Mormon Church Provides $4.25 Million in Aid to Haiti

In the first month following Haiti’s devastating January 12, 2010, earthquake, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints provided an estimated $4.25 million in assistance, with plans for ongoing relief and recovery support for the ravaged Caribbean nation.

Relief efforts have included providing food, relief supplies, shelters for displaced Haitians and medical teams to treat the injured and ailing.

The LDS Church has shipped 28 truckloads of relief supplies — including nine air shipments — to Haiti.

Food and relief supplies included 208,834 pounds of food, 16,070 water-filtration bottles, 12,840 hygiene kits, 11,760 blankets, 4,000 first-aid kits, 2,304 newborn kits, 1,696 tents, 1,319 tarps, 600 quilts and 25 medical supply modules.

Other items range from gas-powered cooking stoves to mattresses.  Additionally, five truckloads of food and relief supplies were driven across the island from the church’s Caribbean area facilities in the neighboring Dominican Republic, while local church leaders were authorized to use fast-offering funds to purchase food and water in the first days immediately after the quake.

Nine of the Port-au-Prince LDS meetinghouses have been used as emergency shelters, with up to 9,000 people total — not just LDS Church members — seeking assistance or staying on the meetinghouse grounds.  The Church has also provided food, relief and some cash assistance to a number of nongovernmental organizations, including CARE, Food for  thePoor, Red Cross, International Relief and Development, Islamic Relief and Healing Hands for Haiti. Local church leaders also have provided additional assistance to Haitian charitable organizations.

The church has sent several first-response medical teams, totaling 17 doctors and three nurses, with specialties including trauma, orthopedics, family practice, emergency room and critical care.  Two mental health counselors also assisted at the shelters. Additional medical and mental-health professionals have since gone to Haiti to continue the assisting and assessing needs. [1]

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Haitian Latter-day Saints

“Those who are members [of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints] begin with a gift not easily duplicated—and that is they see themselves differently.  This is the secret, the very key to escaping the culture of poverty.

“They see themselves not as helpless or hopeless, but on a spiritual journey of growth, children of God with a destiny that lies far beyond the broken hovels.  They have testimonies, understand the scriptures, talk with insight about the meaning of their lives.  They have as President Ezra Taft Benson used to say, not just been taken out of the slums, but have had the slums taken out of them.

“They have vision.  They see themselves differently than do their fellows. While Haiti seeks to build a new infrastructure, the Haitian Latter-day Saints have a personal foundation that is unwavering and firm.  An infrastructure in their nation will follow the building of an internal infrastructure based on a sure foundation.

“We have never met better people than among the Haitian Latter-day Saints, nor seen former missionaries who were so in love with the people they had taught and baptized.

“We have never seen miracles more lavishly given from the Lord than among the members in Haiti who are coping with such difficult odds.

“Beyond that, the Church works to promote education and leadership among the people.  Those who have everything given to them, without expectation of work and effort, grow heavy and dull-eyed with apathy and expectation.  In contrast, the Church is there to bring food and shelter in an emergency, but it is all toward the end of ultimately developing the people, their self-sufficiency and their eternal nature.  They are taught to help themselves, become someone who can be counted on, someone who is productive.

“We remember being in Ghana at the time of the temple dedication, learning about the huge numbers of unemployed Latter-day Saints there, the many that were sunk below the poverty line.  We were told by priesthood leaders there that the goal for the area was to be self-sufficient in fast offerings and be able to cover the needs of their own poor.  That is a high expectation, indeed, but not an unrealistic one, as the ability of people to stand is developed by their membership in the Church.”  (Meridian Magazine Report.)

Update: April 26, 2010
One hundred days after the earthquakes in Haiti, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints continues its aid projects there.  More than a million pounds of food has been delivered and another half-million pounds of additional relief supplies provided.

The totals do not include additional supplies — such as hygiene kits, tents, blankets and medical supplies — given to other charity- or relief-based non-government organizations (NGOs) in Haiti.

However, efforts to build hundreds of shelters are moving very slowly, partly because so much of the land is covered with rubble or near unsafe structures, and residents are unable to show the proof of ownership or landowner’s permission to erect a structure.

The church has hired a local building contractor to oversee future efforts while continuing to donate to other NGOs, such as International Relief and Development, which is building multi-shelter communities on open properties.

The LDS Church has property and plans to build a bishop’s storehouse in Haiti, but the Freres neighborhood land is still housing some 360 homeless, with the meetinghouse grounds now clear of temporary residents.

Deploying an employment specialist and small management staff, the church has established an office in the Centrale Ward meetinghouse that works with bishops to pair individuals with prospective basic-wage jobs, such as the United Nations-sponsored cash-for-work program and groups like Catholic Relief Services and MercyCorps.

Other efforts include working with other NGOs to restart a projected 100 businesses that existed prior to the quake and to foster new businesses.

Another partnership program provides mentoring to would-be employees, as the church “hires” — or pays — individuals during a short training period while a business provides training and job experience for that company or its industry in general.

Update, May 14, 2010:

A banquet was held in Salt Lake City to honor the Utah Hospital Task Force, a Utah group that was the largest non-military response team in Haiti following the 7.0 magnitude earthquake that devastated the island country on Jan. 12, killing an estimated 230,000 people.  The banquet was the formal launch of a program with a goal to build a new hospital in Haiti by Jan. 12, 2011, the one-year anniversary of the earthquake.  At the dinner, Utah Gov. Gary Herbert officially declared May 12 as the state’s Haiti Volunteers Day. Herbert commented on the overwhelming support that poured into Haiti from Utah.

Hospital plans call for 130 beds and treatment options for a wide range of patients. In addition to meeting basic health care needs, the hospital would also provide maternity and child care services and treat malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS.

Fundraising efforts are in the early stages, and the task force faces the daunting task of constructing a hospital in less than nine months.

While in Haiti, the task force treated more than 5,000 patients, delivered food to more than 250,000 people and provided housing and work to numerous Haitians.