Welthungerhilfe is putting together emergency supplies for Haiti – Appeal for donations

Resident search for survivors among the debris
after the earthquake in Port-au-Prince
© REUTERS / Eduardo Munoz www.alertnet.org
(15.01.2009) Welthungerhilfe is putting together its first aid consignments in the Dominican Republic to take them to Haiti overland.  The first aid truck will be loaded with food – rice, beans, oil and salt – enough to enable 5,000 persons to survive for 3 weeks.  In addition to this, supplies of blankets, cooking utensils, tarpaulins and spades plus toiletries such as soap and toilet paper are being procured.

"Many people have lost absolutely everything they owned," says Michael Kühn, regional co-ordinator for Welthungerhilfe in Haiti.  "We have to provide them with the real essentials as quickly as possible.  Every Euro is urgently needed."

Welthungerhilfe will probably concentrate its aid consignments on the rural areas, where it has been working together with its local twinning organisations for a long time.  "These organisations know their way around their regions so that we can be sure that the aid will go where it is most needed."

Welthungerhilfe has been working in Haiti since 1974 and it currently has six German and 105 Haitian nationals working there.

Project leader Rainer Schmid reporting from Jean Rabel in the north of the country says that many people are making their way to Port-au-Prince, to look up relatives there.  There are many funeral processions going in the opposite direction to bury their dead at home.  "It is a spectral scene," says Schmid.

Please send us donations for the earthquake victims in Haiti

Welthungerhilfe
Account number 1115
Sparkasse KölnBonn
BSC 370 501 98
Reference: Nothilfe Haiti