Other ways to help Haiti…Long-term and Short
A boy in Cité Soleil carries away a hard-won bucket of water from a broken water pipe where many Haitians struggled for their share. The shanty town of Cité Soleil has been left with severely diminished water resources after a powerful earthquake rocked the area on 12 January. 15/Jan/2010. Cité Soleil, Haiti. UN Photo/Logan Abassi. www.un.org/av/photo/
I’m sure you are feeling the same mix of emotions as I am when you see the images coming from Haiti: first heartbreak and then the desire to take ACTION.
Many of us have already helped and are looking for more ways to help. We’ve done the research, and I wanted to share these critical steps with you.
- The men of women of the behind-the-scenes Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) are the unsung heroes of disaster relief. Within hours of the earthquake, 3000 workers were on the ground in search and rescue efforts getting people out from the rubble and saving lives. They are continuing this life saving work and working to provide food and medical assistance. CERF, a multilateral effort administered by the United Nations, can often move faster than individual countries acting alone, and it plays a critical role coordinating the efforts of dozens of aid groups. Support CERF’s rapid response efforts here.
- Add your voice to the building call for a halt to the deportation of up to 30,000 undocumented Haitians that would return them to a country struggling to rebuild. The politics of immigration makes this a controversial issue, and your voice can make a big difference right now. Call the Department of Homeland Security Comment Line today at 202-282-8495 (if unable to get through, call the White House Comment line at 202-456-1111) and urge them to: Halt deportations and grant Temporary Protected Status to Haitians in the US and conduct a full review of its policy towards Haiti.
For the majority of the world’s people, it’s natural disasters, poverty, disease and armed conflict that threaten their safety. Yet governments spend far more on high-tech armaments than on investments that truly keep people safe. Global disaster response programs get less that 1% of the funding that global military programs do. By supporting the UN’s efforts to save lives today, we’ll be working to strengthen the global safety net for the future.
If you haven’t yet supported some of the humanitarian organizations working in Haiti, I recommend the programs of Oxfam, Doctors Without Borders, and grassroots group Haiti Emergency Relief Fund.
Thank you for caring, and acting, for smart, humane foreign policies.
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