Food For The Poor Responds to Request for Aid
COCONUT CREEK, Fla. (June 24, 2015) – The relief and development organization Food For The Poor is responding to an urgent request for help from its Haiti office. The aid is required to help meet the needs of an influx of people arriving from the Dominican Republic.
“This is a matter of great concern for all of us, and it is heading toward a serious humanitarian crisis,” said Bishop Ogé Beauvoir, Executive Director of FFP-Haiti. “Our charity has committed to support 700 deported in two very remote areas of the Southeast Department called Pascado and Téte-á-l’eau. In addition, there are more women with children and babies arriving today and they have no assistance. They need our help.”
As of Tuesday, more than 10,000 people have reached Haitian soil from the D.R., according to reports by the Haitian government. The two countries share a border on the island of Hispaniola.
Aid is being distributed from the FFP-Haiti warehouse in Port-au-Prince, and from a second distribution center in Cap-Haitien, where the need also is growing. In the first delivery of support, the charity is sending rice meals, rice, shoes, kerosene stoves, blankets and baby supplies. Six containers of relief at the port there also will be distributed immediately.
Food For The Poor staff are working to secure rehydration salts to treat sickness, rice meals, beans, corn meal, baby supplies, along with dishes and eating utensils. Bleach, and other cleaning supplies are needed to fight a resurgence of cholera and other threats of disease.
The situation is the result of a change in the D.R.’s Constitutional Court in 2013, which removed citizenship from anyone born after 1929 who doesn’t have one parent of Dominican blood. The country later decided that those affected could apply for a residency permit, with a deadline of Feb. 1, 2015. Not many applied, most are now undocumented and thousands are crossing the border into Haiti, according to a government official who spoke at a meeting in Port-au-Prince on Tuesday night.
Food For The Poor, named by The Chronicle of Philanthropy as the largest international relief and development organization in the nation, does much more than feed millions of the hungry poor in 17 countries of the Caribbean and Latin America. This interdenominational Christian ministry provides emergency relief assistance, clean water, medicines, educational materials, homes, support for orphans and the aged, skills training and micro-enterprise development assistance, with more than 95 percent of all donations going directly to programs that help the poor.
Kathy Skipper
Director of Public Relations
954-427-2222 x 6614
[email protected]