Information Release

14^th January 2010

£30,000 IN RELIEF FOR HAITI EARTHQUAKE

Following the devastating earthquake which took place in Haiti on Tuesday 12^th January 2010, the President of The Freemasons’ Grand Charity has approved two emergency grants totalling £30,000. The funds have been issued to the British Red Cross and Plan.

The 7.3-magnitude quake, Haiti's worst in two centuries, struck at 1653 local time (2153 GMT) on Tuesday. The epicentre was within 10 miles of the centre of the densely-populated capital, where around one million people live, more than 50,000 people are feared dead.

The British Red Cross has been awarded £20,000 to assist with their relief efforts.  Red Cross volunteers in Haiti are currently assisting the injured and supporting hospitals who do not have enough capacity to deal with this emergency. The most urgent needs at this time are search and rescue, field hospitals, emergency health, water purification, emergency shelter, logistics and telecommunications.

Plan has also been granted £10,000 in support of their efforts in dealing with the immediate aftermath of the disaster. Plan’s priorities are assisting children and their families and getting people into safe accommodation wherever possible, as well as working with survivors to help ease their psychological trauma.

Notes:

For further information regarding the Haiti earthquake relief grants please contact Siobhan McCarthy at The Freemasons’ Grand Charity on 020 7395 9385.

American Red Cross is also mobilizing that direction. They do not need blood dontations at this time. They do need coin. They have been anouncing an easy way to use the cell phone via AT&T to donate. I don't understand it, but suggest all worldwide to contact the Red Cross in your area for guidance to assist.

Lifeline Christian Mission has always worked to bring aid to Haiti as a whole.  They are ramping up their efforts to assist in this severe emergency http://www.lifeline.org/2003/index.html  They need: personal care items, food such as peanut butter etc, first aid kits and many other items. They have an interesting newsletter with some daily updates. The tremors are still terrorizing the island; http://www.lifeline.org/news/Haiti.htm I am sure there are other orgainizations who are doing the same.

Yesterdsy Jan14, I discovered my physician is going there.

He is part of the Doctors without borders group. They are an international orgainization http://doctorswithoutborders.org/

Anything you can do for the people of Haiti is a blessing.

No I wouldn't expect so. Round here the designation "emergency" means that it is needed double quick-time whereas if there was likely to be more it would have been an "interim" 

Correction, as the scale of the disaster is becoming clear theer is talk of more funds from GC and I know of dozens of individual Lodges making donations to the general appeal.

MESSAGE FROM GRAND MASTER MASON

RE HAITI EARTHQUAKE