Have a Heart for Haiti

Haiti is in trouble; deep trouble. There have been estimates of up to 200,000 deaths due to the earthquake, although it could rise if the situation gets any worse. Today, we're discussing the situation, how it could be better, and what we should do to help the Haitians out during this crisis.

The first thing we started to discuss was the thievery. When disaster like this strikes, most people will be forced to steal for survival. In Haiti, people are invading the homes of the dead to get vital resources. For the most part, we here thought that this was okay; resources are scarce, and it's not as if they're stealing for profit or luxury.

The second topic that came up was immigration. The US is not far away from Haiti, and it is to be expected that many refugees will travel from Haiti to the US. Thankfully, the government is allowing refugees for the time being, and we're thankful that anyone able to get out of Haiti will be allowed to go somewhere. One of us commented that a great many Americans, at this point, would probably open their homes up to the Haitians in their time of great need.

Already, there are many relief efforts and missions traveling to Haiti, including a lot of churches. At this point, the problem is not necessarily a lack of resources, but rather a lack of transportation to get resources to everyone who needs them. Nevertheless, Haiti will need a lot of resources to get back on track, so it's hard to say when enough is going to be enough.

Our church, like many others, is making health kits to send down to Haiti. Our church is hoping for only around a hundred, but if thousands of churches across the globe make a hundred kits apiece, then hundreds of thousands of people in Haiti can get help and relief.

We got into a small debate over whether money would be of more assistance than resources. Referring directly to Haiti, money is relatively useless. We did determine, however, that money sent to relief organizations would help just as much, if not more, than actual resources, as the organizations would then be able to buy the resources that Haiti needs.

One of our teachers is a carpenter/builder and has developed a sort of puzzle structure. We used a similar design from him for Relay for Life, and it's a nice building; we used it without two of the sides up, and it was still an excellent protection against the rain. It's a 10x16ft structure and is ideal for quick and portable relief homes. He hopes to send some of them down to Haiti, which would house some of the now homeless Haitians.

If we can organize it, we hope to send an international mission trip to Haiti with our youth group. We would have to go with a larger group, but there is still a question of safety. One of the reasons that Haiti is in such a bad shape is that it has no real functional government; Haiti has been run basically by the UN for the past few years. Only one other country in the world is in a similar position of no government, but it is without UN assistance. The country? Somali -- home of the infamous pirates that are plaguing the rest of the world, including the US.