Help those in Haiti

With very little effort in someway or another all our lives touch Haiti. Family, friends, friends of friends who are aid workers, siblings of friends who teach there. Here is a note from a dear dear friend whose sister is teaching in Haiti. Please read it, and if you can respond, please do.

Do Unto Others: Together

Friends,

My sister Betsy is a Massachusetts teacher who decided to volunteer to teach high school for a year in Haiti. She is teaching outside Port Au Prince at the Louverture Cleary School, whose mission is to educate a generation of leaders to help Haiti emerge from its third world status.

Fortunately, all 350 students, teachers and staff were outside when the earthquake hit just 12 miles from them. Amazingly the school buildings remained intact, though walls surrounding the school were damaged. No one was injured seriously. They spent the last two nights sleeping on the soccer field.

The school is highly self-sufficient. It has a large network of solar panels and a huge well. So the teachers and staff decided they will turn the school into a refugee center, serving 1500 meals a day and sleeping over 400 people. There's plenty of fresh water and a kitchen staff from the local area that is absolutely amazing in their ability to cook lots of nutritious meals.

I don't know what this means for Betsy, but my guess is over the next six months she and the other teachers will help 350 students understand how to serve others. As you know the scope of the devastation is just becoming known, but the school wants to do its part in the neighborhood where they live.

US AID and the Red Cross are urging those interested in helping to donate money, not clothing or other items as there is no reliable distribution infrastructure yet.

If you are interested in helping Betsy's school and the people living in the neighborhood, you can donate on line here: http://www.haitianproject.org/donate.htm All funds raised go directly to the school and through them, to their suffering neighbors. We have been donating to the Haitian Project for nearly a year (as soon as we heard Betsy was accepted to the program), we can personal vouch for the organization and we have seen the people who benefit from the charity.