Haiti

Lemon Aid was born out of the Vine Church’s desire to see targeted support, investment and relief delivered to the desperately poor people of La Gonave, Haiti following a visit to the island in January 2007 by church members. The level of poverty they witnessed moved us to get involved in assisting with the regeneration of the entire island. Whilst on La Gonave it became apparent that there was almost no access to the basics needed for life. Less than 20% of the population had ANY access to clean drinking water, one 35 bed hospital served the 100,000+ population and children all over the island were living as street children.

Our first efforts were aimed at establishing fresh water supplies by building roads and digging wells with the assistance of an international charity called Compassion. Several wells were dug but more pressing problems were soon to overtake our efforts.

As the world now knows, on Tuesday, January 12th, 2010 at 16:53 local time a massive earthquake devastated Haiti.

In the first few of days after the initial earthquake struck, we were kept up to date with events on the ground by Pastors Dan and Joy Irvine who run the Wesleyan Hospital on La Gonave. It soon became clear that sending money to them to get the medicines, food and fuel that they urgently needed was not going to work as the banks and Western Union had no access to funds, and medicines were not available. As a result, we decided, in discussions with Pastor Dan, that we could help most by hand delivering medical supplies. All military strategists are aware of the value of good intelligence being fed back in a timely fashion. They are also aware of how effective small well targeted teams can be when led by good intelligence. The Vine found itself in the unique position of having the contacts, the accurate intelligence and access to specialists such as doctors, pharmacists and nurses to move relief efforts forward efficiently and effectively.

Within days we had teams in Haiti with supplies. We negotiated with airlines to get luggage allowances that ran into metric tonnes to allow us to carry medicines and equipment. Our contacts in the small island hospital told us exactly what they needed and we sourced and delivered it.

With the initial emergency now past we have turned our attention back to supporting the now overcrowded orphanage and seriously damaged island hospital. Our original work continues in the form of supplying goats, immunisation programs, water projects, and sponsoring children through the Compassion program.

Plans were already well underway for a new hospital on La Gonave prior to the earthquake. Now Lemon Aid is even more determined to see the new earthquake resistant hospital facilities built, completed and operational as soon as possible.

Working alongside other charitable organisations, in particular Compassion UK, the long term plans are in place to provide the people of Haiti, and in particular the widows and orphans with the very best. As the charity’s motto states, we want “The very best, for the very least”.

Find out more at our dedicated Lemon Aid website at http://www.lemonaid.org.uk and http://www.compassionuk.org