Why Help Haiti…

Why Help Haiti?

Over the past couple of weeks we have all been captured by the tragedy in Haiti. At Compassion International, it has been a non-stop effort of the likes I have never seen. We have been in Haiti for over 40 years and currently have over 65,000 children we are working with who are all connected to a local church body.

Since the earthquake hit, the email updates I get from the office are daily. Some are hopeful and some make you want to scream with sadness. I’m thankful to know my friend Dan survived and is home with his family but sad that there’s still no word of my other friend David who was with Dan in the lobby of the Hotel Montana when the earthquake happened… and that’s’ just a small part of the Compassion side of things. Then when you think about all of the other families who have been torn by this disaster and all of the lives lost… well… it’s overwhelming.

Our staff at Compassion is literally working around the clock with getting supplies distributed throughout the country, giving medical aid to those in need all while still trying to account for every child and family affected by the earthquake. Honestly… I can’t really wrap my head around the enormity of it… all I know is it’s massively huge.

You see… it’s like this… when people say Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere… that’s no joke. Moms are making dirt cookies for their kids just to make them feel like they are physically eating something… yep. It’s true…dirt… I’ve had friends tell me about mothers who would walk up to them and hand them their babies and say… Please, I beg you… Take my child back with you to America.

Really? Is this possible? Can you imagine, a country so bad off that a mom would willingly hand her baby over to a complete stranger. Why? Because any situation would be better than her current one… Really?… these people are our neighbors. It’s a longer flight to LA from Nashville than it is to Haiti.

And by the way… things like this were happening BEFORE the earthquake.

Just when you think it couldn’t get any worse… it did. It got a lot worse.

We need your help and what you could do is give. We can get the supplies, food and water to people in need, we just need your money to buy more supplies, food, and water.

So please.

Click on the Help Haiti banner to donate now.

Here’s a little excerpt from the Compassion Blog.

We have received a preliminary report from the Haiti staff with information on 28 child development centers that were affected.

This is not an all inclusive list and is not exhaustive in detailing the impact the earthquake had on each center, but it is a start.

As a snapshot, in the 28 centers, there were more than:

• 100 deaths
• 40 severely wounded
• 1,200 homes destroyed
• 650 homes damaged

These numbers include children, family members, development center staff and church members.

If your child was affected by the earthquake, we will contact you directly with specific information as soon as we can, after we receive it. Even if your child wasn’t directly affected, you will be contacted, although the timing and method may be different.

Click here to go to the Compassion blog to get the latest update. You will learn a ton from this link.

It’s more important than ever that we pay attention to Haiti and do everything possible to make a huge impact. This disaster will open the floodgates for a lot of good… but also a lot of bad, like an increase in child trafficking. Yes… these creepy people WILL take an advantage of the situation. Read this here.

Ok… please give.