Haiti: A Question of Giving

There is no doubt that you are reading this because you are looking for information about Haiti. Perhaps you are trying to find out whether or not it is the right time to give. Perhaps you are trying to decide if the situation in Haiti is as bad as the reports are making it out to be. Perhaps you are just curious, but not really intending to put out any of your hard earned dollars. Perhaps you are trying to keep up on current events. Perhaps you are bored.

This single catastrophe, more than any other single devastating event that has occurred during the lifetimes of most of the people who will read this, has done more to destroy a population, and will do more to affect the future of the western hemisphere than anything we have witnessed to date.

If you don't know it by now, you will soon find out that Haiti isn't a world away. Haitians aren't foreigners. At just 681 miles from Miami to Port au Prince, The capitol of Haiti is closer to Miami than New York City. Haiti is the fragile island nation 681 miles from Miami and made up of approximately 9 million of our fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, and cousins that has recently suffered a cataclysmic disaster that has left as many as 1,000,000 children without parents, and many times that number of individuals without basic human needs such as food, drinking water, and basic shelter.

This isn't your moment to shine. Your act of giving isn't a good deed. Haiti isn't some impoverished 3rd world nation looking for yet another hand out that has somehow managed to garner the support of the worlds most vociferous "do-gooders". Your donation or act of giving will probably go unnoticed when added to the unprecedented deluge of funds, goods, and services that, though still lacking compared to the unimaginable and overwhelming need, are pouring into the cities, townships, and villages that are still recognizable throughout Haiti.

Even so, the absence of your contribution, along with other aid that fails to come to fruition for these helpless members of our family of mankind, will do more to affect the nature and sanctity of the way of life we enjoy and take for granted here in the United States of America than any of us or our most noble and respected leaders can extrapolate.

More than any of us can imagine, the call to aid this tiny island nation off our southern coast is, in fact, a call to save ourselves - for in fact, they, Haiti, are us. More than any of us could ever know, this is the true test of who and what we are and have become in the light of some of the greatest advances man has made in the last 20,000 years. To have made such tremendous gains and fail this test shall surely serve as a most grim harbinger of a shameful destiny that is unworthy of the triumphant strides we have consciously charted over the last 2000 years for ourselves as mankind, and claim, even now, that we endeavor to pursue.

Give.