Valley group continuing to collect necessities
Updated: Sunday, 01 May 2011, 10:50 PM MDT
PHOENIX - Following the massive earthquake and tsunami in Japan in March, many people are forgetting that Haiti is still rebuilding from a massive earthquake that destroyed much of the country in January 2010.
On Sunday, a big event was held in Phoenix to raise money for those in need.
Local businessmen showcased their skills in a basketball game against some of the best athletes in the nation -- most of them football players like Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie and Steve Breaston.
Developer Michael Pollack and Christine Ellis, founder of the Haitian Disaster Relief of Arizona, are continuing their work to take basic necessities and medical supplies to the still devastated nation.
The relief center's Mesa warehouse location is filling up with $1 million worth of additional supplies on top of the $3 million already distributed.
If you don't have money or supplies, volunteer work is something anyone can give for a disaster.
Find out how you can help:
Haitian Disaster Relief Center of Arizona
480-926-1009
HDRA@gmail.com
http://www.myfoxphoenix.com/dpp/money/haiti-still-needs-help-05012011
Affichage des articles dont le libellé est HAITIAN NEWS. Afficher tous les articles
Affichage des articles dont le libellé est HAITIAN NEWS. Afficher tous les articles
lundi 2 mai 2011
Haiti-Food Prices
AP-May 02, 2011 02:21 EDT
Haiti hard hit by food, fuel hikes
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) -- The tough times in Haiti are being complicated by rising food and other prices.
The price hikes come as the earthquake aid operation scales back, and the market reasserts itself.
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization says Haiti's staple food, rice, rose from 42 cents a pound in September to $1.38 in January. It's fallen some since, but is still pricey in a country where 10 million people get by on less than $2 a day.
Corn, which cost about 31 cents a pound just before Haiti's devastating earthquake more than a year ago, was almost double that price in March.
Gasoline has doubled in price, to $5 a gallon, which prompted a strike last month by cab drivers. They had to call it off because they were so desperate for fares.
http://www.abc6onyourside.com/template/inews_wire/wires.international/3c786e70-www.abc6onyourside.com.shtml
Haiti hard hit by food, fuel hikes
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) -- The tough times in Haiti are being complicated by rising food and other prices.
The price hikes come as the earthquake aid operation scales back, and the market reasserts itself.
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization says Haiti's staple food, rice, rose from 42 cents a pound in September to $1.38 in January. It's fallen some since, but is still pricey in a country where 10 million people get by on less than $2 a day.
Corn, which cost about 31 cents a pound just before Haiti's devastating earthquake more than a year ago, was almost double that price in March.
Gasoline has doubled in price, to $5 a gallon, which prompted a strike last month by cab drivers. They had to call it off because they were so desperate for fares.
http://www.abc6onyourside.com/template/inews_wire/wires.international/3c786e70-www.abc6onyourside.com.shtml
dimanche 1 mai 2011
Rock Hill teen 'learned patience' on medical mission to Haiti
Seeing malnourished, poor people 'happy' offers her perspective Andrew Dys - Columnist
ROCK HILL --
When Sierra Gilmore left for Haiti, a place 14 months removed from an earthquake, she was, in her own words, "a little stingy, and I wanted everything right now."
Which means Sierra, 16, was like just about every other teenager.
After a week in Haiti with a team of doctors and nurses, ministering to the sick and the hungry as the sole teenager on the trip - seeing the ribs of children her age and younger stick out as they waited four and five hours for medical help - Sierra was changed.
Andy Burriss - aburriss@heraldonline.com - - Sierra Gilmore gives a presentation to her history class at South Pointe High School about her trip to Haiti as part of a medical mission.
"I learned patience," Sierra told her classmates in her history class at South Pointe High School after she returned. "I don't fuss anymore. I have seen what other people have to deal with.
"And they still are...happy."
Mission trips for churches are usually in the summer or other vacation times. Sierra took a week off from the 10th grade - she had to make up the class work she missed - to go to Haiti.
She raised money through her church, Mount Zion Baptist in McConnells, and went with Dr. Nikita Lindsay of Rock Hill Pediatrics and other providers.
Lindsay brought up the idea to take Sierra on the medical trip. For five straight years, Lindsay has been a part of Haiti Outreach Ministries medical teams. She knew Sierra as a patient who had an uncommon yearning to help others.
Sierra's parents, Linda and Steve Gilmore, thought the trip would be a good experience.
After coming home, Sierra wanted to share with her classmates what she saw, so she gave a slideshow presentation in Kristy Riese's history class. Sierra showed where so many people live in Haiti.
"Tents - that is their home," she told the students, who just couldn't believe that tens of thousands of Haitians live in tents 14 months after an earthquake. A couple of students said they have seen a few homeless living in tents in Rock Hill, but that is it.
Sierra showed communal showers, buildings destroyed, more. She showed a concrete building with no windows - tarps over the openings.
"This is a good house in Haiti," Sierra said.
Her classmates were speechless.
She showed a woman washing clothes in a bucket.
"This is little girls waiting to see the doctor," Sierra said of another picture.
Sierra's job was to check the weight of people, help take temperatures, and other tasks to help the doctors and nurses dispensing medical care and basic pharmacy supplies.
"Most times they needed so much," Sierra said. "There was one man who just passed out."
She talked about the Haitian people walking miles to go to church.
"They never miss," said Sierra, of people who have so little but worship devoutly.
The other students wanted to know if the Haitian kids - in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, ravaged by an earthquake - had toys for little kids, or cars or cell phones or anything that an average Rock Hill teen has.
"They have happiness," Sierra told them.
Because what she showed most were the people of Haiti, in so many pictures, smiling.
"Hopefully, we can all appreciate what we do have and understand that there are people who have much les," Riese told her class.
Every head nodded.
Lindsay - who knows from her own experience as a doctor that poverty was made worse by the earthquake and that so many Haitians had social and psychological traumas long after the TV crews left - said Sierra was efficient and helpful on the trip.
She, too, saw a change in Sierra that can only come through helping another human being with her own hands - and heart.
"Sierra saw that other people's lives are not as our lives are," Lindsay said. "She was great."
Sierra took every question from her classmates. She was in no rush to finish. She wants to be a lawyer some day, but she is in no hurry to get there.
"People would wait in line for four or five hours in Haiti to see a doctor," Sierra said. "And here we get upset if we wait 10 minutes for anything.
"I learned patience in Haiti."
Andrew Dys 803-329-4065 adys@heraldonline.com
Read more: http://www.heraldonline.com/2011/05/01/3029946/after-haiti.html#ixzz1L6vg9Ov6
http://www.heraldonline.com/2011/05/01/3029946/after-haiti.html
ROCK HILL --
When Sierra Gilmore left for Haiti, a place 14 months removed from an earthquake, she was, in her own words, "a little stingy, and I wanted everything right now."
Which means Sierra, 16, was like just about every other teenager.
After a week in Haiti with a team of doctors and nurses, ministering to the sick and the hungry as the sole teenager on the trip - seeing the ribs of children her age and younger stick out as they waited four and five hours for medical help - Sierra was changed.
Andy Burriss - aburriss@heraldonline.com - - Sierra Gilmore gives a presentation to her history class at South Pointe High School about her trip to Haiti as part of a medical mission.
"I learned patience," Sierra told her classmates in her history class at South Pointe High School after she returned. "I don't fuss anymore. I have seen what other people have to deal with.
"And they still are...happy."
Mission trips for churches are usually in the summer or other vacation times. Sierra took a week off from the 10th grade - she had to make up the class work she missed - to go to Haiti.
She raised money through her church, Mount Zion Baptist in McConnells, and went with Dr. Nikita Lindsay of Rock Hill Pediatrics and other providers.
Lindsay brought up the idea to take Sierra on the medical trip. For five straight years, Lindsay has been a part of Haiti Outreach Ministries medical teams. She knew Sierra as a patient who had an uncommon yearning to help others.
Sierra's parents, Linda and Steve Gilmore, thought the trip would be a good experience.
After coming home, Sierra wanted to share with her classmates what she saw, so she gave a slideshow presentation in Kristy Riese's history class. Sierra showed where so many people live in Haiti.
"Tents - that is their home," she told the students, who just couldn't believe that tens of thousands of Haitians live in tents 14 months after an earthquake. A couple of students said they have seen a few homeless living in tents in Rock Hill, but that is it.
Sierra showed communal showers, buildings destroyed, more. She showed a concrete building with no windows - tarps over the openings.
"This is a good house in Haiti," Sierra said.
Her classmates were speechless.
She showed a woman washing clothes in a bucket.
"This is little girls waiting to see the doctor," Sierra said of another picture.
Sierra's job was to check the weight of people, help take temperatures, and other tasks to help the doctors and nurses dispensing medical care and basic pharmacy supplies.
"Most times they needed so much," Sierra said. "There was one man who just passed out."
She talked about the Haitian people walking miles to go to church.
"They never miss," said Sierra, of people who have so little but worship devoutly.
The other students wanted to know if the Haitian kids - in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, ravaged by an earthquake - had toys for little kids, or cars or cell phones or anything that an average Rock Hill teen has.
"They have happiness," Sierra told them.
Because what she showed most were the people of Haiti, in so many pictures, smiling.
"Hopefully, we can all appreciate what we do have and understand that there are people who have much les," Riese told her class.
Every head nodded.
Lindsay - who knows from her own experience as a doctor that poverty was made worse by the earthquake and that so many Haitians had social and psychological traumas long after the TV crews left - said Sierra was efficient and helpful on the trip.
She, too, saw a change in Sierra that can only come through helping another human being with her own hands - and heart.
"Sierra saw that other people's lives are not as our lives are," Lindsay said. "She was great."
Sierra took every question from her classmates. She was in no rush to finish. She wants to be a lawyer some day, but she is in no hurry to get there.
"People would wait in line for four or five hours in Haiti to see a doctor," Sierra said. "And here we get upset if we wait 10 minutes for anything.
"I learned patience in Haiti."
Andrew Dys 803-329-4065 adys@heraldonline.com
Read more: http://www.heraldonline.com/2011/05/01/3029946/after-haiti.html#ixzz1L6vg9Ov6
http://www.heraldonline.com/2011/05/01/3029946/after-haiti.html
Arizona group: $1 mil in supplies to be sent to Haiti
by Weston Phippen - May. 1, 2011 12:00 AM The Arizona Republic
The Haitian Disaster Relief of Arizona will announce Sundaythat it's sending $1 million in medical supplies to Haiti, while hosting a celebrity basketball game at US Airways Center this afternoon to help raise more money.
And the people of Haiti who benefit from the supplies, owe it, in part, to an unsightly trailer parked at a Mesa strip mall.
Hawk Delivery Service donated the trailer to nurse Christine Ellis, 48, who was born in Haiti and was spearheading a relief drive for her home country.
The trailer was packed to the hilt with medical supplies and clothes for Haiti. Free space was so tight that Ellis kept some donations behind her store, in the back alley, under a tarp. Then one day Ellis got a call from a property manager who worked for the owner of the shopping center, developer Michael Pollack. The manager said Pollack drives by the center almost every day and that the trailer had to be moved.
Later that day, Ellis found herself walking over the black and white marble floors in Pollack's palatial office building, with paintings on the ceilings and elaborate trim.
"My people are dying in Haiti, and I'm trying to help them," Ellis told Pollack. Pollack left the room and returned with an assistant and placed two shopping-center maps on the table. Pollack circled buildings No. 8 and No. 13, saying 13 is his favorite number. Ellis said it was her favorite, too.
"Because I am thinking there is one God and three persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost," Ellis said.
Ellis left with the keys to two of Pollack's buildings near Country Club Drive and Guadalupe Road in Mesa. They come to about 9,000 square feet in all. A large banner reading "Pollack Haitian Hope Center" now hangs above the door.
"We didn't know. We thought it'd just be temporary. We didn't know that we'd still be a major supporter a year and half later," Pollack said.
Ellis has been busy preparing for today's event. Her organization, along with the Robert Tate Dyslexia Foundation, is putting on a celebrity benefit basketball game at US Airways Center.
They hope to raise awareness and money.
The transient life of the news cycle has nearly altogether left Haiti. But there is still a lot of work to be done, Ellis said.
There were more than 380,000 orphans in the country before the earthquake, according to the United Nations Children's Fund. And now Ellis worries about their future and the thousands who became orphans after the quake.
"It's almost like we lost a fourth of our generation," Ellis said.
Her organization supports an orphanage that tends to 16 kids full time, and it watches over 74 more in the camps.
Ellis travels to Haiti several times a year. She'll be leaving with a group of nurses on May 9. Each time she goes, she feels nothing has changed. The people are still suffering, they have little food, clothes, medical supplies, nothing.
Last time she was there in December, her sister said, "No, there is something that has changed: The grass in front of the palace is taller."
But Ellis knows Haiti is not a place that can be changed in a year. Pollack still pays the rent for Ellis to use the buildings, and his company donates money to the organization. He said it was the pictures Ellis showed him of children in Haiti that got to him. They were barely clothed, aimlessly wandering around devastated streets.
The pictures that Ellis showed Pollack still hang in her building, 45 in all.
Small, dark faces and big, white eyes. The kids smile against backdrops of crumbling houses. One of the pictures is of 10 boys posing for what looks like a youth-sports photo. Six are standing and four kneel.
They hold up a sign that reads, "Nou se yon ekip," or "We are a team." In front they have a round sack the kids stuffed with paper to make a soccer ball. When she goes back to Haiti in May, Ellis will bring donated soccer balls.
"We went from being poor, to being beyond poor after the earthquake," she said.
Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2011/05/01/20110501haiti-supplies-arizona.html#ixzz1L6dOonSg
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2011/05/01/20110501haiti-supplies-arizona.html
The Haitian Disaster Relief of Arizona will announce Sundaythat it's sending $1 million in medical supplies to Haiti, while hosting a celebrity basketball game at US Airways Center this afternoon to help raise more money.
And the people of Haiti who benefit from the supplies, owe it, in part, to an unsightly trailer parked at a Mesa strip mall.
Hawk Delivery Service donated the trailer to nurse Christine Ellis, 48, who was born in Haiti and was spearheading a relief drive for her home country.
The trailer was packed to the hilt with medical supplies and clothes for Haiti. Free space was so tight that Ellis kept some donations behind her store, in the back alley, under a tarp. Then one day Ellis got a call from a property manager who worked for the owner of the shopping center, developer Michael Pollack. The manager said Pollack drives by the center almost every day and that the trailer had to be moved.
Later that day, Ellis found herself walking over the black and white marble floors in Pollack's palatial office building, with paintings on the ceilings and elaborate trim.
"My people are dying in Haiti, and I'm trying to help them," Ellis told Pollack. Pollack left the room and returned with an assistant and placed two shopping-center maps on the table. Pollack circled buildings No. 8 and No. 13, saying 13 is his favorite number. Ellis said it was her favorite, too.
"Because I am thinking there is one God and three persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost," Ellis said.
Ellis left with the keys to two of Pollack's buildings near Country Club Drive and Guadalupe Road in Mesa. They come to about 9,000 square feet in all. A large banner reading "Pollack Haitian Hope Center" now hangs above the door.
"We didn't know. We thought it'd just be temporary. We didn't know that we'd still be a major supporter a year and half later," Pollack said.
Ellis has been busy preparing for today's event. Her organization, along with the Robert Tate Dyslexia Foundation, is putting on a celebrity benefit basketball game at US Airways Center.
They hope to raise awareness and money.
The transient life of the news cycle has nearly altogether left Haiti. But there is still a lot of work to be done, Ellis said.
There were more than 380,000 orphans in the country before the earthquake, according to the United Nations Children's Fund. And now Ellis worries about their future and the thousands who became orphans after the quake.
"It's almost like we lost a fourth of our generation," Ellis said.
Her organization supports an orphanage that tends to 16 kids full time, and it watches over 74 more in the camps.
Ellis travels to Haiti several times a year. She'll be leaving with a group of nurses on May 9. Each time she goes, she feels nothing has changed. The people are still suffering, they have little food, clothes, medical supplies, nothing.
Last time she was there in December, her sister said, "No, there is something that has changed: The grass in front of the palace is taller."
But Ellis knows Haiti is not a place that can be changed in a year. Pollack still pays the rent for Ellis to use the buildings, and his company donates money to the organization. He said it was the pictures Ellis showed him of children in Haiti that got to him. They were barely clothed, aimlessly wandering around devastated streets.
The pictures that Ellis showed Pollack still hang in her building, 45 in all.
Small, dark faces and big, white eyes. The kids smile against backdrops of crumbling houses. One of the pictures is of 10 boys posing for what looks like a youth-sports photo. Six are standing and four kneel.
They hold up a sign that reads, "Nou se yon ekip," or "We are a team." In front they have a round sack the kids stuffed with paper to make a soccer ball. When she goes back to Haiti in May, Ellis will bring donated soccer balls.
"We went from being poor, to being beyond poor after the earthquake," she said.
Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2011/05/01/20110501haiti-supplies-arizona.html#ixzz1L6dOonSg
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2011/05/01/20110501haiti-supplies-arizona.html
Inscription à :
Articles (Atom)