Homebound Missions

I read the following post yesterday and decided to share it for two reasons:  First, so you can see just how deeply troubled and corrupt Haiti is, and secondly so you can see the true venue for helping the Haitian people.  Sadly, I do not believe help will come from the government, as always it will come from those on the ground working closely with the people.

I will be talking about Heartline Ministries a lot in the near future.  After reading this you will understand why Tyler, myself, and our organization, Homebound Missions have decided to support this organization.

March 22

GUEST BLOGGER BARBIE: MORE ON WORKING TO SAVE LIVES

Let me explain to you the anger surging through me as I sat in the back of our pickup truck at 2:00 AM with the limp form of a child draped over my legs.

Travel back with me to 1:15AM.

Whimpering…sobbing….in the gentle, hesitant high pitch of a child. In the distant corner of the courtyard of our hospital, under a tarp. She is trying to be quiet. She knows it is dark in the hospital, and people around her are trying to sleep. Mewing like a small, injured kitten. Tears run down her cheeks. Her legs are pulled to her abdomen. Heat rises off her febrile form, burning. Her lower jaw trembles as a wave of rigors shakes her small body. Blistering fever.

Father looks on with quiet, concerned eyes. He stands above her and watches intently as I examine her in the small circle of light of my headlamp, kneeling beside her cot in the darkness. Her heart is racing. Heat radiates off of her body. I gently touch her abdomen. A small whimper escapes her dry lips and her glassy eyes open to meet mine. Her hand touches mine and attempts to push it away. “Fe mal…” she whispers weakly. “Fe mal…” It hurts…it hurts. I hold her small, protesting hand in my left, and push again gently with my right. Her eyes clench tightly. She sucks in a deep breath and whimpers again. Her belly is rigid. A frighteningly sick child.

“This is very bad…” I whisper to our nurse translator as I administer a dose of morphine. “We need to get her to a surgeon…now.”

She had presented to our hospital earlier in the afternoon with high fever, headache and abdominal pain. We tested her for malaria — which will become epidemic as the rainy season encroaches and the mosquito vectors reproduce in pools of standing water. She was, unfortunately, negative. “Unfortunately”, because in Haiti, malaria is a very serious, but very drug sensitive illness which is relatively easily treated when diagnosed. With the easy diagnosis eliminated, the more concerning reared their ugly heads. Typhoid? A severe intestinal illness leading to bloody diarrhea, severe abdominal pain and sometimes intestinal rupture. Early appendicitis? Both requiring a surgeon.

Our pediatrician, earlier in the day, drove with the girl to Miami Field Hospital to consult one of the volunteer American pediatric surgeons. The surgeon evaluated her, and advised that her illness was early, and nonspecific, and that we should watch her carefully, treating for possible infection. This is a common medical practice, even in the United States — watch the patient closely, and await for the illness to “declare itself” into a specific diagnosis. If it declares, come back immediately.

So, at 1:15AM, the illness declared. Quite vigorously. And absolutely. Intestinal perforation. Millions of small bacteria from the intestines spilling violently into the pristine, sterile cavity of the small child’s abdomen. An exquisitely painful and potentially deadly event.

We called our midwife, who lives one street over, and has a truck, begging a ride back to the Miami Field Hospital. Father carried his precious child to the back of the pickup and lay her gently across my lap. And in the darkness of early morning, we drove through the deserted streets of Port au Prince, to the only available surgeon in the city. The heat of her body burned across mine, small moans escaping her lips.

The Miami Field Hospital is located in a series of large tents inside the walls of the Port au Prince airport. It was set up within the days after the 12 January earthquake, and placed to be central and convenient to patients, international volunteer medical providers, and imported medical resources/equipment. From outside, it is a series of giant white tents; inside, a bustling field hospital with a lab, pharmacy, xray, and adult, pediatric and neonatal ICU. It is our — and much of Haiti’s — only referral center for patients requiring intensive emergency and surgical care, as much of the city’s medical infrastructure was destroyed in the quake, and many medical professionals were killed. At present is the last hope of many of Haiti’s sickest patients.

At 2am, we arrived at a new entrance to the hospital — a set of wooden gates recently placed into the concrete wall surrounding the airport. This new, unadvertised, unmarked and solitary entrance to the Miami Field Hospital was luckily discovered by our clinic staff during the visit to the hospital the previous day.

Our American midwife, 20 year resident of Haiti, pulled the pickup truck in front of the gates and sounded her horn repeatedly. The gate was locked tight.

“How can the gates be locked?” I asked. “This is crazy.”

She honked the horn again and again, echoing in the early morning darkness. Finally, from behind the gate meandered a man in dark clothing appearing to carry a weapon. A security guard. She honked her horn again. The man did not move.

Our midwife turned to our Haitian translator. “Go tell him to open the gate. Tell him we have a sick child in the truck, and this is a medical emergency.”

Our translator exited the truck, running to speak to the man behind the gate. Words were exchanged vigorously back and forth. Finally, he turned and ran back to us.

“He says the hospital has closed, and the doctors have all gone.”

I am stunned.

“What? No it’s not…” I declare with frustration and disbelief. “No, they haven’t left. That’s not true. That’s crazy!”

Our midwife shares my incredulity. This is obviously a mistake. Just 5 hours ago, the child on my lap was in this very tent hospital, consulting with a pediatric surgeon from USC Los Angeles. A hospital overflowing with patients, volunteer medical staff, and technical medical resources. There is absolutely no way this hospital has closed its doors and evacuated it’s staff in the 5 hours since our previous visit.

Our translator turns to our midwife. “You’re going to have to show your face,” he declares with a mixture of frustration and acceptance.

Translation: You need to show your Caucasian, non-Haitian face. You need to play the White Card.

Our midwife– fabulous, strong, intelligent, compassionate, wielding a beautiful Boston accent (the other Boston) — gets forcefully out of the car. She strides powerfully and authoritatively to the gate, and in fluent Creole, confronts the guard.

She advocates. This is a medical emergency. There is a dying child in the car. She was at the hospital earlier in the day. The head surgeon saw her. He asked that she return. We are an ambulance from a Field Hospital. LET US THROUGH THAT GATE.

“No,” says the guard. “The hospital is closed.”

I can see the top of the hospital tent over the wall surrounding the airport. It is illuminated white against the 2am night sky. It is obviously inhabited and operational.

I am growing furious. I am growing desperate. This is obviously a political power play. And we are the pawns.

I call out the truck window in English to our translator. “What’s going on? Does he want a bribe? Tell them I am a doctor and the child in the car is going to die and he MUST let us in.”

More negotiation. The whimpering form in my lap is breathing rapidly and shallowly. My hand on her chest feels the fever burning through her thin cotton top, and the wild racing of her heart. She moans.

This is impossible. Yet, it is not. It is, perhaps, exquisitely predictable.

Less than a football field away from our truck sits a hospital full of medical specialists. Volunteers from all over the United States, giving of their time to provide free medical care to this city in its darkest hour. On my lap is a dying child. And between us is a wooden gate, and a man with a gun and a political agenda.

The airport authorities have apparently decided that the Miami Field Hospital, which sits on an unused grassy lot on the periphery of the airport, is an inconvenience. And this week, after the US military handed back control of the airport to the Haitian government, public access to the only emergency hospital in Haiti has apparently been extremely and underhandedly curtailed. Hospital personnel report repeated efforts to obstruct patients’ access to the hospital and emergency care – as we experienced on this night. A new unmarked entrance to the hospital, for example. A locked gate, with a belligerent guard. This political stand off — so detrimental — drew the attention of Haiti’s President, who commanded the Airport Authority to allow patients through the gates and access to the capitol city’s only emergency hospital. This was met, apparently, with political belligerence and opposition. And, at 2 in the morning, the power play is acted out. And the order of the country’s Commander in Chief is disobeyed. And we — the patient and her advocates — become the powerless victims.

As I sit seething in the back of the truck, I evaluate the integrity of the flimsy wooden gate which separates us from the lifesaving hospital visible beyond the trees. It is an absurd barrier of chicken wire and two by fours. I am certain we can crash through it with the truck if need be. My outrage is spurred on by the limp child in my arms. As I plot, I observe that the guard has a gun, and I fear he would be willing to use it. The images of several patients in our care flash through my mind — innocent bystanders shot when the police fired recklessness into the ground around crowds in gestures of authority and intimidation — striking bystanders with ricocheting bullets.

At this moment, I am impotent in my ability to help this child. We are at the mercy of this political agenda. An argument over a strip of land superseding the value of a child’s life. A metaphor for the consequence of political ineptness and corruption.

I imagine this is how it felt on the night of 12 January, in the hours after the earthquake, when the sun left the sky and darkness fell. When the screams of the injured rang out, and access to medical care was, in a moment, non-existent. Hopelessness. Dying patients, in desperate need of surgeons. And no surgeons to be had.

I recall news reports of patients having amputations in city parks by the light of hand held flashlights…without anesthesia. I recall patients telling grim stories of being taken to the remaining local and overwhelmed medical facilities, lying without medical care, in rooms filled with dead bodies, themselves fearing that they would soon become just that — another body, to be disposed of en mass in the back of dump trucks visible outside their windows. Desperate acts to save lives. Desperate patients. Desperate providers. Reflecting complete lack of access to care.
In Haiti’s time of crisis, hope came in the form of volunteer field hospitals — such as ours and Miami’s. At the beginning, lack of medical access reflected the utter chaos of an unprecedented natural disaster. Now, lack of access is caused, in part, by political corruption.

Hints of such corruption were evident in my first week at our field hospital. Still on the forefront of the medical crisis, relief organizations were stunned to discover their medical and relief supplies being suddenly unexpectedly being held ransom at the airport…many for tens of thousands American dollars. Donated medical supplies and shelters. For the country’s injured and homeless. Provided free of charge from the generosity of the world community. To be utilized by volunteers, many of whom had paid their own way to Haiti to provide relief. Flown in by privately donated charter flights and international military flights. At the request of the Haitian government. Held at the airport and not released without the organizations first paying exorbitant and newly invented importation fees. While Haitians slept homeless in the streets of Port au Prince, enduring early spring rain without shelter; while the President of Haiti visited the White House in Washington, DC, asking for relief assistance for his struggling country… lifesaving relief supplies — tarps and tents and medications — sat undistributed in boxes at the airport. Our own hospital had its supplies held hostage for weeks — including medications requiring refrigeration which sat sweltering in the Haitian heat.

And now, once again, the Airport Authority, blocks access to medical relief. In the form of this flimsy gate, and a man with a gun, who tells a blatant lie: “The hospital is closed. The doctors have left.”

What will we do without a surgeon, I ask myself as I watch the negotiations. Turn around with this child? Bring her back to our hospital to die of sepsis?

Our midwife and translator continue to negotiate with the man behind the fence. Finally, they return to the truck. The guard, miraculously, manipulates the lock and slowly swings open the gate.

“Okay, he’s letting us in,” our midwife says, as she quickly puts the truck in gear, taking advantage of the sudden opportunity.

“Wait a minute,” I say. “I thought the hospital is closed and everyone has gone home. Isn’t that what he’s been saying for the past five minutes. What did you do? Did you have to bribe him?”

Our Haitian translator turns to me. “He’s letting us in because she’s white,” he says matter of factly, gesturing to our midwife. “You have to know how to work the system. It’s just how things are here.”

I am relieved for the girl in my arms, but absolutely infuriated for the people of this city.

“Wait,” I say, as we start down the dirt road to the hospital. “Are you telling me that if I were a Haitian pulling up with a dying person in this car, that I would be turned away from the hospital?”

“Yes,” he replied, absolutely.

“And we’re getting in because we’re white people?”

“Yes,” he replied.

I am horrified and infuriated by the injustice. But, for the moment, I am grateful for the incidental lack of melanin in my skin which, tonight (and, unjustly, through modern human history), has provided me with this seemingly random political advantage. I am perceived, by the color of my skin, to be someone who has possible political connections to a higher authority, a political democracy, which I can call upon to advocate on my behalf.

And for the local Haitian, who pulls up the the gate tonight with a dying child, without a political advocate? They will likely be turned away.

If you are reading this tonight from the comfort of your home, which fortunately is located in a representative democracy — perhaps one of the wealthy first world nations which, through your tax dollars, has provided disaster relief to the nation of Haiti — I ask you to advocate for those who are less powerful than yourself. Use the representative government that you are so fortunate to have peacefully elected, and which politically advocates on your behalf. Contact your congressperson or political representative, and ask that the government of Haiti be held politically accountable for properly managing their international relief; ask that further relief be contingent upon allowing that relief resources be accessible to its people. Ask that relief supplies be released to organizations on the ground helping their injured and homeless. Ask how your tax dollars are being spent, and how they are being managed, in this crisis.

And of course, because you care…you perhaps would like to know the rest of the story.

So, we drove the remaining distance down the dirt path beyond the gate and pulled up to the front of the great white hospital tent. Father took his whimpering child gently from me and cradled her in his arms as we walked together from the truck, exiting the tropical Haitian night, and entering the front door of the still-bustling field hospital. Immediately, we were greeted by a doctor — in fact, a board certified pediatric surgeon from Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles. He gladly took her back into his care.

I guess the hospital wasn’t closed after all. And, apparently, all the doctors had not flown home in the five hours since our last visit. I guess it was all just a simple misunderstanding.

Barbie

The health care professionals with Heartline are not just treating patients, they as well are fighting to save their lives.  Often it is a fight not just against injuries and sickness but also against a government that lacks social consciousness or a tunnel vision politition, or a mindless gate guard or someone looking for a bit of money to allow you to pass through a gate or open a door to get to those that can offer life saving medical treatment.

Help Heartline help others.  Click here to donate.

Connecting a Fundraiser to your Cause, Finale

     We have been learning about fundraising by using fundraiser-cause connections, but there are other ways to fundraise that do not have connections.  The Drive is one example.  Although it could be argued that there are connections like community or geography it is a very vague connection.  Here you simply hold a drive to collect one or several items for a cause.  You may solicit people to whom you have no personal connection to whatsoever by placing press releases in your local paper, Craig’s List, or other free web site.

• Drives can be a very successful means for acquiring supplies; food, diapers, medical supplies, formula, crutches, and clothing are great items to collect by way of a drive.  You may ask for one or more items as long as the drive makes sense. 
• You can do drives just about anywhere; your front yard, church, school, club, local grocery store, or organizations location.
• It is best to do drives when you have an organization close by to give the items to, or if you are prepared to process and ship the items. 
• Make sure the organization you are collecting for wants the items you are collecting and are aware of your efforts. 

     In closing, I want to pass along some final ideas.  I hope they will set you on a creative path of giving from your home.

Cause:  Well Drilling or Water filtering programs; Living Water Midwest and Life Outreach International.

Fundraiser:  Sell Bottled Water or have a Lemon-Aid Sale.  Set up at church events, yard sales, flea markets, other functions.

Cause:  To Collect supplies for an orphanage; Maison des Enfants de Dieu

Fundraiser:  Hold a Baby Shower.

Cause:  Self Help Programs; CFI (Christian Freedom International), Haitian Creations, & RARA Bags.

Fundraiser:  Have a Home Party.  Sell the items they create to make it possible for them to support themselves.

I have highlighted some very simple fundraiser-cause connections such as BOGO (Buy One, Get One) and Theme.  Today, I want to cover Your Passion and how to use it as your connection.

Your Passion is a much deeper, more personal connection.  It can provide you with the largest base of potential donors because you are somewhat linked to those donors by their passion.  You also have insider information about the logistics and even the quirks of that passion which gives you insight that others may not have.

Today, I am going to use two organizations as my example.  This is because both will have the same connection, Your Passion, but will go in slightly different directions to fundraise most effectively.  I am using this opportunity to show you how flexible and creative you can be.

Cause: Gardening World Wide &  Hope for Haiti, Inc

Your Passion:  Gardening

Gardening World Wide is a really great organization.  They teach people all over the world how to grow vegetables using Square Foot Gardening techniques.  This allows people with very little land to grow food, and they work right in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. 

They are presently collecting seeds and donations for their return to Haiti in March, 2010.  It costs them roughly $200.00 to start a square foot garden, train people,  supply and oversee it for 2 years.

Fundraiser: Sell garden related products; seeds, bulbs, or plants (your own or others). 

• Set a goal.  This will help your contributors know what you want to accomplish.  A reasonable goal would be, raise $200.00 to start a square foot garden in PAP, Haiti.
• Go online and search, bulb, plant, seed fundraisers.  You will have more options than you can imagine. Decide who gives you the most profit, best product and order your sales kit.
• Consider using more than one company if your goal is more than 0ne garden.
• Take orders and payment (other gardeners)
• Deliver product
• Send your donation to Gardening World Wide.

This fundraiser can be started and finished within a few weeks.

Let’s bring this up a notch and see how, Your Passion can be used just as effectively to reach a much bigger goal.

Hope for Haiti Inc, is a ministry in Haiti that also has a gardening program.  For $12,500.00 you can start a garden coop that will feed 50 families.  Not only will it train these families in gardening skills, it will feed them, and provide them with revenue.  This is how you feed and sustain a community.

As you can see this is a much larger program to fund.  So let’s make some connections beyond our own garden.  Who would be interested in this not just as a garden, but as agriculture?  Farmers, local food coops, CSA’s (Community Supported Agriculture), and community farms may all take an interest as donors.

Fundraiser: Instead of selling an item to raise money, you sell the idea, gathering partners who will also value this program and assist you in funding a Garden Coop in Haiti.  There are several ways they can partner:

• One time gift
• On going promotion (throughout the growing season) that asks their customers to partner financially (example:  Would you like to donate $1.00 to start a garden coop in Haiti).
• On going promotion (example: A large container is put out to collect donations).
• A special sale where all funds go towards the garden coop in Haiti.
• You set up at their locations asking for donations.  Be ready to give lots of information, even brochures.
• Matching gifts given by the community.

To promote your idea you may volunteer to make posters giving important details as to the importance of  a garden coop in Haiti.  Through these partnerships you now have access to thousands of potential donors who you do not even know.

Make sure you give all your donors credit for what they contribute.

Put a press release in the local newspaper highlighting what is going on and how the community can be a part of it through the businesses that are partnering with you.

I am only touching the surface of ideas that are available.  I hope that you will read these ideas and be inspired with new ideas, not just for the organizations that I have mentioned, but also for those organizations that are doing things that are connected to your passions.

Your comments and ideas are welcomed.

On my last post, I talked about the three means for making a fundraiser-cause connection; BOGO (Buy One, Get One), Your Passion, and Theme.  Today, I want to show you how a Theme connection works.  Like BOGO it is a very simple connection, but very effective.

When your connection is Theme, all you are looking for is a logical connection.  Today we are going to create a fundraiser for Heifer International.  I have chosen this organization because they deal with poverty and hunger, as will my other examples.  At Heifer International you can provide livestock, such as goats, chickens, cows, ducks, rabbits and more to an impoverished family.  Livestock can change a family’s existence, because it gives them a way to make a living and to eat.

Cause: Heifer International

Theme: Livestock

I am always researching fundraisers, not that we do them very often, but I like to know what is out there.  One evening, I came across this one and it is a perfect match.  Not only does it have a matching theme, but this idea puts the “fun” in fundraising and will have everyone laughing their way to donate.

Fundraiser: Goat Insurance

• Create posters and brochures announcing that you are having a Goat Raffle, to give away a donated goat.  Make sure your posters and brochures include the picture of a big ole smelly buck.
• For $10.00, a person can purchase three raffle tickets, which they then write the names and contact information of their friends on.
• Notice is then given to those individuals that have had raffle tickets purchased in their names, and are given the opportunity to buy Goat Insurance for $10.00 to prevent them from winning.
• The winner of the goat does get the goat, but after all the fun is over, they can give the goat back to the donor, I suggest for a cost of say $30.00 helping encourage Goat Insurance sales.  You can pretend to have a goat.

This is so simple and fun.  The goat can be a mere photo of a goat, the raffle tickets can be just papers that are large enough to put information on, and they can be ripped in half when insurance is purchased making them obsolete.

The more people you have to sell raffle tickets the lighter the load is for everyone in reaching the agreed upon goal.  To consider what it will take to reach your goal you can make an assumption that each $10.00 sale of 3 raffle tickets should invoke $30.00 worth of insurance policy sales.  100% of the sales goes to your cause.

This definitely has the fun factor built into it, so go do some “fun”draising.

Your ideas and comments are welcomed.

What is the secret to making a fundraiser over the top successful?  How do I know if I am using the right fundraising tool?  Where do I find the best fundraiser for the cause I feel passionate about?

If you have asked these questions, I have an answer that will change the way you look at fundraising and give you the tools you need to do it well. Fundraising is not just about selling something and making money for your cause, it is about connecting; connecting your passion with the passions of others, and together meeting a need.

There are three means for making this connection:

• BOGO (Buy One, Get One) – This is a very simple connection.  You offer an item for sale that is the exact item you want to donate.  The connection here is that your contributor is interested in this item for themselves, as well.  For example:  solar flashlights and computers are often donated to poor countries through this connection.
• Your Passion – If you are passionate about something, chances are others will have strong feelings for its value also.  Here you simply find a fundraiser that shares the same passion. 
• Theme -Your fundraiser matches your cause; they logically go together.

For the next several blogs I am going to highlight ministries that have programs I am excited about.  I will then use the means above to create fundraisers for them.  It will be an opportunity to share ideas and strategy.

There is an expression used by those who work in Haiti, “This is Haiti”(TIH).  It refers to the cultural norms of Haiti that just don’t make sense.  For example:  When a policeman steals the license plates off your car, so that you will be forced to go to the police station and pay to get them back, or when you go to a restaurant for breakfast and order a glass of juice, but are told you cannot have juice.  You inquire, “You do not have juice today?”  “Yes, we have juice.”  So, you explain once again, “I would like to order a glass of juice.”  Again you are told, “No.”  After several minutes and lots of confusion you discover that you must order breakfast in order to have juice.  If you were expecting that you could just have juice for breakfast, you are out of luck.

Already we are back to TIH.  According to a CNN report:Red Tape, bad traffic, no power: ‘That’s Haiti’, Haiti is now confiscating all the relief aid, and are you ready, they are taxing it.  Oh yes, this seems like the right thing to do.  Billions of dollars worth of donations that people have worked hard to give to your country and now you are going to tax them.  I am outraged!

There are doctors in Haiti right now enjoying the sights because all the medical supplies they brought with them to treat patients is sitting in Customs.  Yes, Customs has to go through each and every item to make sure no taxable items sneak through illegally.

This is not all.  The Prime Minister has declared that there is no longer an emergency (thus the taxing), but also now the homeless people living in tent cities, on Champs de Mars, need to go home.  Yes, the fancy smancy vacation you have been taking, with the spectacular view of the fallen palace, is over.  Go back to your homes and get on with your lives.

Please take a moment to read the linked articles and call anyone you can to help us get this changed. The Haitian people have enough suffering.  They need these supplies, yesterday.

There are organizations right now in Haiti with tons of building supplies, humanitarian relief supplies, medical supplies ready to serve the Haitian people.  They are unable to do so, because they are unable to get their supplies out of Customs.  If these organizations are then taxed by the tens of thousands of dollars for these donations, they will not be able to serve.

Please pray.  I know that God is still in control.  Pray that He will interject wisdom into the Prime Minister of Haiti and that He will soften his heart towards his people and have mercy.

Fault Lines-Haiti: The politics of rebuilding, the video I posted a few days ago, grabbed my attention not just because of the images it showed, but because of what those being interviewed had to say. I kept hearing the word opportunity which seems like an innocent enough word, until I realized what they were referring to as opportunity, didn’t translate into being good for Haiti, but rather profit for them.

In microbiology, I learned about opportunistic organisms. They are organisms that for the most part aren’t harmful. However, if you should get sick they take over and invade your body, making you very sick.

I started to wonder what exactly opportunity means. Roget’s Super Thesaurus 3rd Edition: Opportunity n opening, chance, occasion,*window of opportunity, possibility, contingency, *shot, golden opportunity.

What will opportunity mean for Haiti?

Will it mean companies moving into Haiti to offer good jobs at respectable/living wages, or will it mean companies coming into Haiti to exploit it for cheap labor with no regard to the people they hire; their needs as individuals, or as family members?

I think the reality is that many are going to come forward offering opportunity, when what they really mean is exploitation and greed.

Others are going to come offering opportunity and what they will be offering is investments that will truly benefit Haiti. They will love the Haitian people more than themselves and make great sacrifices to do what is right.

For Haiti, I am hoping and praying for the later. Please pray for Haiti. She is weak and vulnerable, but she is also hoping for her opportunity to rise and be a great country.

CAM suffered some major damage from the earthquake.  This is just one of their locations.  However, they were up and running the very next day.  They are presently operating as before the earthquake and are delivering once again.

Helping Haitian Families Post Earthquake Through CAM

I have had several families who adopted from Haiti contact me concerned about their children’s birth families and inquiring how they might be able to help them.  I am going to share with you how Homebound Missions assists our families through a business called CAM (Caribbean AirMail).

CAM offers two services that we use frequently, first you can send money just like Western Union.  The difference is that CAM will deliver the money right to the person you have sent it to. This means there is no tracking people down to give them MTCN’s or transaction numbers, although this is available if you so choose.  The typical fee for a money transaction is $6.00 and this is cheaper than WU.

Secondly, we use CAM to buy and send food to our families.  On the CAM web site is a store where you select the food items you want to send.  When finished you checkout and pay for the food by credit card, and your order will then be delivered to your family’s door.  This service is critical to us, as we want to feed our families, not send them spending money.  If we send them food they have no other option but to eat.

To use CAM services you will need to go to their site and fill out an application.  It says they will call you, but I highly recommend that you give them a few hours to a day and then call them.  They will need you to FAX them some information before your account can be opened.

The food items are in French, and so a French to English dictionary will be helpful.  There is one online for free.  Typically we send our families the following items:  Rice, beans, oil, V-8 juice (vegetable), sardines (protien), and spaghetti.  However you can also purchase many other food items.

We have used CAM for over a year now and I am very pleased with the service I have received.  They have been very responsive to any concerns I have brought to their attention and the peace of mind we get from knowing our families have food is priceless.  Their prices are very reasonable, especially for the amount of service you get.

If you have any questions, do not hesitate to e-mail me and ask.  CAM is a lifeline especially during times like this.

I was thinking

I often hear people state a desire to help a particular family or child that they can pray for and bond with.  For those of you who might just want this personal experience of helping in Haiti I have an idea for you.  Maybe you could sponsor a Haitian family and every month order food to have delivered to them.  Let me know if this interests you as I know exactly where to find these families.  We may even be able to exchange photos and an initial letter.

I want to tell you about an organization that I think is doing something really exciting. It is called Kiva.

Kiva links aspiring entrepreneurs in developing countries with lenders who provide microloans. These microloans are repaid by the borrower over time. They are loans that change lives and whose ultimate goal is to alleviate poverty.

To date, Kiva has done 100 million dollars worth of loans.  This is pretty impressive.

Check out the video below to see a Kiva loan from start to finish.

A Fistful Of Dollars: The Story of a Kiva.org Loan from Kieran Ball on Vimeo.