Give Now, Go Later
How to Help Haiti in the Wake of the Quakeby Scott Bessenecker
The disaster in Haiti has created an agonizing human toll of misery, death and destruction. Our compassion has been rightly stirred and we ought to give full expression to our God-given mercy impulse.
The reason mercy and compassion exists in humans is that those qualities exist in the Creator who made men and women in his likeness. One of the earliest set of adjectives assigned to God occurs in Exodus as God passes before Moses and proclaims his name, which is another way of saying that he proclaims his essence, character and being: “Yahweh! The Lord! The God of compassion and mercy! I am slow to anger and filled with unfailing love and faithfulness.” (Ex. 34:6 NLT)
Let us not restrain our lament, our prayer and our resources, no matter how tired we feel after responding to so many previous tragedies in Haiti or around the world. Yet, let’s not overwhelm what remains of the fragile infrastructure in Haiti by jumping on a plane just yet.
Wait to Go
My brother, Chris, left for Haiti within a day of the disaster. He was in Banda Aceh shortly after the 2004 tsunami and has been to numerous locations suffering a state of chaos. He faces the challenges of getting shipments of supplies into a country and distributed with some semblance of order.
Organizations like his which have long histories of responding to disasters are attempting to get systems operational. A massive influx of compassionate but unskilled people from around the world who will need their own store of food, water and housing may actually compound problems. Those with special experience and training in medical triage, disaster administration, food distribution and transportation logistics need time and space to establish order.
A year from now when this disaster is given two lines on the back pages of our newspapers, many hands will still be needed for reconstruction. Who will go to help rebuild schools, and hospitals and to dig wells then?
Two years from now, when scant stories of the Haiti earthquake “way back in 2010” appear sporadically in a few blogs, there will still be Haitian children who wake from nightmares or bristle as the earth shakes every time a truck drives by. Who will go then to care for orphans or create opportunities for healthy play and learning?
Ten years from now when most the world has forgotten this disaster and an earthquake survivor who has been severely disabled by a collapsed building attempts to eek out a living, will there still be people willing to go to Haiti simply to provide friendship and care? Right now Haiti needs a great many of us to pray fervently and give generously; those without experience in relief situations, who feel the impulse to go, need to covenant to seek out opportunities to serve months and years from now after the immediate rescue is completed.
Pray with Haitians Nearby
There are hundreds of thousands of Haitian residents or people of Haitian origin living and studying in the US and Canada. Most of them have friends and family members who have been seriously affected by this disaster. Now is the time to contact Haitians living around us – to offer to listen to their stories, and then to pray for them and their relatives. We need to weep with them at the losses they have experienced and rejoice with them when loved ones are found. Make an effort to seek out and reach out to Haitian communities at your school or in your city.
Give Responsibly
With disaster events there is a massive outpouring of money. This is critical since so many of us, particularly in the west, have incredible access to personal wealth. Even those who feel on the lower rungs of the North American money ladder have far more access to money than the average Haitian who makes just over $500 a year. Large amounts are needed, and those who have it ought to give generously to those who don’t.
However, as has been born out with nearly every large scale disaster, not all organizations are equipped to handle the billions of dollars which need to flow through them and into Haiti. Do some research on the longevity, capacity and number of people an organization has on the ground. Organizations equipped to handle disasters the scale of this one, such as those listed by the American Institute of Philanthropy, have learned how to manage large flow of resources and have systems in place to be certain money flows quickly but carefully to the right places.
Allow the God of mercy and compassion, who made you to be merciful and compassionate, to move through you: to serve the country of Haiti at the right time and in the right way, to pray for and with Haitian people near you and those across the ocean, and to give – first with forethought and research, and then (after deciding through whom to give) with reckless abandon.
Scott Bessenecker is Associate Director of Missions for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. His books include The New Friars and How to Inherit the Earth.
Unless otherwise noted, all materials on the urbana.org web site are Copyright InterVarsity Christian Fellowship / USA. All rights reserved.
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