Charitable groups, Pitt students struggle to keep Haiti in public eye

Three weeks after a devastating earthquake, local and international aid groups scramble to… Three weeks after a devastating earthquake, local and international aid groups scramble to help Haitians before the public loses interest.

“The fact that people are still talking about it is good, but we’re counting on it dropping off,” said Brian Knavish, a spokesman for the southwestern Pennsylvania chapter of the American Red Cross.

He added that 80 percent of the fundraising usually occurs in the first few days after a disaster.

Despite an expected decline, relief efforts have exceeded original expectations three weeks after the earthquake.

Several groups have worked on Pitt’s campus and throughout the city to help the Haiti relief effort. The Caribbean and Latin American Student Association has worked on campus to help raise awareness and funds to send to Haiti.

Other charities, such as the Brother’s Brother Foundation and the Functional Literacy Ministry for Haiti, take support that comes from Pitt’s campus.

The southwestern Pennsylvania chapter of the Red Cross raised more than $800,000 as of yesterday, Knavish said.

Officials from aid groups wonder what might happen to aid for Haitians, as the earthquake’s effects no longer necessarily stand in the forefront of the public’s mind.

Martin Hoffman, a professor at New York University who studies clinical and developmental psychology, said people are more likely to donate time to a charity when the victims are more “salient,” either closer to home or made that way by the press.

When press coverage declines, Hoffman said, so will any person’s likelihood to donate time or effort to a cause.

The supermarket chain Giant Eagle extended its fundraiser for the Red Cross to this Saturday, which should gather even more donations, Knavish said.

Knavish also “can’t even put a number” on the smaller, independent fundraisers from churches and community organizations that have donated to the Red Cross.

On campus, the University’s “Bucket Brigade for Haiti” could exceed the initial expectations of 1,000 buckets, Steve Zupcic said. Zupcic works in Pitt’s Community Relations Office and helped organize the fundraiser.

The Bucket Brigade benefits the Brother’s Brother Foundation, which Dr. Robert Andrew Hingson, a professor in Pitt’s School of Medicine, founded in 1958. The University and Brother’s Brother worked together to organize an aid package for people living in temporary housing in Haiti.

“When we heard the extent of the damage, we said, ‘We’ve got to do something,’” Zupcic said.

The supplies from Pitt won’t arrive until more than a month after the quake, which isn’t ideal, Zupcic said, but it takes time when organizations ask people for specific donations.

The first wave of 500 buckets went to residence halls and the William Pitt Union, Zupcic said. The next set of buckets went to offices around campus.

The Department of Parking, Transportation and Service’s Central Receiving Office started to collect some of the buckets yesterday. Zupcic said more than 30 offices on campus, including his own, have filled buckets and some have started to use cardboard boxes to collect supplies. Those offices called Zupcic to ask for “Bucket Brigade for Haiti” labels to put on the boxes.

On Monday, the receiving office will collect the buckets, attach the lids and deliver them to Brother’s Brother.

Pitt might have to buy more buckets to fit all of the items now sitting in cardboard boxes, Zupcic said, adding that all of the buckets should arrive at the foundation by Feb. 12 or 13.

Luke Hingson, president of the Brother’s Brother Foundation and the founder’s son, said the buckets will likely arrive in Haiti two weeks after the foundation receives them, if not sooner.

Some groups on campus have run into a different situation.

At a tabling event Friday in Towers lobby, the Caribbean and Latin American Student Association received a few monetary donations but no toiletries, its vice president, Alyssa James, said. The association tabled a few times in the lobby for two-hour periods, raising about $10 each time.

“There have been people who come to the table and donate, but many don’t make eye contact and walk away,” James said. The student response “could be better,” she said.

The association plans for a movie night and other activities in the coming weeks, James said.

She said the association planned to work with another outside charity, FLM-Haiti, with which the group had previously worked. Last November, the association ran a fundraiser to help support FLM-Haiti.

FLM–Haiti was founded in 1983 and works through Pittsburgh to fund education initiatives in Haiti. Its main center, 20 miles southeast of Port-au-Prince was not severely damaged by the quake, executive director Leon Pamphile said.

The people of Haiti “had a sense of hope for the future” when he visited last October, Pamphile said. Before the earthquake hit, FLM-Haiti had focused on expanding its services to provide better education to more people in Haiti.

The magnitude 7 quake left FLM–Haiti’s facilities southeast of the capital largely intact, Pamphile said.

Many people, though, have left the city to seek shelter in the surrounding areas

“Many people leaving Port-au-Prince will need help, and we want to be in the position to do it,” Pamphile said.

FLM–Haiti altered its day-to-day plan from education to a “crisis mode” of providing aid to those affected by the quake, Pamphile said.

“It took a few seconds for everything to collapse, and it will take months or years to rebuild. The commitments from the community will hopefully be longstanding,” Pamphile said.

Brother’s Brother ran into the same problems that the Red Cross has — the earthquake damaged the port at Port-au-Prince too much to allow shipments of aid, Hingson said.

Haiti has a number of smaller ports that allow ships to arrive, Hingson said. The foundation sent a 40-foot shipping container to one last week.

Other shipments can go through the Dominican Republic, which shares the eastern half of the island of Hispaniola and was largely undamaged by the quake.

Air transport remains the main method of shipping aid to the devastated nation. The American Red Cross sent 56 flights with aid supplies, toiletries and medical equipment, Knavish said.

“People wonder about how much has not been done, but they don’t look at what happened there. The extent of the damage is beyond what we can comprehend,” he said.