Dear Friends,

Many of you know that I have been involved with volunteer fundraising and work in Haiti for many years. Haiti is the last country that deserved what they got on Tuesday afternoon, having barely finished rebuilding from four tropical storms and hurricanes in 2008. On top of that, 80% of Haitians live on less than a dollar a day. It is, by far, the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere.

We already have word out today that some of the schools we have financed and continue to fund to educate thousands of Haitian children have collapsed, and we don’t expect the news to get any better. As power is restored and cell phone service returns, we will learn more. Suffice it to say that the epicenter of the earthquake was centered about midway between Port-au-Prince and the Grand Colline area of Haiti where we work with about 30 primary and secondary schools.

At times like these, many people want do something to help, but many relief organizations have large administrative overheads and only part of what you send will actually make it to where it needs to go. So I wanted to recommend to you the primary funding organization for a large swath of the southwest country, the Haiti Education Foundation, in case any of you wanted to send money to help rebuild this country. In the case of HEF, 100% of the money that you send will go directly to help toward the rebuilding of Haiti. There are many other wonderful organizations that you can support, of course, but I wanted to let you know of the only one (that I know) that uses no funds for administrative fees (all administrative fees are covered by the founders of the charity). And they will send the money project-by-project as work is approved. These are people who have worked there for more than 25 years and they know what they are doing. It is a inspiring and efficient charity that can claim educating, clothing and feeding more than 10,000 students as well as helping in the lives of the families in the same small mountain villages.

Here is the website and address for the organization:

www.haitifoundation.org

Haiti Education Foundation, Inc.
1801 West Block Street
El Dorado, Arkansas 71730

I’d recommend mailing your donation, as the online version must go through PayPal and I’m sure there is a commission involved. On your check, indicate that you would like the money to go to “Haiti Disaster Relief”.

If you would rather, here are a few other organizations who are also working in Haitian relief:

www.doctorswithoutborders.org
www.wfp.org
www.ajws.org
www.mbfoundation.org
www.icrc.org/eng
www.crs.org

I would encourage you to forward this to family, friends and co-workers.

Thanks,
Rob Crittenden