HODR Recruiting Volunteers

Hands On Disaster Response is energized to help Gonaives, Haiti recover from the devastating effects of 4 successive tropical storms and hurricanes. One thing is for certain – there will be barrels and barrels of great dirty HODR work! We will begin accepting volunteers at our base on 10 October, 2008.
The city of Gonaives (pop 300,000) is awash with muck which streamed down from the hills which frame this fertile valley. The river actually flowed through town and although most of the water is now gone from the city center, what remains is an almost incomprehensible amount of mud. Initially our focus will be on moving this mud out of schools, public gathering spaces, and homes.
We anticipate this to be a very challenging deployment. Haiti has long been the poorest country in the western hemisphere and the recent storms seriously damaged an already weak infrastructure. Food insecurity issues may be compacted by the damaged harvest and generally poor living conditions. Serious needs will exist in the months of our project, and the feeling is almost palpable.
We invite you to volunteer with HODR to help Haiti but we caution you to make yourself aware of the facts surrounding the condition of this country. We will post pertinent data to our Volunteer Info section soon. Arm yourself with as much knowledge as possible and then make a decision that is correct for you. If you cannot volunteer with us at this time please visit our donation page where you know your contribution will make a direct impact.
An NBC news crew has been following us this week as we get to work in Gonaives. We hope to be featured on Friday’s NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams for a story on HODR in Haiti. Watch for updates on our HODR international operations Twitter micro-blog.
This entry was posted on Thursday, September 25th, 2008 at 2:58 pm and is filed under Haiti. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Leave a Reply