Sharing is Caring

15 March 2017

This is an area of Haiti that could badly do with volunteers just to help out with all sorts of daily life. The needs are so great and the opportunities for people so dismal that you can’t come here and not feel an urge to do something, anything that will help in some way.

Volunteers needed here

Volunteers needed here

There are 10 million people living in Haiti, the vast majority of them under 25 and they simply need opportunities the rest of the world take for granted. They need robust homes, decent buildings for schools and daily food to eat. In order to have these simple necessities of life they need to be able to pay for them as there is no such thing as social welfare or social security. If you haven’t the money to buy food, you simply starve and for many children the only food they have to eat is what they get in school.

Thank God in the area of Jean Rabel most people have a small garden where they grow crops for their family or to trade at the market. This is great when there’s a good harvest, but when there isn’t, when crops fail and rains and hurricanes come, devastation is widespread, nobody has money and many people go hungry.

Volunteers appreciated in Jean Rabel

Volunteers appreciated in Jean Rabel

As you walk about the town you are stopped and asked for money, help or food on a daily basis as one after the other tells you they are hungry and asks for a dollar – men, women and children. And how can you help everyone? You are probably already ‘helping’ in whatever capacity you came here to help. I wonder do they realise that or where do they think we get money and more money and more money from.

Perhaps they believe what the Bible says, “ask and you will receive.” Do they believe that if they just keep on asking eventually they will receive what they ask for? But really, they shouldn’t have to ask and ask and ask. The basics of life should be available to them, the same as they are to the rest of us and I think it’s time for the rest of the world to wake up to that fact and realise we are all one family after all and what is available to us should be available to all and shared fairly among us.

Will we ever see that day?