Double Harvest Haiti- 2.16.10

Double Harvest Friends,
Yes, the work of Double Harvest continues on a daily basis as we continue spreading the word through as many venues as possible. While the media coverage of Haiti might have slowed, the need is still great, and the team at Double Harvest continues to work hard to restore the health and spirit of Haitian people in need.

MEDICAL – The 24 hour support will need to continue until May 1st, 2010. This is a great need, but our team has already secured almost enough medical volunteers to make this a reality. Thanks to all who have and will volunteer their time. After May 1st, we will still have a medical center, but the 24 hour round-the-clock continuous care will adjust to more of a “day clinic” as it was before the earthquake. We will continue to host at least one surgical team per month for the forseeable future. Contacts and volunteers for this will need to continue to contact Diane Cable at cablefamily@hotmail.com.

FOOD/SHELTER - we have been distributing food, and our kids, employees, patients and family members are getting daily plates of rice, beans, chicken and fish. We have one meal a day that is continuously served from 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. so that everyone can have a chace to eat while only having to fire up the cookers, etc once a day. This past week, we have cooked over 6,000 plates of food for the people at Double Harvest and our guests.

As our teams moved into our five surrounding villages, it becomes a more difficult task as we need to make sure food is given in a humane way and not the degrading way of just throwing the food overboard a truck and letting the Haitians fight over it. The team at Double Harvest have done a census in the villages, forming committees of community leaders. We have a list of people in those villages and will be distributing food in each community to assure those most in need receive food. We also developed a wristband system to assure all families are fed. Unlike what you might see on the media, the people were very well organized, and in less than 20 minutes we gave out food for about 950 people . The food distribution should last them about 1 week so we don’t get in the mode of people expecting a handout every day. The packages they receive include rice, beans. live fish, and oil. When the team moves to the next village (there are 5 we are serving), they use different color wristbands to assure an honest distribution between villages. The plan is to teach them how to do the distribution at the beginning and then turning it over to the local village committee. The smile and the hugs from those people tell how happy and appreciative.

REBUILDING - In addition to the feeding program we have had in place, we have been also doing a tree planting programs for a couple of years. To each family receiving a meal we also provided one tree for them to plant in their neighborhood. The picture of those young man was taken in front of a tree that we gave them to plant 2 years ago. The idea is to have these young men and women understand that we want to help them also but also that they need to take some active part in their future. As Double Harvest’s main focus is agriculture are making sure that we do not lose focus despite the situation. Reforestation and proper farming continues to be one of the main focuses for this country to assure their survival and rebuilding.
SCHOOL – School continues to be in session on a daily basis now. If you are in the sponsor a child program (or would like to be at $30 a month), we should be back to regular updates soon, but there is such a great need, we are still working on getting all of the information together. Visit Doubleharvest.org and tab on the left for more information.
MIKE WALLACE DOUBLE HARVEST CAR – Mike Wallace, driver of the #01 Nationwide Car, was kind enough to donate space on the car and to design a personally funded Double Harvest racesuit for the race at Daytona last week. He was able to get exposure and interviews nationally on Fox News, ESPN, ESPN2, SpeedChannel, and Sirius Satellite Radio. Attached are some pictures of the car and of Mike. Mike will again be wearing the race suit this weekend in California at the race. We had immediate hits on our Double Harvest Facebook page all weekend and we had a spike in donations to Double Harvest on Friday/Saturday/Sunday due to the this exposure.
FUNDRAISING – our original goal was $150,000 raised and after the earthquake hit, we thought we had a realistic shot of $500,000, bit we raised the goal to $1,000,000 just to provide a stretch target. With fundraising still going on (and still a need), and due to all of the great exposure and work done by many groups across the country, we are up to $1,300,000 in donations in-house with more pledged and more coming in. An unbelievable effort by all and everyone at Double Harvest is amazed at everyone’s generosity. From groups of employees (see attached pictures at Metrolina of a fundraiser), to groups of doctors (Kansas Group), to groups of kids (tons of examples), to individuals, to the Haitian employees of Double Harvest (they raised $400 themselves), everyone continues to make this a wonderful example of giving. This money allows us to expand our rebuilding efforts, provide more resources for our medical teams, and assure Double Harvest “grows” to support the ever-expanding need.
ONGOING UPDATES – tons of folks have created their own picture forums (See attached word document from one of our volunteer doctors who just returned with over 200 pictures in a shutterfly type link) and blogs (see an update from JL Williams at http://www.jlwilliams.org/home/full_entry/haiti_valentine/ ), and as each group returns from their volunteer service, their recaps and stories will be shared. We just had another group return on Monday and I hope to have new pictures and information from them later this week to post to Facebook and to the online at doubleharvest.org.

CHURCH/GROUP PRESENTATIONS - we have developed a .ppt presentation if someone needs one to tell the story of Double Harvest, the earthquake, the relief effort, and now the rebuilding plan. We will get this on doubleharvest.org to download as a .pdf, or we can email it to you if you need it. We will constantly update this presentation so it is relevant to the need.
FACEBOOK - 3,000 Strong and counting. This is one of the most active Facebook pages on both hits and number of members of any Haiti relief page out there. Continue to check this for updates and information from folks who have visited Double Harvest and others with updates.
VOLUNTEER GROUPS – we are starting to gather the longer-term volunteer needs for electricians, plumbers, maintenance, etc and we will publish that need (groups of 10-12 people at a time are most manageable) in the next letter or two. If you want to go, please contact vernon@doubleharvest.org or joe@prinsusa.com or gary@prinsusa.com. They are coordinating volunteer groups and assessing the needs from a technical/managerial level after the May 1st timeframe.

GIVING LOCATIONS – Money is still the #1 need, but if you are collecting, we have sites as follows to drop off goods: