Skip to main content

Security Wall Needed in HAPI ShalomZone

This morning I received Valerie's update on the situation on the ground in Mizak, Haiti.   She and her mission service team will leave on Saturday for Haiti with cash for food and some emergency supplies and help in time of need. 

Paul Prevost, who lives there and deals daily with increasing needs and desperate demands for food and shelter, is trying to feed 500 kids 3 days a week in the "Peace Park" next to his house that still stands.  He needs cash now not only to buy rice and beans, but to buy materials and hire local labor to build a security wall around Peace Park to protect the kids in his care.  And there is a continuing need for tarps, tents, and sanitation for the children of Mizak.  Here's Valerie's update: 

Paul called again today and if you could only hear!! the kids are so loud! He said they have more coming above the 500 that came last week, and he is unsure how to respond, given that he has no means to enclose the inscribed children from those who are not registered for the program. Plus, more and more of the new children are from Port au Prince families who are relocating--and likely the most in need. The Port kids are likely the ones with more acute trauma. It's becoming clear that the security wall has moved from the wish list to the 'essentials' list!  And that he needs to limit the number of children he feeds to 500. 

I told Paul that we cannot guarantee a particular amount of food per week and I am starting to get the challenge out there for $5000 per week for 500 families, until we can access one of the Big AID groups in PAP.  

As of this morning, a couple hours before the wire deadline!!), we met the original goal of $2500 per week to feed 250 kids this week.  A team from W VA will sponsor next week and has offered to challenge some
other teams to do the same.Does Drew or Shalom want to sponsor a week of food aid  when you come in March?




For material donations, here is our list of needs this month: 
  • Heavy duty Army Surplus for 8-12 persons. Or Coleman quality durable tents.   No limit.  If we had them today, we could easily distribute over 500 within the shalom zone.
  • Heavy duty Tarps for Peace Park enclosure.  About $250 each.  If they are multipurpose,  we can't
  • go wrong. We could have used 100s following the hurricane to cover lost roofs!  Now we need them for shelter. 
  • Cash to buy rice, beans vegetables locally
  • Cash to buy materials and hire labor to build security wall around Peace
  • 2 notebook computers for staff and volunteers organizing feeding and activity program.


Peace,
Valerie


To support HAPI Community of Shalom please visit their website:  www.haitianartisans.com




Popular posts from this blog

Mother Shalom

South Central, Los Angeles, was the neighborhood in the city where Communities of Shalom began in 1992. I met Marx Gutierrez from El Salvador who was there attending High School at the time. He remembers what happened at the corner of Florence and Normandy Streets in South Central, LA, when Reginald Denny was pulled out of his truck and beaten while the crowd looked on and the police did nothing; and how the Rodney King beating resulted in a not-guilty verdict for the police and resulted in a major, 3-day uprising in the neighborhood, until the National Guard came in and finally imposed law and order. He can still remember the fires, the bright orange night sky, the mass looting, 45 unsolved killings, the social chaos...And how the United Methodist Churches responded by creating a zone of shalom in 7 neighborhoods of Los Angeles. Today, Marx is a community organizer, and married to Jennifer Gutierrez, Conference Shalom Coordinator in the Calif-Pacific Annual Conference, and Rev. Vilma

First Generation Lambs Club Reunion

Fifteen of us gathered Saturday night at the Lambs Club for a 35 th year reunion of those who helped start the Lamb’s Church in Times Square in the mid to late 1970’s, including: Rev. Paul S. Moore , Founder of the Lamb’s Church of the Nazarene, and his wife, Tamara Dr. Michael J. Christensen , charter member and former associate pastor, and his wife Dr. Rebecca Laird Fr. William (BJ) Webe r, former Associate Pastor and Director of the Lamb’s Residency, and his wife Sheila who lived at the Lamb’s Jim and Dustee Hullinger, who were on staff together and made the Lamb’s their home for over 25 years Effie Canepa , who was the church pianist under 3 pastors, and her husband Peter Shirley Close, who attended the Lamb’s in the late 1970’s while studying, performing  and teaching music and voice Carl "Chappy" Valente , former associate pastor Rev. Bob DiQuatto , lead singer of the Church’s “Manhattan Project” and staff member of the Lamb’s, and his son Jason Rev. Gabriel

Liberation Spirituality: Henri Nouwen and Gustavo Gutierrez in Dialogue

Liberation Spirituality: Henri Nouwen and Gustavo Gutierrez in Dialogue Lecture Notes: Presented by Michael J. Christensen, Ph.D.,  Associate Professor in the Practice of Spirituality and Ministry,  Drew University;  and  International Director, Communities of Shalom, The United Methodist Church Introduction “There is a little man in Peru, a man without any power, who lives in a barrio with poor people and who wrote a book.   In this book he simply reclaimed the basic Christian truth that God became human to bring good news to the poor, new light to the blind, and liberty to the captives.   Then years later this book and movement it started is considered a danger by [the USA, or Rome], the greatest power on earth.   When I look at this little man, Gustavo, and think about [the President of the US, or the Pope], I see David standing before Goliath, again with no more weapon than a little stone, a stone called A Theology of Liberation (Henri Nouwen