Haiti: relief for now, real change from now on

I visited Haiti twice, in 1989 and again in 1995 and I know how difficult life there can be at the best of times. Now, in the very worst of times, Haiti needs our help to survive and recover.

I’ve sent my money for emergency help to Medicins Sans Frontiers (Doctors Without Borders), and can confidently recommend them as a good way to help.

MSF has medical staff on the ground in Port-au-Prince. Although all three of their Port-au-Prince hospitals were destroyed, they will be setting up an inflatable hospital in the next day. I once visited a MSF hospital in rural Haiti. It was an oasis of compassion and care.

We can only hope that this catastrophe will be the very bottom of the seemingly endless well of misery this poor nation has suffered. Perhaps now, the U.S. and the world will turn away from interventions and imposed solutions and support Haitians in reconstruction. That work must literally be “from the ground up” since so much of Haiti’s land has been ruined by deforestation and erosion

My client Grassroots International does exactly that kind of development. In the years ahead, Haiti will need programs like GRI’s on a much wider scale to achieve food self-sufficiency and the long-term prosperity it deserves.