Edeyo | Help Them: Haiti Education Initiative

A DROP IN THE OCEAN

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It’s a drop in the turbulent ocean, but—three weeks after Hurricane Matthew ravaged much of Haiti—the Edeyo Foundation is now distributing its first shipment of emergency relief supplies. Co-founder Unik Ernest has visited our school in Bel-Air, providing T-shirts, water bottles, and other urgently necessary items. Today, he will be traveling as part of a team heading to the Tiburón Peninsula, in the southwest of the country, to distribute medical and hygiene supplies to the worst affected areas. Our hope is that we may be able to alleviate conditions for up to 1,000 people. Edeyo would like to thank Jet Blue, the Hofstra University community, Natural Bunch Kids, the Montclair community, and all our volunteers in New York for their commitment and generosity.

Unfortunately, it is difficult to exaggerate the severity of the problem. The livelihood of hundreds of thousands of small farmers has been destroyed, and famine threatens to hit the city of Port-au-Prince within weeks. The Tiburón peninsula was the bread basket of Haiti, but it has been leveled: crops and livestock alike have been wiped out, along with many hundreds of human lives. Some eyewitnesses have described the impact of the hurricane as a post-apocalyptic scene. Conscious of the need for deep solutions, the Edeyo Foundation hopes to bring together some key stakeholders in the near future, to discuss infrastructural changes that may prevent future catastrophes.