travel to haiti to help relief efforts
How can i travel to haiti as a volunteer?
a friend and i would like to spend our spring break volunteering our time to the haitian relief effort. he is 18 and i am 17 so it’s difficult to find an organization that would accept us. if actually going to haiti is not a possibility, are there any large groups in the US somewher that we could travel to and help out? something along the lines of building beds, or putting together packages. things like that. i’m completely open for suggestions. ideally we just want something that would occupy 3+ days because we want to spend our sping break helping and we want to make the most of it.
Mary O: you didn’t help what so ever.
PLEASE, think about the situation there. You would be mores mouth to feed and water and protect and find a toilet for.
There is no place to stay. There is minimal electricity.
Think about what you would need–for each of you.
If you went for 10 days, you would need a gallon of water for each day. A gallon of water weighs about 8.5 pounds. That’s 85 pounds of water.
You would need your own food. Figure a pound of food a day. 10 pounds.
You would need a sleeping bag. 5 pounds.
How about a first aid kit? 2 pounds.
Clothing? 10 pounds.
So, you have more than 100 pounds of supplies _just for yourself_ to lug around destroyed streets, in 80+ degree heat, surrounded by stinking, rotting corpses.
Don’t expect a motor vehicle to transport you.
Your health insurance is not valid in Haiti. If you break a limb, you would go to the end of the line for treatment. If it were an open break and became infected, the current treatment of choice is _amputation_, because of the lack of antibiotics.
If you are serious about getting involved in disaster response, find your local Red Cross chapter at http://www.redcross.org and contact them to start getting trained. You can get trained, get experience by committing to respond to local disasters, and then expand into regional disasters or other areas you might be interested in, such as logistics, communications, or public affairs.
Iron Chef Cat Cora & Timberland CEO Jeff Swartz Travel to Haiti