- ATD Fourth World

Several times now, our International Leadership Team has managed to speak by phone with Jacqueline Plaisir and David Lockwood, full-time Volunteer Corps members, as well as with several other members of ATD Fourth World. Some of the news they share of the people around them is reassuring, while other news is about the mourning and the losses endured.

Here is how they describe their days and nights:

Like everyone in Haiti now, they sleep outdoors in a group – team members, families living in extreme poverty, and neighbors. “Behind the Fourth World house, which is still standing, there are a hundred of us spending the nights grouped together, giving each other comfort, courage and a feeling of safety.”

The Volunteer Corps members are determined. They have begun visiting each of the families they know. Together, they are thinking about how to organize themselves, faced with shortages of everything.

“We can see the extent of this catastrophe. Things will be difficult, but our place is here, with these families and their children and young people. On the first day, we counted 74 airplanes overhead. That was a relief – but as of today, no aid at all has been brought to neighborhoods in some of the poorest areas. Vehicles cannot access our district, and the steepness here often causes mudslides. Water, food and health care are terribly lacking. Saturday, there was a strong aftershock and everyone was shouting.” People living in extreme poverty have taken action.

They know that for the moment they can count only on themselves.

“We’ve been burying the dead, clearing the rubble. Local merchants are packaging their food in smaller quantities so that even with just a tiny bit of money in their pockets, people can afford to eat. Children from our pre-school program run to meet us, they’re so happy to see us. In the heart of this destruction, they continue to come together to sing and hear stories, to look at books and to draw.”

This afternoon, the team of Volunteer Corps members met with families living in poverty and other members of ATD to decide how to organize themselves in the coming days and weeks. Their main goal is to enable the most isolated people and families to gain access to shelter, provisions and the health care being set up. They are listing their needs: a satellite phone, a solar panel to recharge it, water sterilizing tablets, a car…

To make an online donation in US dollars, please go to:

https://www.networkforgood.org/donation/MakeDonation.aspx?ORGID2=237135119

To make an online donation in euros, please go to:

http://www.atd-fourthworld.org/Inline-Donation.html

To make an online donation in £ (pound sterling), please go to :

http://www.everyclick.com/atd-haiti