(Community Matters) the update I sent friends today who’ve donated to HelpHaiti – for which we’ve matched their contributions dollar for dollar:
Another brief update. Welcome to new friends on this list. I periodically send these personal updates to friends who have given to HelpHaiti. As always, if you prefer to be taken off these periodic emails, please let me know.
The three $50k challenge grants we issued from your contributions and the match monies to Partners in Health (@PiH.org), Concern Worldwide (@Concern) and Catholic Relief Services (CRS) have gone very well.
PiH_org challenged students on several university campuses to raise $50k against the match this week. They exceeded the challenge and we’re thrilled to double the money raised by the students, i.e., again doubling your already matched monies. Similar success by @Concern. A group of Irish writers and musicians planned a fundraising event for NYC last week. It was expected to bring in a few thousand. Once @Concern let them know about the EF/AV HelpHaiti challenge grant, the momentum changed, they enlisted the Irish consulate’s aid, and they raised $57,000. I haven’t heard final results from CRS but know they inquired about opportunities if they exceeded the match.
So, cash raised to date into HelpHaiti totals approximately $800k, and we have an outstanding pledge for at least $100k – let’s call it $900k raised to date. If you consider the $150k just raised through the challenge grants, that would be $1,050,000. I’m not sure whether or not to count the $150k, still want to discuss it with our grants committee. Nevertheless, we continue to raise against the original $600k match, and we’re staying in touch with our partners and ensuring they are resourced to help Haitians in need.
Aside from grants, we helped @PiH_org source high-tech coolers to store vaccines. We’re making calls about helping @Concern transport 140 tons of supplies out of India – no idea if we can or can’t help here. We’ve agreed to advocate for @Concern’s $5mm government grant request for cash for work programs. We are evaluating a $100k worldwide challenge grant for a twestival benefitting @Concern’s Haiti relief efforts, probably for education & schools – more as information available. And, we’re in discussions/research on economic empowerment as well as other education & school programs.
You should have received EF’s general email blast, the HelpHaiti update on Thursday. If you didn’t, please check your junk mail box. It came from Eugene AT GiveToAustin DOT org. It includes a map of our partners’ activites on the ground in Haiti.
Below, I’ve pasted updates from the agencies.
Thank you again for your generous contributions. As always, feel free to send your suggestions, questions or comments. And, please forward our link (http://GiveToAustin.org/HelpHaiti) to any friends who might be interested in contributing to Haiti. I hope we are demonstrating the value of donating through us – to receive the match and ensure precious dollars are invested wisely.
w/ much appreciation,
Eugene
(on behalf of the match donors & the Entrepreneurs Foundation: Austin Ventures, Donna & Philip Berber, The Garber Family, Lynn & Tommie Meredith, Silicon Labs and Isabel & David Welland)
Partner updates:
Partners in Health: launching a plan to bring emergency crops to harvest in as little as 3 months. The Inter-American Development Bank puts recovery and rebuilding costs in Haiti as high as $14 billion. PiH mobile clinics in Port au Prince performed 746 HIV tests between 2/7-2/21; 39 tested positive. Between 2/7-2/21: PIH/ZL mobile clinics saw 10,432 patients in settlements for homeless earthquake survivors. [they’ve done so much more than this – literally helped save thousands, are feeding and caring for tens of thousands]
Concern Worldwide: We have a great team of more than 250 staff now working in Port-au-Prince. 230 of them are Haitian, and we’re recruiting more every day. Heading up the emergency team are some of our most capable and experienced staff members. Per Andersson, our Emergency Engineering Manager, is more experienced in water and sanitation than anyone else I know. Tom Dobbin has being doing food distributions in emergencies in Africa for 20 years. Kate Golden has led Concern’s emergency programmes for the most vulnerable children in Sudan, Ethiopia and Democratic Republic of the Congo. Ted Shine has worked in every large-scale emergency around the world in the last 10 years. It’s an impressive team, and we need every single one of them because we have a huge job to do.
There is nothing fancy and nothing small about what we’re doing here. We are simply ensuring that thousands of families have the basics for survival.We’re already providing clean water and latrines to over 50,000 people. More than 30,000 have received a shelter kit, blankets, jerry cans and a hygiene kit. Thousands of children have been screened for malnutrition. In the coming weeks, we’ll be providing 15,000 children with supplementary food. We are providing education for 30,000 children and seeds, tools and goats for 5,000 farmers.Water distribution has been a big priority from day one, and Concern is now providing 188,500 litres of clean drinking water to 53,000 people every day.
Catholic Relief Services: As Haiti paused to mark the one-month anniversary of the earthquake that devastated its capital city of Port-au-Prince, Catholic Relief Services reached our own milestone—providing food to a half-million people in the country. CRS donors continue to demonstrate their care for the people of Haiti, giving or pledging $60.4 million for relief operations. Now attention is turning to providing shelter as the rainy season looms a month or so away.
CRS distributed emergency shelter kits—waterproof sheeting, lumber and nails—to an estimated 6,500 families (about 32,500 people) at the Petionville golf course, where close to 50,000 people now live under sheets and other materials that will be useless as protection once the rainy season begins in March. The week of February 15, CRS will be distributing 10,000 more of these shelter kits to families in smaller camps and settlements, and at Champ de Mars, the grassy area in front of the heavily damaged government buildings in the center of Port-au-Prince.
Community Matters 