Are you saving your loose change? Windows on the World is April 17

REBUILD HAITI has selected Togetherness in Christ Orphanage in Haiti as recipient of funds collected during Windows on the World Loose Change Drive. TIC was identified by Samaritan’s Purse staff as an orphanage that took in many children after the earthquake. Samaritan’s Purse has provided assistance to TIC, but the need is still great. Learn more about TIC here.

Samaritan's Purse is a nondenominational evangelical Christian organization providing spiritual and physical aid to hurting people around the world. Since 1970, Samaritan's Purse has helped meet needs of people who are victims of war, poverty, natural disasters, disease, and famine.

Windows on the World

Charities we support

REBUILD HAITI supports these charities at work in Haiti:

Doctors Without Borders is an international medical humanitarian organization created by doctors and journalists in France in 1971. In emergencies and their aftermath, DWB provides essential health care, rehabilitates and runs hospitals and clinics, performs surgery, responds to epidemics, carries out vaccination campaigns, operates feeding programs for malnourished children, and offers mental health care. When needed, DWB also constructs wells, dispenses clean drinking water and provides shelter materials like blankets and plastic sheeting.

On any given day, close to 27,000 doctors, nurses, logisticians, water-and-sanitation experts, administrators, and other qualified professionals can be found providing medical care in international teams made up of local DWB aid workers and their colleagues from around the world.

Habitat for Humanity International is an ecumenical Christian ministry that welcomes to its work all people dedicated to the cause of eliminating poverty housing. Since its founding in 1976, Habitat has built, rehabilitated, repaired or improved more than 350,000 houses worldwide, providing simple, decent and affordable shelter for more than 1.75 million people.

Habitat has set a goal of helping 50,000 earthquake-affected families in Haiti improve shelter conditions. The organization’s multi-year plan includes distributing emergency shelter kits, debris recycling and removal, house repairs, transitional shelter, new construction and on-the-job training in house construction. Through all aspects of its work, Habitat strives to cultivate partnerships with local residents and other humanitarian organizations that can multiply the effectiveness of its response in Haiti.

Heifer International is a non-profit charitable organization dedicated to relieving global hunger and poverty. It provides gifts of livestock and plans, as well as education in sustainable agriculture, to financially-disadvantaged families around the world.
Heifer has set a goal to raise $3 million to fund a multi-year recovery restoration effort in Haiti. Staff will assess project and partner needs and provide rapidly productive agricultural and livestock resources to help families meet medium- to long-term needs. Efforts will focus on helping restore land and access to clean water. Staff will begin to establish partnerships with complementary agencies for program and funding strategies. Heifer will support sustainable recovery of family farms through training, reforestation, improved small animal species (poultry, swine and ruminants) and soil conservation methods over three to five years. As residents migrate to smaller towns, Heifer will work with other agencies to identify areas with the most concentrated need and opportunity for Heifer’s assistance.

Make noise!

It will soon be two months since the devastating earthquake destroyed Port au Prince and other parts of Haiti.

No other nation in the past two hundred years has endured – and is still enduring – so much. A million plus Haitians are still without the barest necessaries of life: adequate food, drinking water and shelter. Sanitation is still primitive and completely inadequate. Some 500,000 tents or plastic tarps have been distributed, but that still leaves numberless people sleeping under thin sheets and in the mud when it rains.

Conditions will soon worsen. The rainy reason is fast approaching. Homeless Haitians must be moved to higher ground soon, or disease, misery, and death will afflict more and more of them. Immediate and dramatic action is essential. There is no time for politics and bureaucratic turf wars. If land must be appropriated to accomplish the task, some authority needs to cut through legal niceties. Landowners’ rights must stand aside; the rights of the masses who desperately need a place to go take precedence. We are talking about people’s lives after all. Now! The clock is ticking, the hands are moving.

Most newspapers and TV stations have moved on. Other concerns have superseded Haiti’s earthquake – the politics of health care, the earthquake in Chile, the storms in this country, our seemingly endless winter. . . , the list goes on. But the job in Haiti is not done. We’ve got to maintain the focus. How do we keep helping the Haitian people?

Make noise!

Write, call, FAX, or email
President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
(include your e-mail address)
202-456-1414
FAX: 202-456-2461
www.whitehouse.gov/contact

Write, call, FAX, or email
U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander
455 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Phone: (202) 224-4944
Fax: (202) 228-3398
http://alexander.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=Email

Write, call, FAX, or email
U.S. Senator Bob Corker
185 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C., 20510
202-224-3344
FAX 202-228-0566
http://corker.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=ContactMe

Write, call, FAX, or email
U.S. Representative Bart Gordon
2306 Rayburn HOB
Washington, D.C. 20515
Phone: (202) 225-4231
Fax: (202) 225-6887
http://gordon.house.gov/contact/contact_form.shtml

If your representative is someone else, Google them for their contact information.

Write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper, or all newspapers in your region.

Please take the time, now. And ask (nag, cajole, prod, motivate) your family, friends and business associates to write. The more noise, the better the chance of action.

Children in urgent need of surgery

The Haitian earthquake has taken many lives – some estimates run as high as 300,000. While the official count stands at 212,000, the exact figure may never be known. Many other Haitians were injured and are still without the necessities needed to maintain a normal life – adequate food, water and shelter. But this is not their story – this article relates to the mountain of red tape that is keeping children apart from much needed medical care.

This is the story of one of these children – Landina – a three month old, little Haitian girl that unless she receives an operation – she will die - says Dr. David Nott – a British volunteer.
Landina has suffered greatly in her short life. “Her agonizing wails are hard to list to”, he says. “It is a desperate cry for help from a life that is only just beginning, but may soon end.”
She was pulled from the rubble of a collapsed hospital. Her mangled right arm had to be amputated. But she has lost much more than that - her mother is missing – presumed dead.
Dr. Nott said: "Because the bone in her head is dead there is significant risk of infection not only systemic infection but brain infection."The child needs urgent treatment in a neurological centre." And one of the few places that performs the complex operation she needs is the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London. But transporting her there has become a major challenge.
Dr. Nott’s request to move her out of the country has been turn down, because of the lack of paper work. The problem is how to get the child from Haiti to London at a time of great sensitivity over Haitian children, especially orphans, following the scandal over the American missionaries who are now being held on child trafficking charges.

Dr. Nott said: "With all the paper work and legal problems I don't know precisely how we will do it but we are not going to stop.”I have written to the Haitian government to see whether or not they can expedite this to ensure she gets on a flight to the London.”

Time is running out for Landina. Mr Nott believes they have a window of 10 days, possibly only a week to save her; such is the risk of brain infection.

For Landina… the clock is now ticking. If this tiny child, who has already suffered so much, does not get help and fast, she may well become another needless casualty of a disaster that has claimed so many.

The upside to this story… we have just learned, as we were finishing this article, that after weeks of trying to obtain the necessaries paper work - last Tuesday, the authorization to evacuate Landina was received, but due a series of last minute delays – she was not able to leave until last Friday. Landina is now being looked after at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London, where she will receive treatment for her injuries.

Back to an even darker downside to this story… six to twelve months after her treatment, Landina, that had her right arm amputated near the shoulder – is to be returned home to Haiti. (An agreement – that had been made with the Haitian government in order to expedite her departure.) This child will be returning to a country that cannot feed her people – where there’s little medical care, no parents… an orphaned amputee.