Big Haiti Send-Off!

I’m ready for the food.

Susannah Gray hosted a Big Haiti Send-Off party for me on Sunday, and served all sorts of Haitian Creole foods. Red beans and rice, sweet potato bread, crab cakes (more because I like them), coconut candy, chips with mango salsa, and my favourite — andouille sausage corn dogs with Creole mustard. And you know what goes well with an incredible spicy sausage eaten like a hot dog?

Haitian Cremasse.

Oh, baby.

It’s the new Egg Nog.

Sweetened condensed milk, coconut milk, coconut rum, and more coconut rum… it’s de-damned-licious. And it’s the perfect complement to spicy food. Hell, it’s the perfect complement to ice.

Susannah made a donation box out of popsicle sticks for the occasion, and the donations received put us well over the $6000 mark! I decorated with paper houses – one for every donor to the cause. Yodel decorated with all of Murphy’s toys. It was a steady stream of friends of Haiti, the generous people who made my trip possible. I even “sold” a couple 14.5 Reason T-shirts!

Thanks to everyone who came or sent good wishes — the moral support is really important to me as the build gets closer — and very special thanks to the world’s best hostess, for getting me ready for Haitian food (and hopefully, drinks!).

Haiti is Habitat-forming T-shirts!

They're HERE! 


OK, they've been here for a little while, but with the Sabres trip to Germany I could not focus on the T-shirts until now. They're high-quality shirts in Habitat colours, with some silly reading on the back, and a fantastic cause behind them. 


If you haven't reserved yours yet, click on the Carters' photo at the top of the page and donate $25 per shirt to order! Hey, if the Jimmy and Rosalynn can do it...


To read the list of Top 14&1/2 Reasons to Send Suzanne to Haiti that appears on the reverse of the shirt, click here. And, no, I did not iron the shirt before I took the photos. I don't iron, and now is not the time to compromise my principles.

Top 14&1/2 Reasons to Send Suzanne to Haiti...

1. Because she will Safety Monitor the heck out of that place.

2. Three words: Hard Hat Thursday!

3. Because she hardly ever gets to use "trambleman tè" in a sentence in the US.

4. That rebar isn't going to tie itself, Sparky.

5. If Jimmy and Rosalynn can do it...

6. By November, she needs Vitamin D.

7. The Sabres are on the road that week anyway.

8. Otherwise her blog about the CWP in Haiti will be lacking, well, a certain something.

9. She looks awesome in big floppy hats and work gloves.

10. Living in tents. For a week. In Haiti. Without showers. OK, not such good reasons...

11. If Trisha and Garth can do it...

12. 'Cause of that story about the kid throwing the starfish back into the ocean one at a time, where he said, "It made a difference to that one."

13. Be the change you want to see in the world. Gandhi said that. Sounds kinda bossy, but he's right.

14 1/2. (the extra-big reason) Because the Haitian people, already impoverished, have now suffered through an earthquake, a hurricane, and a cholera outbreak. Millions are displaced, unemployment is 60%, relief is not getting through and rebuilding is slow. She thinks it might be WJWD.

'14.5 REASONS' T-SHIRTS ARE HERE!

Raising Money for Habitat is just an Excuse to Drink Beer in the Sun

Here’s the thing… when I did my first Carter Work Project in 2006 in India, I started a fundraiser called “Homes at Home” to raise money for Buffalo Habitat, raising a dollar for every mile between Buffalo and the build in Lonavala, India. Almost $8,000, and that was without Facebook.

When I told my friend Bob about my fundraiser then, he told me about his sister. Shirley Arnold, a painter who had done a a still life of tools that Jimmy Carter had actually used on a previous Carter Work Project, called “The Humanitarian’s Handtools.” (She wants to donate the painting to The Carter Center. At the time, I didn’t know anyone at the CC to ask – I was just in my Jimmy Carter Groupie infancy.) She had posters of the painting, so I bought 100 of them to sell for the fundraiser, and planned to drive down to Georgia to pick them up.

Aaaaaand…  that was the last I ever heard from Shirley Arnold. She moved after she got my cheque, and the person who sent me the new address must have written it wrong, because my letters came back. Huh.

Flash forward to 2011. I’d run into Bob a couple times but he never had the address with him. Then I didn’t see Bob for a while. One or both of us stopped hanging out in the right bars. A couple of weeks ago, I looked for him on Facebook, and BAM – Bob was back in my life. One of his first comments? “We’ve got posters in Georgia for you!” That’s about $2500 worth of good news… and just in time for another Habitat fundraiser.

So, the week after Labour Day, I’ll be driving down to Georgia. Because I kind of have a short fuse and I don’t see the scenario of me trying to ship 100 posters going very well. And anything can happen to them during shipping, and I’ve waited five years for these. AND… I can bring beer to Atlanta.

I have many displaced Buffalo friends living in Atlanta. And my friend Sue Hrib who I visit? She’s actually from Syracuse. So I’m planning on taking orders, for Bison Chip Dip, Crystal Beach Loganberry, Dinosaur BBQ sauce, and plenty of products from the Labatt family of breweries. Maybe even Genesee and Saranac. Because I can’t bring the dog, so I’ll need friends with me on the drive. Blue Light Limes by the pool, anyone?

And, yes, I have the right address for Shirley now.

Thanks...

Over the weekend, I did a Facebook message blitz for my fundraiser. "The $2.75 Facebook Challenge." The idea was that if every one of my Facebook friends who hadn't yet donated gave $2.75, I would reach my goal. Even though some of my friends did not respond, many others gave more than that (it's actually a pain in the butt to only donate $2.75). By the end of the weekend, I'd raised about $900 towards my goal - almost exactly $1 for each of my Facebook friends.


This is my status on Facebook this morning:

"You commit to these projects alone, for your own reasons. You know in your heart it's what you want to do, no matter what anyone else thinks or would do in your place. And along the way, your friends tell you that you made a good choice, that you're doing the right thing, that they wish they could join you. And you realize how much easier it is to meet a personal challenge with the moral support of loving people. You guys really rock."

Thanks, everyone who has donated so far. I'm 3/4 of the way there!

Haiti Earthquake: 19 months later...

What is Habitat for Humanity International doing to help piece Haiti back together? 

More than just bricks and mortar...

On Jan. 12, 2010, an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 struck the Caribbean nation of Haiti just 10 miles west of the capital, Port-au-Prince.

 The earthquake damaged nearly 190,000 houses, of which 105,000 were completely destroyed. Of the more than two million affected survivors, 600,000 are still displaced today. That’s more than twice the population of Buffalo, living in temporary shelters and with little infrastructure in an area not much larger than Western New York.

This summer, Habitat for Humanity will break ground on a permanent housing development in the Santo community of Léogâne. Léogâne is close to the epicenter of the earthquake, where nearly 80 to 90 percent of buildings were damaged or destroyed. The development will provide housing for up to 500 homeless families, or approximately 2,500 individuals.

The Carter Work Project in November will complete 100 homes in one week, toward that goal of 500 homes. The Global Village Program, which organizes volunteer teams to perform short-term assignments at builds all over the world, has put together three week-long trips before the CWP to assist in preparing the foundations for our build.

In light of the number of displaced persons, housing 2,500 people may not seem to make a dent. While Habitat measures their progress by the number of families and individuals served, the impact of their work can be seen in the transformation not only of lives but entire communities. They call it their Urban Development Approach, which is based on empowering and strengthening communities in defined geographic areas. By working closely with communities, Habitat helps them to build self-confidence to take action, identify and prioritize their needs. Habitat also helps them develop community action plans and leverage their collective capacity to advocate for change.

While Habitat has set a goal of serving 50,000 families in the five years after the earthquake, the scope of their services to date goes well beyond building permanent structures:

• more that 24,000 emergency shelter kits have been distributed to those in greatest needs, while 3,000 more have been stockpiled for distribution in the event of a future disaster

• more than 2,500 families have received upgradable shelters (a timber-frame skeleton with pressure-treated plywood walls, a tin roof, and permanent concrete foundation, to which concrete blocks can be added later when the family can afford to upgrade), including the families who will move out of them to occupy the CWP-built homes

• Habitat has assessed housing damage on over 5,000 units, to determine which can be made safe, and launched a repair/rehab program that completed 500 projects by the end of this June

• more than 3,000 Haitians have been trained in construction or construction business practices

• 1,200 Haitians have been trained in financial literacy

• more than 700 Haitians have found job opportunities through Habitat Haiti and Habitat Resource Centers (with unemployment at 60%, rebuilding cannot take place without employment opportunities)

To help in funding these desperately-needed projects in Haiti, all participants in the 2011 Carter Work Project are asked to raise $5000 apiece. Please help rebuild Haiti and allow me to do the same by donating here!

Fundraising Kickoff

Over the next several months, I will be raising money for Habitat for Humanity International (HFHI). I need to raise $5000 to qualify to go on the Carter Work Project in Haiti in November. I've already overcome the first hurdle - being accepted as one of only 400 volunteers who get to go.

I first became involved in the CWP in 2006 when I was donating money online to HFHI after an earthquake in Pakistan. Whenever there is a disaster, I donate to HFHI, because they're the ones who are there after the cameras and celebrities have gone home, working with the residents to rebuild their lives. On the donation page, a banner advertised, 'Now accepting applications for the CWP in India.' I hate hot weather, was terrified of planes, didn't particularly like travelling, and had no building skills. It was so contrary to my nature, I just had to go...

Through the CWP, I have helped build a village of 100 homes in India, a village of 82 homes (for the King, who turned 82 that year) in Thailand, and rehabbed a home in Los Angeles. I have never felt closer to God than I did at the home dedication in India. These builds are really hard for me, but never as hard as the living conditions that we are helping families leave behind when they get the keys to their new Habitat homes. Please make a difference to someone you'll never meet - I'll do the heavy lifting, I just need your help to get there.

Donations can be made on my Team Member Page - thanks!