This disaster has touched many of our lives, whether we have family or friends in Haiti. It’s something unfathomable and I’m still trying to wrap my head around the numbers of lives lost and injured. The number of people who have still not heard from loved ones and need our prayers. We really need to help as much as we can.

I received an email from a Own Your Power member and I wanted to share it, since many of us want to give, but it’s good to do your research since unfortunately there are some people taking advantage of this tragedy with scams. Please see what our member Lashelle Wooten had to say:

“Hello all.  Like most of us, my heart and prayers go out to the families in Haiti.  I was anxious to figure out what I could do that would actually DIRECTLY help the families there.  So, I called my friend Michelle Karshan (who some of you know).  Michelle has lived in Haiti for much of the last 20 years working with the government to improve international relationships and living conditions in Haiti.  She is also the founder and executive director of Chans Alternativ  (Alternative Chance), an advocacy organization for criminal deportees in Haiti.  In my world, she is a foremost expert on what has happened in Haiti and what is happening now during this tragedy.  Her advice to me which I am passing along to you is that the two most important things we can do for Haitians in Haiti and abroad are 1) share our thoughts of support and prayers with any and all Haitians in any way we can communicate it to them and 2) send money by donating to organizations that are doing DIRECT work with this unimaginable situation in Haiti.

Here are Michelle’s suggestions for organizations she KNOWS from her work in Haiti over the past two decades:

Partners In Health (Paul Farmer’s organization) – PIH.org

http://www.pih.org/youcando/donate.html

Red Cross International – (Haiti is not in America)

http://www.icrc.org/eng

I have also been told that Wyclef Jean’s charitable organization is doing very direct impact services.  There site is:

http://www.yele.org/ (THEY’VE RAISED  2 million so far!)

We can all send this email to our friends, family and colleagues and email blast lists.  If we can invite 200 people to a party, let’s invite all those folks to donate whatever they can to help OUR people.

Please pass this on!

News Update:

“TENS OF THOUSANDS OF EARTHQUAKE VICTIMS NEED EMERGENCY SURGICAL CARE NOW!!!!!” the group said in the statement. It did not describe the basis for that estimate.

The reasons are varied:

• Both national and international authorities suffered great losses in the quake, taking out many of the leaders best suited to organize a response.

• Woefully inadequate infrastructure and a near-complete failure in telephone and Internet communications have complicated efforts to reach millions of people forced from their homes.

• Fears of looting and violence have kept aid groups and governments from moving as quickly as they would like.

• Pre-existing poverty and malnutrition put some at risk even before the quake hit.

Governments have pledged nearly $1 billion in aid, and thousands of tons of food and medical supplies have been shipped. But much remains trapped in warehouses, or diverted to the neighboring Dominican Republic. Port-au-Prince’s nonfunctioning seaport and many impassable roads complicate efforts to get aid to the people.

Aid is being turned back from the single-runway airport, where the U.S. military has been criticized by some of poorly prioritizing flights. The U.S. Air Force said it had raised the facility’s daily capacity from 30 flights before the quake to 180 on Tuesday.

About 2,200 U.S. Marines established a beachhead west of Port-au-Prince on Tuesday to help speed aid delivery, in addition to 9,000 Army soldiers already on the ground. Lt. Cmdr. Walter Matthews, a U.S. military spokesman, said helicopters were ferrying aid from the airport into Port-au-Prince and the nearby town of Jacmel as fast as they could.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the military will send a port-clearing ship with cranes aboard to Port-au-Prince to remove debris that is preventing many larger aid ships from docking.

The U.N. was sending in reinforcements as well: The Security Council voted Tuesday to add 2,000 peacekeepers to the 7,000 already in Haiti, and 1,500 more police to the 2,100-strong international force.

“The floodgates for aid are starting to open,” Matthews said at the airport. “In the first few days, you’re limited by manpower, but we’re starting to bring people in.”

The WFP’s Alain Jaffre said the U.N. agency hoped to help 100,000 people by Wednesday.

Hanging over the entire effort was an overwhelming fear among relief officials that Haitians’ desperation would boil over into violence.

“We’ve very concerned about the level of security we need around our people when we’re doing distributions,” said Graham Tardif, who heads disaster-relief efforts for the charity World Vision. The U.N., the U.S. government and other organizations have echoed such fears.

Occasionally, those fears have been borne out. Looters rampaged through part of downtown Port-au-Prince on Tuesday, just four blocks from where U.S. troops landed at the presidential palace. Hundreds of looters fought over bolts of cloth and other goods with broken bottles and clubs.

USGS geophysicist Bruce Pressgrave said nobody knows if a still-stronger aftershock is possible.

“Aftershocks sometimes die out very quickly,” he said. “In other cases they can go on for weeks, or if we’re really unlucky it could go on for months” as the earth adjusts to the new stresses caused by the initial quake.

READ FULL ARTICLE:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/cb_haiti_earthquake