Fw: Project K.I.D. Update from Haiti
lenor...@gmail.com
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
Dear Friends, Staff, Partners
and Board,
I am sharing Paige Ellison-Smith's update on the work in
Haiti. As a backdrop to this update, the Children's Forum is the partner
agency to Project K.I.D. which means we have agreed to be their infrastructure
support (which stands for Kids in Disaster) whose mission is to bring
PlayCare to areas affected by disaster (which is essentially play therapy
and coordination / provision of other resources for affected
children). The kit referenced below is one that the Forum staff put
together to send down to Haiti (with contents donated and/or secured by
staff). Our kit is the first actually being deployed and will be serving
children at the Medi Share site co-located with the hospital. We are so
thrilled...special thanks to everyone who made this a reality. Special
thanks also to GRCMA in Mobile, AL for their coordination of warehouse and
storage of incoming supplies. Other Play Care sites will be deployed soon.
The Project K.I.D. team arrived in Haiti yesterday for their second trip down --
pictures to follow. Your contributions and support to this effort are
truly making a difference! Contributions are still needed to keep this
work going -- please visit www.project-kid.org. We are working
on the website so please check back often.
From Paige
Ellison-Smith, co-founder of Project K.I.D.
Phyl,
This was God at
work. No one is good enough to make things happen like yesterday. As it
turned out, The Children's Forum kit was sitting at the hanger that was less
than 30 yards from the air-conditioned(!!!) tent MediShare is having us
use! The guys at the hanger brought your kit straight over on a
forklift. Truly amazing! We didn't even have to set up our tents for
sleeping here. They had two for us. We even have cots:-)
The
Children's Forum Kit is 80-85 percent fully operational. We will open it
at 11:00 today. The children (currently 60 are here) at Miami Hospital are so
excited-we could hardly get them to wait until today to begin using PlayCare.
Bellinda is bringing two "volunteers" from the church that I will train today to
run space from 11:00 until 5:00 daily. Have to determine how to cover weekends
and some night usage with volunteers. Hospital folks said CNN may cover
the story. Dr. Green, MediShare founder coming this weekend and folks here
excited to show PlayCare to him. Much work this am and an 8:30 Child
Protection cluster meeting with Bellinda. Wish you all were
here!
From Jim Smith, Paige's husband who is with Paige this
trip:
WOW!!!
When we saw the kit boxes at MAF, we were
wowed by the absolutely top-quality containers for the kits - other folks had
stuff in crumbling cardboard boxes falling off the pallets - your kit was
perfectly stacked and ready to go, and that made it easy to hijack a forklift
and move it to the Medishare tent Paige got. (OK, I wish we'd pirated equipment,
because it sounds so swash-buckling, but we actually found the guys at MAF on
the same mission as us, and we only had to hint before the load was on its
way...)
When we started unpacking, it was wow, wow, wow, wow... over and
over again as more great stuff was discovered. I couldn't believe how fabulous
your kit was. Everything top-flight, beautifully packed so it all transported
safely, and literally everything we needed to set up, even though we'd brought
nothing but our hands with us. The kit list is certainly comprehensive, but your
group executed incredibly. (speaking of kit contents -- an aside -- Tom
Henderson, founder of Shelter Box, has been talking about partnering with PKID
as they deploy the Shelter Box kits. They already add to their deliveries
what they call Classrooms in a Box, which includes some school supplies and 50
little yellow backpacks with a chalkboard, pencils, drawing and coloring sets,
and such. He started doing that (from a separate funding stream) because
he saw the gap in response for children in the disasters he worked. He's
candid about wanting to get out of that so he can focus on his primary
mission. He asked if PKID had gone overseas before, and I told him this is
the first out-of-country mission. He then asked if PKID would deploy, say, to
Kenya if need be. I said sure if funding permitted. So maybe y'all should get
your shots updated for Africa, too <g>...
I expect there'll be more
talks with him, because he seems fascinated with PKID. It didn't hurt that
we met him at lunchtime and by suppertime we were mostly set up and ready to go.
Rapid deployment resonates with him because Shelter Box has spent years
fine-tuning to be able to do just that.
You can tell I'm fascinated with
ShelterBox, but there's a task-list point in all this. One thing that
caught Tom's eye when he visited this morning was the inflatable globe balls
you'd sent. We gave him one as a sample, but it would be terrific if we could
give him a source for those - he's been trying to find them, and I'd love
to be able to demonstrate PKID's resourcefulness on that....)
OK, that's
the quick, partial debrief.
Best,
Phyllis
Phyllis Kalifeh, President
& CEO
Children's Forum, Inc.
2807 Remington Green
Circle
Tallahassee, FL 32308
http://www.thechildrensforum.com
Office 850-681-7002 Office ▪ Cell
850-322-8053