Robb Schiller

Been try­ing to gather my thoughts about the earth­quake in Haiti over the past week. It seems very well like one of those defin­ing moments in his­tory when things that never before hap­pened take shape and place. It also took a spot close to home because it is just quite sim­ply so close. And friends were there.

When the Tsunami’s hit the micro/mela/polynesia area it felt so dis­tant. Even though I remem­ber telling myself about how big of a deal this was, that they’re real peo­ple… It still felt distant.

Haiti is pretty much the total opposite.

And with Haiti I can’t get this thought away from my head that I need to go use my hands to help, use joy to help, use some­thing more than just donat­ing some money. All the while ask­ing and telling myself to dig deep in under­stand­ing why? Usu­ally I get the rea­sons of “Because it would be so cool of an expe­ri­ence” “Because no one else is doing it yet” All kinds of rea­sons in which my pride jolts is self­ish head, caus­ing my heart and brain to respond in suppression.

Any­ways…

It has also been really cool to see all the aid relief and efforts that are going into serv­ing Haiti. Yes­ter­day I was able to lis­ten in on a tele­con­fer­ence between some Wil­low Creek Asso­ci­a­tion church lead­ers and the lead­er­ship of an orga­ni­za­tion that has been serv­ing in Haiti for the last 30 years, Com­pas­sion Inter­na­tional. It was encour­ag­ing to hear their pos­i­tive out­look on the sit­u­a­tion and encour­ag­ing to hear some sto­ries of sur­vival. They were also speak­ing very highly of the Church in Haiti, what they have done and are doing, and encour­aged us to remem­ber them as well. It has been easy to for­get that the Church in Haiti is still there, need­ing to serve and love just as they were before.

It has also been easy to see the 500 mil­lion num­ber that the EU is giv­ing and say… “Dang! I don’t need to give, that’s totally enough for any­ones every­thing.” But then you remem­ber all of what needs done. Entire grid-system recon­struc­tion, all the gov­ern­ment build­ings being rebuilt… the list goes on and on.  All this money is going to dry up so quickly, and the ones who will be checked off the list first are the ones who need it the most, the poor­est of the poor. Who’s left to care for them?

The Church.

But with all the pos­i­tivism comes some seri­ous ques­tions that need to be asked. Is enough being done? What’s being over­looked? Is money being appro­pri­ated effec­tively? Are the right lev­els of civic and morale rebuild­ing being deployed?

What are the ques­tions Haiti is caus­ing you to ask per­son­ally? Do you show enough atten­tion to the un-served/loved/voiced peo­ple in our world? Does your cur­rent real­ity need read­just­ing because of the hait­ian reality?

Enough for the ram­bling I sup­pose… Now a few links.

Ushahidi: Crowd­sourc­ing Cri­sis Information

Wash­ing­ton Post: U.S. Cell­phone Text Donation

Jedidiah + Com­pas­sion Intl: Haiti Relief T’s