Haiti earthquake Relief - D7020 Brief Haiti Task Force Update March 2nd 2010
D7020 Website - Haiti Updates
the opportunity to meet with most of the members of the Haiti Task
Force at once. What a great opportunity to share our thoughts and
experiences through all this.
The purpose of the meeting was as follows:
Ø To understand the most current critical needs that that our Haiti
Ground Team feels we must focus on medium term while agreeing to
commit to a long term sustainable solution for the country to be
decided after the PDNA is completed.
We went around the table and got everyone's input as to what we needed
to do next, and how we should approach the future needs of the
country. The response was amazingly consistent. In the short term we
need to address the overpopulation of the schools in the various
regions and do what we can to get as many of the children as possible
back to school. That will involve a number of things depending on the
particular region, but classroom shelters by way of tents or other
structures, desks, benches, materials for those items, meals and
tuition fees are at the top of the list.
We have asked each Club President through the Assistant Governor to
identify one school in each Rotary Community that needs our assistance
and to provide us with an exact list of what we can provide for each
school to meet our objective of providing a place for schooling and
social activity for the refugee children. It was also suggested that
the displaced senior students and university students be used as
tutors in the school system to make up for the extra students and
limited additional teachers.
This will be completed by week's end and we will evaluate based on the
magnitude of the requests, and decide what we can do. We urgently need
20' through 60' tents for this purpose and hope you can all call
someone to who might have access to one or two. They do not have to be
new or any exact shape or size. Please put the word out.
We have agreed that our response for the long term sustainable
recovery will depend on the competition of the PDNA and the
recommendations that come from the United Nations review of that
document with the international rebuilding partners. We have agreed to
put forward Haitian Rotarian Kyss Jean-Mary as our representative on
the PDNA committee in Port au Prince. I will send a letter confirming
that to the Prime Minister of Haiti later today.
Barry Rassin will be assisting with the Rotary presence at the United
Nations when the recommendations are reviewed at that level.
We asked each assistant Governor to provide us with a synopsis of
their respective clubs health and to report back to me by week's end.
Barry is following up on our proposed $50,000 contribution for seeds
through the UN Agricultural Cluster. I am getting information to
clarify the routing of the funds.
ROTAH, Regroupement Oeuvrant a Travers des Actions Humanitaires en
Haiti will have its NGO finalized this week and will be used as our
primary consignee for the relief aid we send to Haiti.
We discussed many options and possible directions for Rotary to go in
the rebuilding plan and were quoted a Haitian saying which I want to
share with you all.
'A dog has 4 paws, but can only go one place at a time'.
PDG Richard McCombe
District 7020