The scale of devastation in Haiti is so overwhelming that it sometimes is wiser to focus on helping individuals when sending aid.
Jerrice Baptiste knows all about that dynamic. In 2008 using her role as host of the  “Women of Note” radio program on WKZE, she helped coordinate aid from the Hudson Valley via her large extended family in Port au Prince after four hurricanes ravaged Hailti. That disaster pales compared with the devastation wrought by the magnitude 7 earthquake Jan. 19 and so Baptiste is again helping efforts to get aid directly to people using her relatives as a focal point.
The Haitian People”™s Support Project (HPSP) is another outlet for helping in direct ways. The nonprofit was founded in 1990 by native Haitians Pierre and Terry Leroy along with Nora Gallardo and is now involved in supporting three orphanages, a medical clinic and a pottery collective to give rural residents a way to make a living.
Both Pierre Leroy and Baptiste emphasized that any help to Haiti through any outlet is critically important. A week after the temblor, Baptiste said, that on the island basics of life were in short supply; the preliminary death toll at press time was more than 200,000.
“I was just very lucky to reach my Uncle Roodly Laurore on a Friday night,” said Baptiste. “My grandmother and his wife and two kids are alive and sleeping outside of their homes since that Tuesday night. They said they have no water and no food.
“I was able to reach him again a few days later,” Baptiste continued. “I was trying all weekend and finally got lucky. He confirmed they are still alive, have been able to get a little water and boiled it, but they are very desperate. No rescuers have been able to get to their area.”
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Baptiste has about 100 relatives in her extended family in and around Port au Prince and a week after the quake knew of some casualties, knew of others believed safe and did not know the fate of many.
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Seated in the foyer of a special Martin Luther King Day concert in Kingston Jan. 18, Pierre Leroy and Nora Gallardo were collecting donations for Haitian relief and providing information about the situation in the country, from where he fled into exile during the years of the Duvalier dictatorship. Leroy has returned many times since the uprising of the 1990s and at this event, as spirituals floated from the concert inside, he was showing pictures of friends who died in the earthquake.
But Leroy is undaunted. “Determination and perseverance gets us to do things in Haiti” he said, a French accent still audible after decades living in the United States. “We make things out of nothing in Haiti.”
Both Leroy and Baptiste said help would be needed for the long haul and that even amid the devastation, thoughts of the future are beginning to percolate. Baptiste said that her Uncle Roodly was using a bicycle to go and seek news of family members and coordinate a joint plan of action that might include moving out of Port au Prince while the capitol is rebuilt. “At this point we don”™t know what is possible,” said Baptiste, noting that it was difficult to even send money since no Western Union offices had returned to operation as of a week after the quake.
Leroy said clinics and orphanages and other programs often have storefronts in urban areas that can play a role as distribution centers. “The local organizations are people to people,” he said. “We are connected.”
Donations can be made to the UUCC (Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Catskills) Minister’s Discretionary Fund ”“ Haiti/Jerrice, at 320 Sawkill Road
Kingston, NY 12401; Attention Rev. Linda Anderson. The WKZE Facebook page also lists reputable organizations to donate.
The Haitian People”™s Support Project is in Woodstock. Its web address:Â haitiansupportproject.org
