Haiti Relief

Recommendations and evaluations from a reliable source.

Our son Nick is a USAID development program manager in Haiti.  His wife and 8-year old daughter are being evacuated to us, here in Avila Beach, this week. Nick is staying on as part of the in-country US management team for disaster assistance, refugee aid, and redevelopment planning and implementation.

1. Doctors without Borders
The Medicens sans Frontiers has been recognized (receive the Noble Peace Prize) for its incredible commitment to international humanitarian medical aid.  Fortunately it already has three medical clinics in PaP before the earthquake.  Unfortunately all three suffered terrible physical damages.  In spite of this the medical personnel are fully engaged in emergency work, in the workable areas the damaged clinics and in the nearly streets under improvised sheltered.  They are overwhelmed by the needs and hampered by the lack of medical supplies.  No agency can give more for the $$$ in terms on the grounds aid right now. 
http://doctorswithoutborders.org/donate/

2. The International Rescue Committee
The IRC has been the world's premier, non-profit, low overhead, reliable humanitarian relief organization since post WWII beginnings.  We know them first hand as son Nick was the administrator of their largest refugee center for Rwandan refugees in Goma, the Congo, during that humanitarian crisis.  Their field staffs are professionals - mostly volunteers with some really low paid but dedicated professionals - who are capable, committed and reliable for medical, public health, food aid, etc.  The UN as well as the US gives them grants/contracts for work around the world but much of their support is from private contributions.  You can count on them for a bang for every buck.  We do not know how much mobilization they have already done in he PaP disaster, but we are confident that their services in long term aid to the refugee, displaced population there will be critical and reliable as they fill out staffing needs.
https://www.theirc.org/donate/donate-now-haiti
 
3. The Salvation Army - Haiti
Probably the best low overhead non-medical relief agency on the ground in Port au Prince right now.  With tragically limited resources they have been reaching the poorest in PaP for years.  They have both expat and Haitian staff that are dedicated and able.  What you give NOW will be put to immediate good use.  They will use $$$s to procure what they can locally as well as to bring is supply through their own tested and reliable means.  Count on them.  They do not demand "faith" commitments from those they serve.
https://secure.salvationarmy.org/donations
 
4. Partners In Health (PIH)
Right now, PIH has the greatest capacity for mobilizing local medical professionals for disaster medical aid to the earthquake victims.
Founded by some 30 years ago by the then young Dr. Paul Farmer, public health physician at Harvard Medical School, PIH has grown into the largest full service medical assistance effort in Central Haiti.  The following is from their web site:
Zanmi Lasante (“Partners In Health” in Haitian Kreyol) is PIH’s flagship project – the oldest, largest, most ambitious, and most replicated. The small community clinic that first started treating patients in the village of Cange in 1985, has grown into the Zanmi Lasante (ZL) Sociomedical Complex, featuring a 104-bed, full-service hospital with two operating rooms, adult and pediatric inpatient wards, an infectious disease center (the Thomas J. White Center), an outpatient clinic, a women’s health clinic (Proje Sante Fanm), ophthalmology and general medicine clinics, a laboratory, a pharmaceutical warehouse, a Red Cross blood bank, radiographic services, and a dozen schools. ZL has also expanded its operations to eight other sites across Haiti’s Central Plateau and beyond. Today, ZL ranks as one of the largest nongovernmental health care providers in Haiti – and the only provider of comprehensive primary care, regardless of ability to pay, for more than half a million impoverished people living in the mountainous Central Plateau.
PIH has developed a large cadre of volunteer physicians of all specialities from medical schools and in private practice in the US and around the world who give regularly scheduled service year around.  And over the years, the PIH program has mobilized, trained and now employs some 100 Haitian physicians plus nursing and other support staff in its extensive network of hospitals and clinics in Haiti's interior.
Dozens of PIH physicians and support staff have been sent from central Haiti to PaP to help in this crisis.  Critical care (amputation and other major surgeries) patients are being transported to Cange or other field clinics as transport is available.  Your $$$s here will be effectively, efficiently and reliably used immediately for medicines, transport costs, food and shelter and other urgent services.
http://www.pih.org/youcando/donate.html
 
5. Habitat for Humanity
Habitat has already begun to mobilize staff and resources to plan for and find funding support to begin to rebuild housing, mostly on a self-help basis, in the PaP area.  No other agency will do more with fewer outside resources to help the homeless with new and decent shelter than Habitat.  As conditions allow, future efforts will include opportunities for international volunteers to aid in the housing reconstruction effort. 
Resources are need immediately for first stage shelter construction and for stockpiling critically needed materials for new and rehabilitated housing.  Investing in Habitat programs now will be a commitment to Haiti's future.  You can count on the integrity and the professionalism of Habitat program management. 
Https://www.habitat.org/cd/giving/donate.aspx?link=1
 

6. The Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund. 
Though they have no track record yet, the Clinton-Bush fund raising program initiated by President Obama today has great promise for general resource mobilization and subsequent allocation to specific aid agencies.  Since we cannot know which agencies will finally be chosen to receive funds, it is impossible now to vouch, in advance, for the efficiency and reliability of their work.  One can assume that all selected to receive this aid will be carefully vetted and, to the extent possible, their work will fall within a coordinated effort.  Our recommendations above are not meant to suggest that you should not have confidence if you choose to give your support to the Clinton-Bush Fund.