Haiti vegetarian food relief and sanitation

Arjuna Krishna-Das — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 23:07:03 +0000

Just had a Skype call from my friend Richard Higgins in the Dominican Republic. He’s leading the Food For Life relief effort in Haiti, and is currently based in the Dominican Republic’s capital, Santo Domingo.

Richard Higgins, Haiti Food for Life coordinator, in Dominican Republic

Richard and his small team are making good contacts with food relief, security and government agencies, preparing the ground work for short- and long-term reconstruction. Just getting into Haiti is fraught with problems, which is one reason why it is so necessary to build up good working relationships with the other agencies.

International Red Cross HQ, Dominican Republic

They have identified a site by a lake 15 miles east of Port-au-Prince, Fond Parisien, where there is land already growing vegetables and a plentiful supply of water.

Richard is also a consultant with New Directions Foundation, and will be implementing dry sanitation systems to hygienically process human excrement into compost for growing crops. Sewage is one of many major problems in Haiti, and if it’s not dealt with ASAP, may cause major disease outbreaks.

Hospital, Dominican republic

Food for Life will soon be cooking hot vegetarian meals and distributing them to Haitians rather than simply giving out raw ingredients such as rice. Distributing raw food staples is all very well, but with the destruction of many homes and other buildings, people have difficulty cooking and thus actually getting food into people’s mouths is not straightforward. There are even reports of large-scale diversion of food relief supplies, so it is vital to provide meals as directly as possible.

His immediate needs are for cash, extremely large cooking pots/woks, gas burners, gas bottles and huge quantities of paper plates.

Please donate whatever you can at Food for Life Haiti.

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Haiti vegetarian food relief and sanitation