How To Help Haiti via Mobile Phone, Volunteering, Music, & More

(Photo thanks to IFRC Flickr Creative Commons.)
Across the world, our hearts are broken for Haiti. For a people who have suffered so much and lived on so little for generations, it’s incomprehensible to imagine the added devastation of the 7.0 earthquake that hit the country last week. Many blogs have provided excellent posts on ways to help, including this post from Care2.

As events unfold each day, we’ve learned that the best way to help immediately is via cash donations to highly respected organizations like Partners in Health and Doctors Without Borders. Both organizations have a stellar reputation for effectiveness, integrity, a long-term established presence in the country, and success in achieving results.

The second question therefore is, “in what other ways can I help?”

Here are a number of other ways to help:

1. Help find missing people by tagging photos. Visit The Extraordinaries.
2. Volunteer your time and skills over the next 12 months. Search Global Volunteer Network. Also, Habitat for Humanity is expected to have opportunities to volunteer in coming months – updated info to be released soon.
3. Volunteer in design, engineering, or construction in the coming months. Visit Architecture for Humanity.
4. Recycle old mobile phones to provide disaster relief in Haiti.
5. Visit Care2 and click daily: with each click, sponsors donate to earthquake relief through Oxfam.
6. Provide relief to Haiti via iPhone app CauseWorld. Sponsors donate, you choose the cause (select Relief for Haiti).
7. Organize a fundraiser to support Partners in Health, a highly respected organization that has been working in Haiti for over twenty years.
8. Medical suppliers are requested to donate supplies. Check out the list of supplies needed by Partners in Health.
9. Download Music for Relief featuring Linkin Park, Alanis Morissette, and More Top Artists: Proceeds go to Haiti Relief.
10. If you play social games on Zynga, spruce up your farm, fish, or poker game with special virtual goods that support Haiti Relief efforts.
11. Stay informed. Great sources of info include Facebook Global Disaster Relief and New York Times.
12. Spread the word of ways to help via Facebook, Twitter, and word of mouth.

Know of other ways to help? Please leave a comment, thanks!

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Q: What are you hearing from your people regarding the (security) and slow pace of this? – Katie Couric

A: We’re speaking to our folks on the telephone daily via satellite phones… The overwhelming message we’re getting from our folks on the ground … is of the really extraordinary peacefulness and calm. Two of my colleagues said that the first two nights, the only noise coming from areas where there are 50,000 people lying in varying degrees of terrible distress with cradling loved ones and everything else, is that of singing, of taking care of one another, of washing each other, of great comforting of a community – not even taking care of only family members, but of really taking care of one another. – Ophelia Dahl, President, Partners in Health

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