hi everyone!
here is a very touching part of Eric's e-mail (Eric was a volunteer with us for 3 months together with his girlfriend Molly):
...for those of you in a rush, or those of you who always skip to the back of the book to see what happens, i'll skip to the punchline right off the bat: with one click you can donate online at www.amurthaiti.org, to make a huge difference in the lives of some amazing people. AMURT is not the UN or UNICEF or OXFAM or something big. they are a small group of europeans, haitians, south americans, and unitedstatesians in beards and dirty pants sleeping in tents and crappy shacks in a little dusty village with a staff of 80-some haitians and 20-some dirtbikes and two trucks -- doing some amazing work beyond their means and beyond all odds...
1. a little background first. molly and i worked with a community development group in rural northwest haiti earlier this year, called AMURT-Haiti (www.amurthaiti.org, if you hadn't picked up on that theme yet...). they're good folks, doing good stuff. no, actually, they are amazing folks, doing amazing stuff. they originally began work there as a response to the disaster brought on by hurrican jeanne in 2004, killing some 3,000-5,000 in the nearby city of gonaives and surrounding areas. since then, they've expanded exponentially into longer-term projects with a local staff of 80 or so working in areas of health, education, water filtration, infrastructure, and more.
2. however, the string of hurricanes that have hit the island one after another in the last couple weeks (fay, gustav, hanna, and ike) have left the country, the northwest region, and specifically that same city of gonaives, in worse shape than they've ever been. perhaps you have seen some of the coverage last week on tv or somewhere, perhaps not. amurt has turned to immediate disaster-relief mode in the wake of all this.
Submitted by Dharma.
