Saturday, January 16, 2010

Helping Haiti: even if we have little...

anyone who's watched the news on tv or on the internet lately, has heard of the Haiti disaster for sure.


map of Haiti


we've been so flooded (sorry for the expression) with images and reports with all the "latest" unfortunate details on the situation, body counts, the anger of surviving locals, lack of aids from their government, problems with foreign aid reaching the country, etc etc.
for some strange reason i've been watching the tv news about it, over and over again in the last 2 days, like a strange (morbid?) fixation. i surely agree this isn't the best "subject" to become obsessed with, just since the past month i've been trying hard not to let myself be taken into the dark depths of depression.
i think many specialist would claim that watching these terrible events is too overwhelming and might make people feel depressed. well, if i was already kinda depressed, i guess this isn't gonna make me feel that much worse...

but i couldn't stay indifferent to the aid appeals all over the media for too long, so yesterday i donated to the Portuguese Red Cross, a Portuguese NGO* [*Non-governmental organization] called AMI-Assistência Médica Internacional* [*International Medical Assistance], and to UNICEF* [*United Nations Children's Fund].
still, i was remembered about the situation of the animals in the area... i remembered when hurricane Katrina happened and i got emails from animal welfare organizations. so i decided to visit the IFAW* [*International Fund for Animal Welfare] website, since i was on their mailinglist for quite some time, and i ended up not "resisting" making a donation to them.

i'm unemployed right now, have been so for over a month, and i'm currently trying to put my life together, as i need to do this in order to get my mind "straight" and start looking for a job more seriously/actively. luckily for me that i have some savings from the time when i had a steady job, but i try not to spend so much on "extras" since i'm out of work of course. i've wrote about my spendings on "extras" in previous posts: zines, that's what makes for most of my so-called extras.
and luckily for me, i have a home, i have food and water, i have clothes. i have family and friends. and those people in Haiti don't have much, if any, of these things. and animals don't have anyone to help them either, not to mention that this crisis increases the outbreak and spreading of diseases between animals and people.
i don't have much [money], but they have so little. my donations are perhaps a small grain of sand to the Support Disaster Relief.

in the next months much more money and human resources will be needed to help Haiti recover. it might even take them years to recover. but my small grains of sand made me feel a bit better about myself. to know that even miles away i can still help, even if it's a very small help...

if everyone did the same, just donate 1 euro, 1 dollar, whatever! 


even if we have little, it's easier for "us" to help out those who have nothing.




here are some useful links:

Portuguese Red Cross:
http://www.cruzvermelha.pt/

International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement
http://www.redcross.int/  --or--  http://www.icrc.org/

AMI (International Medical Assistance):
http://www.ami.org.pt/

IFAW (International Fund for Animal Welfare):
http://www.ifaw.org/

Google crisis response:
http://www.google.com/relief/haitiearthquake/

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