How would you tell the four hundred thousand residents of a Haitian shanty town that your emergency food supplies would only be able to feed around a thousand of them? How would you choose which thousand people would be fed? That was the situation faced by U.N. food distributors recently.
It’s easy to sit at home in Australia and forget about those living in desperate poverty in developing countries around the world. We can get caught up in our own issues like rising interest rates and ever increasing fuel prices but after seeing the huge need in places like Dominican Republic and especially Haiti, I can’t allow myself to ignore the need.
An article by Reuters today, titled World Food Program launches emergency call for Haiti, says that the situation in Haiti remains critical with the World Food Program being critically short of the funds needed to feed millions of starving people. The United Nations agency is calling for urgent and massive aid.
“The situation is particularly serious because 56 percent of the Haitian population was already living with less than one dollar a day,” the WFP regional public information officer, Alejandro Lopez, told Reuters.
“We don’t have enough food to face the demand and we will need even more funds than what already requested.”
He said the agency had a $37.8 million shortfall in the $45 million budget anticipated for this year in the Caribbean nation, where recent food riots killed six people.
The program aims to feed 1.7 million Haitians but predictions show the number needing help to cope with the current food crisis could reach close to 5 million.
It’s just over two weeks since I was part of a Compassion Australia team that had to escape Haiti as riots and looting escalated. We managed to fly out of the country after a scary and sometimes dangerous trip to the airport in Port-au-Prince.
I can’t be content with the fact that we made it out safely. Something needs to be done for the millions who weren’t able to simply board a plane and head to a safe, comfortable existence on the other side of the world.
I want to thank everyone who followed our travels and prayed for our safety but I urge you, please don’t forget Haiti now. You can make a difference in Haiti through Compassion Day on Thursday the 15th of May or by contributing to an emergency aid fund today.
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