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Last Sunday, Barb Glasscock shared about the Crittenden's ongoing work in Haiti after the recent hurricane. Here's an update: Hello Haiti Education Enthusiasts and Supporters: Well, it always seems like our friends in Haiti just can’t catch a break. The earthquake in January, 2010 shook most of our schools to the ground, and after almost seven years, we have been well on our way to getting most of them repaired or replaced. And now the largest hurricane ever to hit the south coast of the island (at least since 1963, perhaps ever) has destroyed AT LEAST nine of our thirty-five schools. Our new school at Petite Rivière was built to survive a Class 5 hurricane and it apparently survived Hurricane Matthew fine. We are thankful for that. I’m sure that it was used as a shelter. I’ve been communicating with Maccène Ulisse, the principal, and he told me that the roof blew off his tiny house but that the school is fine. We will rebuild our schools. It’ll take a lot of time and money, but we’ll get things rebuilt.
The big issue we have is not about our schools. The catastrophe that is unfolding in Haiti is starvation. Most of our 7000 families across thirty-five villages have lost all of their crops. These are mostly subsistence farmers and they have no backup. Insurance doesn’t exist in Haiti. Ideally, we would need about $420,000 to keep these 7000 families fed a minimal amount of food for thirty days. That’s $2 of food per family per day. We hope that thirty days will be enough for them to begin harvesting some new crops. So we’ll send whatever we can. Yesterday, we wired a little over $15,000 to Ancy Fils-Aime and connected him to Alex Moise of Trinity/Hope, the school lunch program regional director, and we are going to a warehouse in Jacmel with a truck today or tomorrow, and using Trinity/Hope’s previously negotiated pricing, we will buy $15,000 worth of beans and rice and begin the long process of meeting all the principals throughout the region and giving them enough for the school families for one day. Then in another couple of days, we’ll send another wire with whatever we have. Hopefully we’ll have a lot more. We’ll keep sending money down and buying beans and rice for three or four weeks. We are hopeful that others will be doing the same. Our region is the poorest and the most remote, and many of the international donors will get nowhere near. But we hope some will. The US carrier George Washington is heading down and the navy will be assisting but I’m guessing that there are at least four million people living in the south coast, and most of the aid will be directed toward the larger cities of Les Cayes and Jeremie. I am almost positive we will see no US aid in our section. But we’ll see how it goes. We would love for you to help. If you send money to the disaster fund of the Haiti Education Foundation, the money will be included in the next wire we send and 100% of your donation will be used to buy food and distribute it to our families. It is a tragic situation, but there is strength in numbers. Let’s see what we can do. Here’s the link: http://haitifoundation.org/Help_Haiti.html#disaster. This has weighed so heavily on us—we think about our families and wish we could do more. We thank you for any financial support you can give. Blessings, Rob Rob Crittenden Comments are closed.
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