Not one week after the deadly earthquake in Haiti, at least two Red Deer-area groups are chomping at the bit to get down there and help out.
Three men from Lacombe were to hop on board a plane bound for Toronto at midnight tonight, to eventually arrive in Haiti as part of Lacombe-based A Better World’s initial response to the disaster.
Rob Weich, a project manager for A Better World’s work in Bolivia and volunteer firefighter, Shanon Hedgecock, manager for Bosco Homes, and Levi New, construction worker, will offer medical assistance and build temporary shelters at a location outside of Port-Au-Prince.
A Better World co-founder Eric Rajah explained that since his group seldom does relief work, it usually doesn’t respond to disasters in the first 30 days. Same goes for the restoration stage, Rajah said, when displaced peoples are usually being brought into camps to be fed and given medicine.
It’s in the third stage — reconstruction — that Rajah’s small outfit shines.
But not so with Haiti. Or at least, not yet.
“We decided to bend the rules and give it a shot, given the desperation of the situation,” Rajah said, explaining that Weich’s group will also do some assessment for likely follow-up projects by A Better World.
Weich’s group will be working with the International Hope and Rescue Team, which requested the help and already has boots on the ground in Haiti, Rajah said. Security will be provided by Dominican Republic police, as the team is flying into the Dominican Republic and will be escorted to their site in Haiti.
“We have to go sometime,” Rajah said. “We might as well go now.”
A nursing instructor at Red Deer College thinks it’s more likely than not that her church-sponsored aid mission to Haiti next month is still a go.
“There are various things to take consideration of in things like this. We are waiting, watching, praying for wisdom, seeking counsel and guidance any way we can,” said Alma Funk, leader of the 13-member team that was set to go down and help out at a technical college in Grand Goâve set up by Canada-based Haiti Arise.
Funk said her team is mainly waiting to hear from Haiti Arise’s chairman, who is expected in Haiti in the next few days and who will give the team the thumbs up or down.
“Security, that’s one of the issues. For me, it’s an ethical dilemma,” Funk said Monday.
“If we’re going to go, we have to (eat) ... but how do we take food away from them, when we have all this food back home?”
“How do we take a bed in a guest house, when we have our homes back home? The people we would be displacing don’t have homes. How do you put that across your ethical grid? That’s been a huge issue for me — are we a greater liability?”
If the team goes, they won’t be doing what they initially planned to, since the technical college has since collapsed. Instead, they’ll be using those skills they would have been teaching to others — welding and carpentry, among many others — to help rebuild.
Funk, who has worked in international aid for 30 years and who visited Haiti only last spring, said the next 10 days are crucial to whether or not they’ll make the Feb. 5 trip.
Others in the area are looking to the Canadian and Haitian governments for any indication of what’s going to happen to the orphaned children of the destitute country.
While the Dutch have flown a plane over the Atlantic to pick up the more than 100 children already in the adoption process, and the Americans have instituted “humanitarian parole” to allow children in adoption situations into the U.S. temporarily for care, the Canadian government has said that adoptive children are being given “priority processing.”
On Saturday, Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said “we will leave no stone unturned in trying to accelerate applications,” but also warned of the dangers human traffickers and kidnappers can pose in such times of disaster and pointed out that many of the Haitian government’s files had been lost.
Anna-Marie Loomis of the Caroline area has been on the phone with immigration officials over her adoption of a seven-year-old Haitian girl named Dalina. She said her contact had received no particular directives about speeding up Haitian adoptions, but said things were looking positive overall.
“I think as the world recognizes that there are children with homes that they can be in, they need to vacate spaces for the children who are in dire need of basic necessities and medical care,” Loomis said.
She and her husband have jumped through most of the bureaucratic hoops in the adoption process. A veteran of two previous adoptions from Haiti, Loomis knows the ropes and understands the need for due process in most cases.
“We know the government can work on your behalf, and we know they will,” said Loomis. “My hope is that Canada follows the lead of the Dutch government ...”
Even those without a stake in Haiti are taking an active interest.
Residents at Victoria Park Retirement have put a pot out and started collecting money to donate to the Red Cross’s Haiti relief fund.
From when they started on Friday to midday Monday, residents had collected close to $1,000.
“It was one of the ladies in a group here came to me during meal-time and said ‘wouldn’t it be a good idea to raise money for Haiti?’ And it sort of mushroomed from there,” said resident Don Laubman.
Laubman and others are hoping the spirit of competitiveness can get some of the other retirement homes in the area in on the drive, and have issued a challenge to that effect. They want others to meet or beat what they’ve got at Victoria Park.
“We’ll see if we get any reaction, maybe it’ll stir the pot a bit,” Laubman said. “The challenge might just ring a bell.”
Community members can donate to the “pot” at 9 Avery St., or can go to the local Red Cross office itself, which has extended its business hours in light of the need for disaster relief. The Red Deer Red Cross office at 3030 55th St. is open 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. all week. Donations can also be made at Wal-Mart and any number of local banks.
mgauk@www.reddeeradvocate.com
