Help for Haiti: Supporting grassroots organizations after a disaster is crucial

As we learned in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, not all aid is equal. Haiti’s January 12th earthquake has left thousands dead. Many more need urgent medical attention.

To donate to grassroots rebuilding efforts, Food First recommends Grassroots International, Haiti Action and for longer-term work, Agricultural Missions. For urgent medical needs, Partners in Health and Doctors without Borders are the largest in country health providers left standing after the quake, and have impeccable records.

Supporting grassroots organizations in a time of crisis is of paramount importance. Once the crisis is over and immediate needs have been served, the country will be even more vulnerable that it was to begin with. With the most open economy in the Western Hemisphere, chronic political instability, and some of the worst effects

Partners in Health

Founded by Dr. Paul Farmer, this nonprofit health delivery program has served Haiti’s poor since 1987. To donate for earthquake relief, go to

In an urgent email from Port-au-Prince, Louise Ivers, Partners in Health clinical director in Haiti, appealed for assistance from her colleagues in the Central Plateau: “Port-au-Prince is devastated, lot of deaths. SOS. SOS… Temporary field hospital by us at UNDP needs supplies, pain meds, bandages. Please help us.”

https://donate.pih.org/page/contribute/haiti_earthquake?source=earthquak…

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)

Doctors Without Borders was working in Haiti prior to the quake with a staff of 800. Here is a report on January 13, 2009 with a link to their donation page.

http://doctorswithoutborders.org/news/article.cfm?id=4148&cat=field-news

Haiti Action

Haiti’s grassroots movement – including labor unions, women’s groups, educators, human rights activists, support committees for prisoners and agricultural cooperatives – will attempt to funnel needed aid to those most hit by the earthquake. Grassroots organizers are doing what they can with the most limited of funds to make a difference. Please take this opportunity to lend them your support.

http://www.haitiaction.net/About/HERF/1_12_10.html

Grassroots International

Long time Food First partner Grassroots International has a long history of working with organizations on the ground in Haiti. Grassroots has committed to the extent possible to, “provide cash to our partners to make local purchases of the items they most need and to obtain food from farmers not hit by the disaster.”

http://www.grassrootsonline.org/news/blog/all-hands-responding-haiti-eme…

Agricultural Missions

Agricultural Missions is an 80 year old ecumenical organization with long term partnerships at the grassroots level in Haiti, who stand at ready to funnel resources to long term grassroots agricultural development. Donations can be sent as checks made out to Agricultural Missions,Inc (AMI) with ‘Haiti recovery’ written in the memo line, to Agricultural Missions, 475 Riverside Drive, Rm 725, New York, NY 10115.

To donate go to: http://www.agriculturalmissions.org/donations.htm

Source: Food First

The 2010 Haiti earthquake was a catastrophic magnitude 7.0 M_w earthquake centred approximately 25 kilometres (16 mi) from Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, which struck at 16:53:09 local time (21:53:09 UTC) on Tuesday, 12 January 2010.^[4] The earthquake occurred at a depth of 13 kilometres (8.1 mi). The United States Geological Survey recorded a series of aftershocks, fourteen of them between magnitudes 5.0 and 5.9.^[5] The International Red Cross estimates that about three million people were affected by the quake,^[6] and an estimated 45,000–50,000 deaths.^[3]

There was major damage to Port-au-Prince. Most major landmarks were significantly damaged or destroyed, including the Presidential Palace (though the President survived), the National Assembly building, the Port-au-Prince Cathedral, and the main jail.^[7][8][9] All hospitals were destroyed or so badly damaged that they have been abandoned.^[10] The United Nations reported that headquarters of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), located in the capital, collapsed and that a large number of UN personnel were unaccounted for.^[11] The Mission’s Chief, Hédi Annabi, was confirmed dead on 13 January by President René Préval.^[12]

About Food First

Food First “is rooted in the early experiences and sensibilities of its founders. Joseph Collins, beginning in his teens, saw poverty and hunger first hand as he traveled around the Third World with the Catholic Maryknoll Brothers and Fathers. Frances (Frankie) Moore Lappé grew up surrounded by adults who believed that their actions could make their community a better place to live; she went on to study at Earlham, the Quaker college.

Keynote – Transforming the Food Crisis: From Food Rebellions to Food Sovereignty by Eric Holt Gimenez from Community Food Security Coalitio on Vimeo.

“Both Joe and Frankie came of age during the 1960s, a time when many young people were immersed in the civil rights movement and demonstrating against the war in Vietnam. Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty brought Frankie to Philadelphia, where she first realized that something more would be needed to end hunger and poverty. This epiphany led to her search for an answer to the question, Why is there poverty in the richest nation on earth?, and eventually to her writing Diet for a Small Planet. This book struck a strong chord with those who read it: it sold two million copies over its first 10 years, largely by word of mouth.

“At the same time, Joe Collins was working at the Washington think tank Institute for Policy Studies, writing the book Global Reach, about the impact of multinational corporations in the Third World. He also coauthored a report titled World Hunger: Causes and Remedies, which was written to challenge the official UN world food assessment for the 1974 World Food Conference in Rome.

“Joe and Frankie met at the first World Food Day in 1975, and shortly thereafter they incorporated the Institute for Food and Development Policy and began work on the book Food First: Beyond the Myth of Scarcity (published in 1977).”

Source: Sourcewatch