DIX­IE-ANN DICK­SON

As the news hit the air­waves about the earth­quake-strick­en Haiti, T&T was ready and will­ing to help al­le­vi­ate the suf­fer­ings of its Cari­com neigh­bour. There was gen­er­al care and con­cern ex­pressed by var­i­ous or­gan­i­sa­tions when con­tact­ed yes­ter­day. Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of Unit­ed Way of T&T, Pamela Fran­cis, said the or­gan­i­sa­tion al­ready has be­gan mo­bil­is­ing its stake­hold­ers and oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tions who may be will­ing to as­sist.

She al­so said she was flood­ed with calls by cit­i­zens and or­gan­i­sa­tions who were will­ing to pledge their sup­port. She added that there were a lot of will­ing par­ties as the tragedy has touched every­body. Fran­cis said all of Unit­ed Way's work was done through net­work­ing and by ac­quir­ing fi­nances and oth­er re­sources. She not­ed that some of the ma­jor stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing So­ci­ety of St Vin­cent de Paul, First Cit­i­zens Bank and Foun­da­tion for the En­hance­ment and En­rich­ment for Life (FEEL), al­ready have been con­tact­ed.

"We have al­ready be­gan to send out no­ti­fi­ca­tion to cam­paign teams for them to put things in place," she said. "We are al­so net­work­ing with St Vin­cent de Paul as they al­ready had a re­lief team on the ground in Haiti," she added. Fran­cis said the or­gan­i­sa­tion had es­tab­lished an ac­count at Roy­al Bank of T&T (RBTT) and was plan­ning to so­lic­it funds from the pub­lic as well. She said the In­ter­na­tion­al arm of Unit­ed Way al­so was plan­ning to sup­port the ef­forts of T&T.

AS­SIS­TANCE

First Cit­i­zens Bank

Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Man­ag­er of First Cit­i­zens, Dex­ter Charles, said man­age­ment was in process of dis­cussing plans to help Haiti. One of the op­tions, he said was to chan­nel its re­sources through Unit­ed Way.

FEEL

Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer, Le­o­line Box­il, said the board would meet to­day to dis­cuss how it could as­sist the dis­as­ter-strick­en coun­try. She said part of its plans was to net­work with Unit­ed Way.

DO­MA

Down­town Own­ers & Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA), in col­lab­o­ra­tion with YM­CA, was re­quest­ing ur­gent sup­port from the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty in do­nat­ing re­lief sup­plies, in­clud­ing bed­ding, canned foods and first-aid sup­plies for trans­mis­sion to Haiti. Con­tri­bu­tions may be sent to YM­CA, Ben­bow Road, off Wright­son Road, Port-of-spain.

Con­tact num­ber DO­MA- 625-3662 YM­CA-627-9622.

T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce

The or­gan­i­sa­tion said it joined the rest of the na­tion in ex­press­ing its deep­est con­cern for the peo­ple of Haiti. It added that the cham­ber would be work­ing with Unit­ed Way and oth­er rel­e­vant rep­utable agen­cies to en­sure prop­er dis­tri­b­u­tion of aid to Haiti.

Re­li­gious Bod­ies

Arch­bish­op Ed­ward Gilbert has au­tho­rised a spe­cial col­lec­tion to be tak­en up in all Ro­man Catholic church­es to be sent to Haiti on the week­end of Jan­u­ary 23-24. He added the Catholic In­ter­na­tion­al Hu­man­i­tar­i­an Agency al­ready had be­gun to pro­vide as­sis­tance to vic­tims and oth­er Caribbean church re­lief ef­forts were forth­com­ing. Mean­while, Pope Bene­dict XVI said the Ro­man Catholic's char­i­ty or­gan­i­sa­tion would im­me­di­ate­ly as­sist those most in need and in­vit­ed every­one to pray for the vic­tims and those mourn­ing their loss.