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.

Mormons Remember 1985 Fast for Ethiopians

2010 is the 25th anniversary of an especially successful and heartwarming humanitarian aid project funded by members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  Leaders of the LDS Church visited a feeding camp in Ethiopia which housed 120,000 refugees.  30,000 more were trying to be admitted.  The people were hollow-eyed and starving.  The Church had called upon its members to hold a special fast and to donate the money that would have been spent on meals to the starving people in Ethiopia.  Latter-day Saints fast on the first Sunday of each month, anyway, and then donate the money saved on skipped meals to the Church for the support of the poor.  That day is called “fast Sunday” by members of the Church.  This special fast brought in donations of $6 million US dollars from Latter-day Saints worldwide.

Elder M. Russell Ballard, then of the Presidency of the Seventy and now a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and Elder Glenn L. Pace, then managing director of the Church’s Welfare Department and now of the First Quorum of the Seventy, were in Ethiopia to determine how best to use the money donated.

“While the Church has always responded to the suffering caused by various disasters, the Ethiopian famine triggered a more methodical and organized effort than had been experienced before,” Elder Pace said.  Church leaders held sacred the funds raised in the fast, as well as a second fast held in November 1985 that raised an additional $5 million. To expedite its Church’s humanitarian endeavors, the Church began to form relationships with humanitarian organizations to help those in need.

In the 25 years since that fast, the Church has sent $1.1 billion in assistance to 167 nations. That includes 61,308 tons of food, 12,829 tons of medical supplies, 84,681 tons of clothing and 8.6 million hygiene, newborn and school kits.

And each year the Church’s ability to assist others increases as other humanitarian organizations (many with which the Church now partners) have become acquainted with the Church, said Presiding Bishop H. David Burton. “They know our integrity. They know that when we commit, we follow through. I think we have earned a place among the very best of the non-governmental organizations around the world.”

Today, members may provide support for humanitarian work by donating online, donating through LDS Philanthropies, by giving items to the Deseret Industries or by serving at some of the hundreds of established Church welfare facilities located around the world.

The Church guarantees that every penny donated to the humanitarian fund is used for the care of the poor and the needy.

Vegetable Program Helps Bolivians

The Bolivia Altiplano is a remote region some 14,000 feet above sea level, home to an impoverished population.  Residents are enjoying a more healthy, balanced diet thanks to an LDS Church-sponsored greenhouse project that is bringing spinach, carrots and other vitamin-rich produce to a region where vegetables are typically scarce.  The people of the Bolivian Altiplano have long existed on a diet of meat and potatoes. The climate here is simply too harsh for traditional farming and reliable plant growth of most types of vegetables. As a result, many people here live in a perpetual state of vitamin starvation.

Recognizing the need to incorporate fresh vegetables into the diet of LDS Altiplano families, the church introduced a culture-changing technology here in the form of family underground greenhouses. Dozens of earthen greenhouses can now be found outside Altiplano homes.  Made of adobe and other simple building materials, the greenhouses are providing families with year-round access to tomatoes, spinach, lettuce, peppers, carrots and a produce section’s worth of other vitamin-rich veggies.  With the assistance of the church’s Benson Institute Office in La Paz, some 100 families have built greenhouses over the past two years. Most of the families are LDS, but many non-LDS families also have been included in the project. The greenhouses are typically built underground where the temperature remains constant, allowing for perpetual harvests.

After digging a rectangular hole, a wooden frame is built that typically rises about two feet above the ground. A roof made of fiberglass or plastic is then stretched across the frame.   The church provided the building materials for the families to get started, along with plenty of construction assistance and training. The homeowners and their families perform most of the building and labor. Principles of self-sufficiency are followed throughout the building process.

The greenhouse owners also were given a maiden batch of seeds that would allow them to grow the vegetables needed to feed their families — with enough produce left over to sell and purchase more seeds.  Training has been essential to the project’s success.  Greenhouses must be situated to receive 10 hours of sunlight, and vegetables must be planted correctly, or they won’t grow.  The residents have been used to eating only one vegetable — potatoes.  They have needed training in the cooking of the vegetables as well as how to serve them raw, and how to make them palatable. [1]