Northwest Yearly Meeting of Friends (Quakers)

Food, water and medical supplies are beginning to flow into Haiti, but the needs are immense. Friends’ organizations are not generally at the forefront of disaster relief efforts such as pulling people out of buildings or giving immediate medical assistance, but they have good relationships with those that do.

The American Friends Service Committee and Evangelical Friends Church Eastern Region have been using their specialist knowledge of agencies that could put funds to immediate good use. Read below for the details of what these groups are doing, and how to track their ongoing efforts.

Sincerely,

Margaret Fraser of Friends World Committee for Consultation

AFSC, EFC-Eastern Region and Haiti relief efforts

The American Friends Service Committee has sent $50,000 to purchase supplies for emergency medical stations, shelter and to meet the needs of those suffering amputations and other serious injuries. It is partnering with Handicap International in these efforts. The AFSC has designated another $50,000 to provide 10,000 meals for families in hard-hit neighborhoods of Port-au-Prince, in partnership with HEKS (Swiss Interchurch Aid.) Jorge Laffitte, AFSC Director of the Latin America/Caribbean Region, is currently in Haiti and is providing on-the-ground perspectives on the crisis via his blog.

Evangelical Friends Church Eastern Region (EFC-ER) has seven affiliated churches in Haiti with around 2,500 attenders (plus another three Haitian congregations in the Dominican Republic.) EFC-ER’s Field Director in Haiti and the Dominican Republic is William Bertrand, who served for a while as pastor for a Haitian Friends Church in Florida. The churches are more than thirty miles north of Port-au-Prince, so their main challenges have been shortage of food, water and other supplies because of transportation difficulties. Since they provide material aid for their communities, this is a serious concern. Soon after the earthquake, EFC-ER sent $15,000 to Haiti through World Relief to fund three food distribution centers that are feeding 5,000 people a day and to support a 300-bed hospital with three operating rooms. EFC-ER is posting bulletins about Haiti on its home page.

The agencies that both these Friends’ organizations have partnered with are part of InterAction, a coalition of 150 humanitarian organizations (many of them faith-based) that offer disaster relief, refugee assistance and sustainable development with a focus on the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people.