‘Hope for Haiti Now’ Revisited

Mar 15th, 2010 9:56 AM UTC
By Chris Scott

Nearly two months ago, George Clooney organized the “Hope for Haiti Now” telethon that aired on a number of networks and raised over $65 million for the survivors of Haiti’s devastating earthquake.

Now the Huffington Post has a piece following up on the money raised during the telethon and how it’s being spent in Haiti. This kind of follow-up and transparency is rare, but important. Worth a read:

The urgent need in Haiti right now, they discovered, is food. Funds from the telethon were given to the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) to supply 25,000 metric tons of food to families in need.

Rice is the only food being distributed at the moment, because of how easy it is to cook, store and feed large numbers of people. According to the WFP’s Louis Hamann, “The reason that it’s only rice right now is to make sure that we reach everybody quickly and efficiently [and] calm down the food situation in Port-au-Prince.” The WFP will soon start supplying a “more traditional basket” of food for victims in the next few weeks once the hunger situation is under control.

MTV’s Sway went to the Sylvio Cator Soccer Stadium near Port-au-Prince and watched thousands of people line up to receive bags of rice. About 3,000 families — more than 20,000 people — will receive bags of rice daily.

MTV followed one of those 20,000 people, Myrthile Joseph, back to her home, which was decimated by the quake. Joseph lost her husband in the earthquake and now must cook her bag of rice in a small makeshift stove next to where her kitchen used to be.

TAGS: Earthquake in Haiti, Haiti