Here is the first of many from the folks working at the Matthew 25 guest house; it is a few weeks old but still relevant to what is still going on relative to the Haiti disaster relief efforts.
The UN – - the organization on the ground directing the relief effort has arranged itself into what it calls “clusters”, and each cluster takes responsibility for a certain aspect of relief, such as Health, Housing, Food, Child Safety, Logistics. The relief comes in and is mainly given to the larger, non governmental organizations (NGOs). However, it’s the smaller, community organizations, pastors, priests, etc. who are in touch with their own communities who really know what is needed, and where.
The major NGOs don’t have much of this information, and in addition are hampered by the particular parameters of their organization’s mission statements and purposes. For example, its been reported that Catholic Relief Services cannot travel anywhere to deliver anything unless they have a military escort. That takes time to arrange on the ground, and leaves people hungry.
Smaller efforts like the Beyond Borders/Konbit, Soil, and, in fact we at Matthew 25 (this just names a few), along with those individuals who just show up to help are not hampered by the same restrictions. We are free to travel about the city. gathering information from hundreds of “have not” camps and communities, and passing it on to the appropriate “haves”, and then begging for release of supplies.
The international presence here is amazing. One night someone brought in an infant that appeared to have meningitis. It was night time, and Jim, a nurse, the baby and her mother piled into the van and Pat drove them to the Israeli Hospital. Trouble was, the location had been listed in three different places. One of them had been our soccer field. The only thing they were fairly certain of was that it was set up on a soccer field near the airport. Fortunately, Pat knows quite a bit about getting around in the city – - at least the major trunk roads. They went to three locations, including a relief facility set up by the Jordanians. However, they only spoke Arabic. The third try, a Dominican physician that had set up his own clinic hopped in the van and showed them the way. We’ve since brought about a dozen people. It is an amazing tent facility spread out over a large field. They said they had everything but, “We have no coffee.” So of course, when Pat and I went back to pick up a girl having a broken leg treated we brought them five pounds. We try to get “social credit” wherever we can.
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