Text Size:
A|
A|
A
Email
Print
In the first hours after the devastating earthquake in Haiti, while news reports of damage and death were still sketchy, three men huddled on the North Side last night to plan local relief efforts.
"The first thing you do is share the pain," said Luke Hingson, president of Brother's Brother Foundation. "Then you share the work.
"You talk to each other, and if you know anybody who has been affected, you feel sad about it. The next thing is 'How do we help?' "
Mr. Hingson was meeting with Dr. Leon Pamphile, a native Haitian and executive director of Functional Literacy Ministries of Haiti, and Russell Bynum, the organization's chairman, to discuss what aid can be rendered now as well as what will have to be done later.
Numerous charities are accepting donations to aid relief efforts in Haiti. Donations may be made to:
• Brother's Brother Foundation - Haiti, 1200 Galveston Ave., Pittsburgh 15233, call 412-321-3160, or visit www.brothersbrother.org.
• Functional Literacy Ministry of Haiti, 1064 Premier St., Pittsburgh 15201, call 412-784-0342, or visit the Web site at www.flmhaiti.org.
• UNICEF also is helping with relief efforts. Call 1-800-4UNICEF or go to www.unicefusa.org/haitiquake.
PDF"There is a strong connection between the people of Pittsburgh and Haiti," said Dr. Pamphile, who founded Functional Literacy Ministries, a Christian nonprofit organization, in 1983. "There is a strong desire to help in education, health care and to provide hope for those who are hopeless."
There are more than 100 Haitians living in Pittsburgh, many of them in East Liberty and Point Breeze. That number does not include the students at universities, Dr. Pamphile said.
Many of those residents, he said, were calling him last night, desperate for any news from the island nation, which is about the size of the state of Maryland, with a population of more than 9 million. News, however, was scarce as lines of communication were disrupted by the quake.
"The phone has been ringing nonstop," Dr. Pamphile said. "People are concerned, and they're unable to get through."
"Right now, we're just hearing anecdotal stories about buildings being destroyed," Mr. Hingson said.
The effort to help didn't take long to get started, mostly because it was already in place. Churches and community groups in Pittsburgh have been contributing educational and medical aid to Haiti for decades.
"We've been active in the country for 40 years," said Mr. Hingson, whose charitable group has been headquartered in Pittsburgh for 50 years. "We work with a number of groups in Haiti. We send medical supplies and other things through Christian ministries. There is an enormous number of mission groups and medical teams that go to Haiti each year."
Brother's Brother has provided more than $3.4 billion in medical supplies, textbooks, food, seeds and other humanitarian supplies to people around the world in more than 140 countries. It sent more than 50 medical shipments to Haiti last year, Mr. Hingson said, and had already been planning to send another shipment before yesterday's earthquake.
"There will be Pittsburgh hands on the ground in Haiti in about a week," Mr. Hingson said. "These are people whose lives have been damaged, and we have to help them. And then you have a rebuilding process. We're talking about need, not just today, but need four months from now, maybe years from now.
"We can deliver, because we have. But we don't have the same personal connections that some other people do. People who live in Pittsburgh who are from Haiti or have family there and have day-in, day-out connections there. There are groups that have a daily interest in Haiti."
Functional Literacy Ministries is one such group.
"We have had a medical and educational mission in Haiti for about 26 years now," Mr. Bynum said. "We have about 70 reading centers there. We have a clinic that we just built in Thomazeau, in the mountains outside Port-au-Prince, in July. And we already were in the process of getting a group to go to Haiti to convene with doctors there to do some medical mission work.
"The doctors and teachers we bring in are native Haitians, so this is really hitting us very deeply. Because we know the people."
Another organization with local ties, the Friends of Hopital Albert Schweitzer Haiti, a nonprofit based in Point Breeze, was working to help earthquake victims. The organization focuses on cultural awareness, as well as the health and economic needs of people in central Haiti's Artibonite valley.
Hopital Albert Schweitzer's main campus is more than two hours from Port-au-Prince, near where the earthquake struck. The hospital employs more than 500 people and has 120 beds.
Friends president Lucy Rawson said her husband, Ian, the managing director of the hospital, was driving home from a village near the hospital when he felt his car wavering on the road. He was able to e-mail her about 6:30 p.m. Eastern time, she said, but she had not heard from him since.
"He said his car was going from side to side on the road, and he ended up in a ditch," Mrs. Rawson said. "He got out to see what was wrong with the car, and all these people were screaming and shouting. He thought they were worried about him. Then he realized they were worried about something else."
Their homes and cars were shaking around them.
"He said, 'We're all OK,' " she said. " 'Surprised and shaken, but OK.' "
Looking for more from the Post-Gazette? Join PG+, our members-only web site. You'll get exclusive sports content, opinion, financial information, discounts from retailers and restaurants, and more. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.
