PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Operation Blessing’s relief operations in Haiti have become so huge that we have needed to rent a second warehouse. Now our original warehouse (warehouse 1) will be exclusively for food, water and hygiene supplies. Warehouse 2 will become a distribution hub for medicine and medical supplies.

At any given time at warehouse 1, our team of Haitian workers are tirelessly unloading shipping containers, preparing relief kits or loading the variety of smaller trucks and pickups our partners bring to collect supplies.

We have 17 approved partners in our network consisting of churches, local non-governmental organizations, and orphanages. Each group makes a pick-up appointment with the warehouse manager and arrives to collect pre-assembled kits. Each large palletized kit contains a variety of food such as rice, beans, oil, oats, peanut butter, and meals-ready-to-eat and can feed 250 people for one week.

Our partners are responsible for distribution to the camps or communities they serve. OBI team members have vetted the partners to ensure that the food is getting into the hands of those with the greatest need. Each partner also has access to hygiene supplies as needed and bottled water too.

It has been almost two months since the quake and food supplies in Port-au-Prince are beginning to become available. Markets are open and food is available to purchase. The big problem now is that so many people are out of work and they cannot afford to feed their families. Our relief supplies are targeting those families who have lost everything or, as in the case of orphans, had little to start with.

For many already struggling orphanages the increased price of food has made survival even more difficult for the children. Through our distribution network Operation Blessing is providing food to around 4,500 people on a weekly basis.

As news spreads about the Operation Blessing network, we have been receiving more and more requests each day from all sorts of groups hoping to access our supplies. A steady stream of brown manilla envelopes arrives in my hands each day—each one containing a letter from a group claiming to be an orphanage or a ministry in need of help.

It’s hard to know how many requests are scams and how many really do need assistance; it’s common knowledge among the NGO community here that there are groups posing as churches or orphanages which are really nothing more than a scam to tap into free supplies. The truth is that OBI can hardly take on any more partners, we’re already working at full capacity. So vetting the new applicants is not actually a problem as there are simply no more slots for additional partners.

But no matter how over-stretched we are however, there are some exceptions. Today I happened to be at our warehouse when a Haitian man came to the gate asking to see me. He reminded me that this was the second time he had asked for help, so I sat down with him to hear him out.

He told me that he and his wife run an orphanage for 57 children and were in urgent need of food for the children. There was something about his expression and the urgency in his voice that made me realize he was the real deal. I asked him where the orphanage was and if he would like me to visit. He smiled and said he would be very happy if I would. So I asked our warehouse manager, Larry, to load up his SUV with some food supplies. We crammed it to the brim with rice, boxes of high nutrition individual meals, and water and set off into the tedious Port-au-Prince traffic.

Ten miles and 45 minutes later we bounced down a pothole-filled back road and through the metal gates of the orphanage. As is usually the case at orphanages, the children were very excited to see a visitor and I was immediately serving up high fives and belly pokes to the amusement of the beautiful little kids surrounding me.

The building itself had not been destroyed in the quake, but the entire group have been living outside under a big blue tarp ever since, too afraid to sleep inside. In one corner, near the collapsed perimeter wall, there is a fenced in area that looked like a chicken coup. I asked the director what it was for. “We had chickens, but some were killed by the wall, the others were eaten by some dogs,” he said.

Some of the boys were rustled up to help unload the SUV and the director shouted out a few names to the group. Four little boys stepped forward; they looked concerned and confused. “These four are new to the orphanage since the earthquake,” the director said as he did his best to tidy them up. I did my best to make them smile, but the offer of a high five and a friendly belly poke was not enough to help them see past their pain. I can’t imagine what those 4 boys have gone through. None of them smiled the whole time I was there.

The director took me inside to show me the house. The unfinished building was very sparse, it had very little color and hardly any furniture or toys. He called me into a small room and said it was the pantry. He reached down to the bottom shelf of an empty cupboard and pulled out three almost empty sacks of grain. “You see why we needed help,” he said as he reached into one of the sacks and pinched out a few kernels of dry corn.

It really shocked me, not to see how little they had, but to think that I was so close to telling him we had no more slots available at our warehouse. And we really don’t have any more slots available, but I told him that from now on he must come and collect food from OBI—we will find a way to make up the difference.

One of the hardest parts of this job is having to say, “Sorry, but no.” The truth is that right now in Haiti there is more need than all the aid agencies combined can meet and if OBI distributed to every group that asked for help, we would dilute our impact and never really help anyone. It’s vital to maintain a focus, and right now our supply chain is capable of serving and really making a difference to the lives of the 4,500 we are reaching with food.

Tags: Caribbean, David Darg, Disaster Relief, Earthquake, Food Supplies, Haiti, Medical Supplies, OBI, Operation Blessing, Orphan Care, Partners, Port-au-Prince, Relief

This entry was posted on Monday, March 8th, 2010 at 5:46 pm and is filed under Caribbean, David Darg, Disaster Relief, Earthquake, Haiti. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.