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Haiti Relief - Update

Immediate Action

In the aftermath of Haiti's devastating earthquake, GO Campaign is mobilizing youth and supporters with tangible ways to help and show their solidarity with Haitians who are struggling for survival.

Bookmark: This page will be updated frequently with new actions and updates on how your contributions are saving lives.

Take Action	Updates from Haiti
Donations In-kind Medical Supplies HOPE for Haiti Cards 10 Things for Haiti	Feb 12 - Heartfelt thanks from Haiti Feb 10 - View from Borgne after a month Jan 26 - 1st Shipment of Med. Supplies Arrive Jan 21 - GO Mobilizes Airlift of Medicines Jan 18 - Refugees Arriving from Port-au-Prince Jan 15 - Long-Term Reconstruction

TAKE ACTION: HOW YOU CAN HELP RIGHT NOW

Donations: Emergency Relief Fund for Haiti

(Posted Monday, January 18, 2010)

100% of all donations to our Emergency Relief Fund directly aid the suffering community of children and refugees who have been cut off from all supplies due to the earthquake.
In addition to donating funds for supplies and to cover various transportation costs to Borgne, if you have connections for medical in-kind donations, please contact us for a list of needed supplies.

HOPE for Haiti Cards

In times of need, a small gesture like a kind word or show of empathy can uplift and instill hope. We are asking our GO Community to make cards that we will send to H.O.P.E. Messages such as "We Care!" and "Sending you love from Los Angeles" can bring Haitians who have lost all sense of normalcy a measure of hope.

If you would like to participate, please let us know. Please send cards to: GO Campaign, 2461 Santa Monica Blvd. #437, Santa Monica, CA 90404. For students, please include the name of your school, grade level , teacher/parent name and email.

Items for Collection/Drop-off

10 Things for Haiti

GO's collaboration with Lime-Aid in gathering 10 staples of life started as a simple way to provide two orphanages with fundamental necessities in the wake of the earthquake. Thanks to the outpouring of support, hundreds of pounds of food and supplies were delivered to the orphanages in their critical time of need. As always, we thank our supporters for their generous contributions. Updates on "10 Things for Haiti" are posted on their site.

UPDATES FROM HAITI: LATEST NEWS & PROGRESS

(Friday, Feb 12, 2010)
As our work continues, a special thanks from our friends at H.O.P.E.

Dear friends of H.O.P.E.! It is very difficult to find the words to express my personal gratitude for all you have given to the people of Haiti and in particular those our organization serves in Borgne, on Haiti's northern coast... Thanks to our GO angels, we have bought medical supplies, food, and a generator and will soon have a vehicle!!! I take comfort in the fact that we are not alone and that this young boy (at right) whose picture I took in Borgne a few days before the earthquake will thrive thanks to your generosity. I am also elated that the Mobile Teacher Program sponsored by GO is just about to be launched!!! The earthquake slowed us down a couple of weeks but the committee in Borgne is all set to move. That is a bright light!!! We estimate that come August we will have trained the teachers and that 400 kids from remote villages will be attending summer camp and start school in September!!! You should be extremely proud; you are helping to build a brighter future!

On behalf of my colleagues here and in Borgne, sincere and heartfelt thank you's!
- Rose-Marie Chierici

(Wednesday, Feb 10, 2010)
H.O.P.E. shares with us the view from Borgne one month after the disaster

We are now a month into the disaster, or as some say, “that thing that happened to us”… avoiding to name the event that destroyed their lives. As we read in the media, and know too well from Borgne, the crisis has entered a new phase… and the depth of the devastation is beginning to sink in! The dead are buried, all 230,000 of them; and the living need to be cared for. They need our full attention—their bodies, their minds, and their souls are in need of tender care. An eerie normalcy, complacency almost, is already replacing the hectic pace of the early search and recovery days in Port-au-Prince. “Bedsheet” cities look more and more like neighborhoods where survivors establish tenuous roots and make new friends, scrape a living, find creative ways to build sturdier shelters out of scavenged wood and tin roofing, and…as usual where kids bring life and force adults to plan for an uncertain future.

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(Tuesday, Jan 26, 2010)
Our first shipment of medical supplies has landed in Cap Haitien airport in Haiti!

The supplies have been unloaded and are going straight to the hospital in Borgne. 20 new post-op patients needing long term care were picked up from a nearby hospital in Milot and brought to H.O.P.E.’s make-shift hospital erected in the high school field across the street from the local hospital where a staff of 70 medical personnel is now treating the refugees. While the plane was refueling in Turks, the H.O.P.E. team was graciously offered tents to take with them to Haiti – amazing what can be done when we all pull together!

We are currently working on getting more medicines and supplies for the next flight. All donations go toward these efforts!

(Thursday, Jan 21, 2010)
GO needs your help to mobilize airlift of medicines.

"GO is not only helping! It is saving LIVES! You are the first to know that we have been asked to take patients from a hospital in Port-au-Prince and a skeleton medical staff will be driving down there this weekend and bring our first bus load! Please know how much I personally and my colleagues in Haiti appreciate these donations..."

- from an email we received just moments ago from Rose-Marie at H.O.P.E.

LATEST UPDATE
We have a plane leaving Florida THIS upcoming Monday, and another leaving next week from Rochester, and likely more after that. We have clearance at the Santiago airport in Dominican Republic and the Cap Haitien airport in Haiti and available trucking directly to Borgne, in Northern Haiti, where our partner H.O.P.E. has a team of 70 medical workers waiting for medicines and supplies needed to treat the scores of refugees arriving from Port-au-Prince. Luckily, the northern route is not frequently traveled, so our trucks will not encounter the prohibitive bottlenecking that other relief organizations are experiencing. (You can read excerpts from H.O.P.E.'s latest email to us below.)

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WHAT YOU CAN DO
Please forward this to your friends. This is an opportunity to have a significant and immediate impact in Haiti. In addition to donating funds for supplies and to cover various transportation costs to Borgne, if you have connections for medical in-kind donations, please contact us.

HOW WE ARE MAKING A DIFFERENCE
Together, GO Campaign and H.O.P.E., which has been providing medical relief in the Borgne region for over 15 years, are doing what the more famous relief organizations are working so hard to do. Often it's better to work with the smaller organizations, as noted this week by Grantmakers Without Borders: "A lesson from the tsunami was that some better known organizations raised funds far beyond their absorptive capacity, while many lesser known but equally capable organizations struggled for funding. With the same few organizations appearing on almost all Haiti response lists, something similar is likely to occur in Haiti."

Your support will have tangible real-time results for the affected peoples of Haiti. If donating by check, please indicate "Haiti Relief" in the memo section and send to GO Campaign, 2461 Santa Monica Blvd. #437, Santa Monica, CA 90404.

GO was working with H.O.P.E. prior to this catastrophic disaster and we will continue helping vulnerable children in Haiti when the immediate relief efforts have turned to reconstruction. Stick with us.

As always, 100% of your donation to GO will serve those in need.

Thank you in advance for your support.

Excerpts from yesterday's email from H.O.P.E. to GO:

...H.O.P.E. was working in Haiti before the January 12th earthquake, through past disasters like the 2008 hurricanes, and will be there long after the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders and other relief agencies are gone. We say this not to detract from the work of any of these relief agencies- but to underscore that in Borgne many aspects of life were already what would be called 'a disaster' by most modern standards... and the earthquake is now further damaging many vital elements of this community's life.

H.O.P.E.'s role has always been to ensure that the voices of Haiti's rural poor are recognized - and to respond with support as they build health, education and economic capabilities for a sustainable future. Now we are responding to an overwhelming influx of casualties and refugees in our little community hospital....This crisis must be the catalyst for a new and more sustainable Borgne.

...Many injured or suffering from PSTD - all hungry and exhausted from the long, hard road over the mountains by construction truck. Hospitals are overflowing. Our community leaders are preparing, with a makeshift 200-bed field hospital prepared in the local high school (just across the road from our ASB hospital). It is rapidly filling with patients even as the supplies diminish. We are sharing our supplies and resources to ensure that they go to the greatest needs, wherever they may be. We are unable to make banking transactions - cash and IOU is the new currency. Our supplies of ALL goods/services from the capital are cut - we are on our own to find alternate resources. Our immediate priorities remain medications and supplies - both emergency and chronic care, as these inventories have been depleted even as demand rises. But right behind this demand is a looming nutrition and public health crisis. We have already built a complete distribution center and logistics network...

Our work is person to person, community to community... We desperately await our relief shipment...With continued gratitude...

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(Monday, Jan 18, 2010)
Truckloads of refugees are arriving to H.O.P.E. from Port-au-Prince - We are working to airlift a shipment of medical supplies and basic necessities to our partners, Haiti Outreach - Pwoje Espwa (H.O.P.E.), in the northern Borgne region of Haiti, where truckloads of refugees are arriving from Port-au-Prince. H.O.P.E. informs us, There are large trucks arriving filled with refugees. Many if not injured are suffering PTSD. The hospitals are now overflowing. We have taken over the high school across the road from our clinic and set up a makeshift hospital for overflow.

LONG-TERM RECONSTRUCTION

(Friday, January 15, 2010)
Mobilizing Relief in the Wake of Tragedy - GO Campaign's First Steps and the Road Ahead

We are sure you have been following the reports from Haiti. As the most impoverished country in the Western Hemisphere with 70% of its population living on less than $2 a day and without even the most basic infrastructure (e.g., no fire department), the devastating affects of the earthquake have exacerbated Haiti's existing troubles to a tragic degree.

GO Campaign partner organization Haiti Outreach - Pwoje Espwa (H.O.P.E.) is based in the northern rural region of Borgne, which has been spared the most severe destruction and loss of lives. However, according to Executive Director Rose-Marie Chierici, H.O.P.E. needs to prepare for the massive migration of once city-dwellers to the countryside. As Rose-Marie writes, "With roads cut off, nothing will move to the north so food, medical supplies, and other necessities will not reach our area. Although the epicenter and most of the damage occurred in Port-au-Prince, like a cracked windshield, the tragedy will spread quickly to the rest of the nation." One of the most effective ways to help those affected by the earthquake is to help existing organizations be prepared for the short-term and long-term impact of this natural disaster. Donations to H.O.P.E.'s reconstruction efforts will help those on the margin who will likely be forgotten.

We are also keenly aware of the immediate needs in the capital city Port-au-Prince. Operation USA and Doctors Without Borders are skilled first responder organizations meeting the most pressing medical needs. In addition, for our supporters in the Los Angeles area, we are working to mobilize youth and provide them with a tangible way to support the relief efforts by filling a Santa Monica shipping container with food and medical supplies that will be shipped to Haiti by collaborating nonprofits in the coming weeks. As the plan develops we will post information on this page as well as on our Facebook Fan page. Stay tuned!

In the months ahead, GO will assess how our community can best play a vital role in the rebuilding process and address the needs of orphans and the most vulnerable children.

The outpour of concern and support for Haiti is heartwarming and we thank the GO Community for doing your part.

In solidarity,

Your friends at GO Campaign