanks to the Taiwan team for their efforts to raise awareness for the ongoing needs in Haiti. To learn more about how Timberland is contributing to Haiti relief efforts — and how you can help – visit our Help Haiti webpage.
Helping Haiti’s Children
Marie Jose Poux is a busy woman: the Haiti native now lives in New Orleans where she’s a hospice nurse and also owns an art gallery where she features the work of Haitian artists. She’s also the director and founder of the Hope for Haitian Children Foundation HFHCF(HFHCF) – a nonprofit organization working to provide support and care for orphan children in Haiti.
Through HFHCF, Marie Jose operates Foyer Espoir Pour Les Enfants — an orphanage in Port au Prince, Haiti. She travels to Haiti several times a year to bring supplies and donations to the orphanage – and was there on January 12 when the earthquake struck.
Some of the children of Foyer Espoir Pour Les Enfants
Like many individuals and organizations that were serving the people of Haiti long before January’s disaster occurred, Marie Jose’s mission now takes on (if that’s possible) greater importance and critical urgency. HFHCF has facilitated the collection of desperately-needed supplies – enough to fill at least three 40-foot shipping containers – and last Saturday, the first container was packed and prepared by local New Orleans volunteers. Our own partner Yele Haiti sponsored the cost of shipping the first container to Port au Prince (each container costs roughly $7,000 to ship, transport on the ground in Haiti and unload).
HFHCF is seeking support for their effort – most immediately, sponsors to help pay the shipping fee for the second and third containers full of supplies. To learn more about the organization and how you can help, please visit their website.
A Time for Regrowing
A full month has passed since the major earthquake that rocked Haiti and devastated its people. In its wake, much of the world has shifted its focus to the need for aid and relief for Haiti’s survivors. The need for basic necessities – food, water, secure shelter – remains critical.
Equally critical is a vision for Haiti’s future … and as part of that vision, a sharp focus on the country’s environmental state. Haiti suffers one of the highest rates of deforestation in the world, thanks in large part to the need for energy (Haitians cut and burn trees in “raw” form or turn the wood into charcoal). Wood accounts for more than 70 percent of all fuel consumed in the island nation … but with fewer than 100,000 acres of forest remaining, Haiti’s deforestation problem is poised to become yet another crisis for the country.
Satellite image depicting the border between Haiti (left)
and the Dominican Republic (right), 2002.
Deforestation is a serious problem anywhere – but particularly alarming when you consider the effects in a region that has in recent years suffered several natural disasters. Without trees creating any sort of a natural barrier or holding soil in place, flooding, mudslides and landslides become severe threats, impacting everything from infrastructure to agriculture.
While we’re currently supporting relief efforts underway in Haiti , we haven’t lost sight or passion for the reforestation project we’re undertaking with our partner Yele Haiti. In fact, the current state of affairs reaffirms our commitment to helping rebuild the country, one tree at a time.
Stay tuned for more details of our reforestation projects, in Haiti as well as other regions of the world
Hope in a Box
There are few things disaster victims need more urgently than emergency shelter – and that’s when ShelterBox USA does their best work.
A “shelter box” is just that – a big green box packed full of essential disaster-survival equipment, including a 10-person tent, a cook stove, water purification kit, blankets, pots and pans, dishes and tools. When disaster strikes, a ShelterBox response team is deployed as quickly as possible, to get ShelterBoxes to people who need them most. To date, they’ve sent 900 boxes to Haiti (enough shelter for 9,000 people) and hope to triple that number in short order.
Here’s the kicker: ShelterBox is a nonprofit organization, heavily reliant on volunteers and largely supported by Rotary clubs in the UK (where it was founded), US, Australia, Canada and several other countries. Each ShelterBox costs $1,000, and their box supplies are running low.
"The need in Haiti is huge. Current estimates are that there are over a million people who have lost their homes. We continue to rely on the support of volunteers and donors to allow us to help them in the days and weeks to come." – Tom Henderson, ShelterBox Founder and CEO
To learn more about how you can help provide emergency shelter for victims in Haiti and elsewhere throughout the world, please visit the ShelterBox website. There you’ll find out how to sponsor a ShelterBox (smaller donations are also gratefully accepted), learn about volunteer opportunities , and read more about the important work being done by the ShelterBox team. You can also donate $5 via your mobile phone by texting "Support Shelter" to 20222.
What Haiti Needs
“It has never been able to fulfill its potential as a nation. But I think it can.”
A moving and inspiring piece by Bill Clinton , the UN Special Envoy to Haiti, appears on TIME.com today … below, an excerpt of his piece. In times of crisis, immediate response is critical – and in the wake of a tragedy of this magnitude, more is better – but Former President Clinton reminds us that coordination, sustainability and broad vision are key to making sure our efforts to help are truly most helpful.
Click here to read the TIME piece in its entirety (please do – it’s worth the read).
The international relief effort that followed the Asian tsunami of 2004 offers some lessons that can be applied in Haiti. First of all, there has to be national buy-in by the U.S. There has to be a national vision, and I think we have that. Secondly, coordination is really important both within the U.N. and among all the donor countries and nongovernmental groups. There are 10,000 nongovernmental organizations working in Haiti, the highest number per capita in the world except for India. We’ve got to all work together toward a common goal. We have to relentlessly focus on trying to build a model that will be sustainable, so we don’t plant a bunch of trees and then revert to deforestation, or adopt a program to bring power to the country that can’t be sustained, or adopt an economic strategy that is going to wither away in two years.
I’m trying now to get organized to make sure not only that we get the emergency aid that Haiti needs but also that donors come through on their pre-existing commitments. We need to keep the private sector involved. Once we deal with the immediate crisis, the development plans the world was already pursuing have to be implemented more quickly and on a broader scale. I’m interested in just pressing ahead with it.
Haiti isn’t doomed. Let’s not forget, the damage from the earthquake is largely concentrated in the Port-au-Prince area. That has meant a tragic loss of life, but it also means there are opportunities to rebuild in other parts of the island. So all the development projects, the agriculture, the reforestation, the tourism, the airport that needs to be built in the northern part of Haiti — everything else should stay on schedule. Then we should simply redouble our efforts once the emergency passes to do the right sort of construction in Port-au-Prince and use it to continue to build back better.
Before this disaster, Haiti had the best chance in my lifetime to fulfill its potential as a country, to basically escape the chains of the past 200 years. I still believe that if we rally around them now and support them in the right way, the Haitian people can reclaim their destiny.
Bill Clinton is the United Nations special envoy for Haiti.
