A DAY IN HAITI

Immediately following Frank McKinney’s return from his successful search and rescue mission in Haiti, the Caring House Project Foundation has been actively engaged in providing emergency food relief.    CHPF has chartered planes on a now weekly basis to bring emergency food consisting of rice, beans, cooking oil and corn meal along with tents for shelter. Many of you have been so generous in making donations to help make this happen, thank you!

We are currently in the midst of sending over 1/2 million meals (that’s right, 500,000!), along with temporary shelter for 4,000. Please don’t get donor fatigue on us! We need your help!

Please be sure to keep up with our latest Haiti relief efforts  by reading and sharing Frank’s firsthand account: http://www.frank-mckinney.com/blog.asp?article=168 .

To donate please visit:  http://www.frank-mckinney.com/donate.aspx .

Orlando Hotelier Harris Rosen stands in front of Little Haiti Houses, a one-room home on display inside the Rosen Shingle Creek Hotel off Universal Blvd. in Orlando, Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2010.  

The house — built to resist hurricane-force winds and earthquakes — is a prototype of the “Little Haiti House Project,” brainchild of Orlando hotelier Harris Rosen in what he says is the second and more sustained phase of his relief effort for survivors of last month’s earthquake.

Rosen’s project is one of several ideas from Americans trying to help Haiti figure out how to dig out of the rubble and move forward. Others include fiberglass domes, plastic water containers made into bricks and shipping containers turned into houses.

On Wednesday, Rosen gave an Orlando Sentinel reporter a tour of the prototype of one of his Little Haiti homes.

It’s midday in Port-au-Prince and the sun is beating down from a cloudless sky.

It’s good news, another day without clouds means another day without rain.  But it won’t last.  Everybody knows the rainy season is now only a few weeks away, and a million people have no proper shelter.

A park on the edge of Port-au-Prince is sprouting what look like giant white field mushrooms.   They are actually large white tents, hundreds of them.  It’s the first proper tent encampment to be built since the earthquake. Along a high concrete wall workers are digging latrines, and building shower blocks.

In a few days from now 3,000 refugees from the centre of Port-au-Prince will start moving in here. But they will be the lucky few. 

Watch the video in this link to see what ShelterBox is doing   http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8488728.stm

‘Huge number’

Despite repeated calls from everyone – from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to Haitian President Rene Preval – only a few thousand tents have so far arrived in Haiti.

Mr Gascon says there are simply not enough tents

“The priority for flights has been given to bringing in food and medical supplies,” says Christopher Gascon from the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

He is in charge of building the mushroom tent camp. He has 40,000 more tents on their way from Panama, but by ship, not by air. And even when those do arrive, they will not be nearly enough.

It seems extraordinary, but so vast are Haiti’s needs that there are simply not enough of the right sort of tents in the world right now to house all the refugees.

“We are talking about a huge number of tents,” says Mr Gascon.  “These sort of tents are not widely available. They will have to be made, ordered from China. If you want 200,000 tents now its not going to happen, they are not there.”

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The Executive Director of Food For The Poor, Angel Aloma, returned 36-hours ago from Haiti where his organization is working day and night to help Haiti recover from the earthquake.

I have traveled with Angel in Haiti on prior mission trips there.

Donate Here:  Food for the Poor

The ShelterBox Response Team in Haiti has set up emergency shelter for up to 1,000 Haitians at Henfrasa Stadium in Delmas, Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Response Team member Lasse Petersen said: ‘We agreed with the local community that the initial tent allocation would be for families with pregnant women and families with newborns.

‘Port au Prince is overflowing with encampments of people sleeping out without basic shelter. The demand remains enormous, but with the help of our donors, ShelterBox has flown 5 aircraft and over 3,000 ShelterBoxes to aid those left homeless by the quake.

‘In the hospitals, orphanages and local communities we are making a difference and thousands of more boxes are en route.’

For more information please visit http://www.shelterbox.org

Foreign leaders and organizations joined the United States in pledging to help rebuild Haiti over the next decade, but costs and specific plans remain elusive

BY SCOTT HIAASEN
SHIAASEN@MIAMIHERALD.COM

MONTREAL — The United States and other allies of Haiti agreed Monday to a 10-year effort to rebuild Port-au-Prince and foster the long-term development that has eluded the Caribbean country despite decades of foreign assistance.

The commitment grew from a conference of 19 foreign ministers and international organizations, known informally as the Group of Friends of Haiti, who gathered in Montreal to discuss how to manage what promises to be one of the most daunting reconstruction efforts in modern times.

“It’s not an exaggeration to say that 10 years of hard work — at least — awaits the world in Haiti,” said Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who hosted the meeting.  “We must hold ourselves and each other accountable for the commitments we make.”

The meeting produced few details about the scope of the damage from Haiti’s Jan. 12 earthquake, or the potential cost of the reconstruction. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced plans to host a more comprehensive conference of donor countries in March at the United Nations headquarters in New York.

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Haiti’s Homeless Are Short Hundreds of Thousands of Tents

Mark Dyer stands in a warehouse at Miami International Airport, surrounded by big plastic containers stacked on wooden pallets, waiting to be loaded for Haiti.

Inside each container, called a ShelterBox, is enough gear to shelter and hydrate 10 disaster victims for six months.

Dyer is a small-business consultant from the Chicago area.   His volunteer job is get 1,500 ShelterBox units from Miami to Haiti.

“We have to help,”he said.   “These people were living their lives, and something happened that they had no control over.”

ShelterBox, an international disaster relief charity, started in 2000 as a Rotary Club project in the United Kingdom.

The actual box is a green weatherproof tub about two feet tall, three feet across and weighs 110 pounds — about the size of a small trunk.

It generally takes about $1,000 to build a ShelterBox, fill it and ship it to a disaster zone.

The contents are customized for each disaster. For Haiti: A 10-person sleeping tent, water purification tablets; insulated sleeping bags, collapsible 2.1-gallon water carriers; collapsible trenching shovel, rope, hatchet, jack-knife, screwdriver, hammer, hoe-head; multi-fuel stove; ponchos, mosquito-resistant nets, eating utensils, cups, plates, even a children’s activity book.

Authorities give priority to the most immediate needs, Dyer said.

Water comes after rescue and medical supplies.

“And because we (have)water purification, that qualifies our boxes to get in.”

Visit info@shelterbox.org
- KENNY MALONE

ShelterBox USA

Click link for an amazing Video about this water filtration straw from Water is Life.
http://www.news9.com/Global/category.asp?C=116601&clipId=4468721&autostart=true

More Water is Life Photos & Videos Here