Haiti Crisis Update: How to Help

Friday, Jan. 22, 2010

Humanitarian crisis experts agree that the best way to help the people of Haiti right now is to donate money to reputable organizations involved in the relief effort. Collections of goods, such as food, clothing and medicine, are well meaning, but do far less to improve conditions in the disaster area than monetary donations. Likewise, traveling to Haiti as a volunteer is probably neither possible nor helpful at this stage of the crisis. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), outlines the very limited conditions under which goods and services might be helpful in Haiti on its website: www.usaid.gov/helphaiti

See the information and links on Fordham's home page for ways to donate to relief efforts in Haiti.

Expert Panel: Haiti: Crisis and Humanitarian Action

Kevin M. Cahill, M.D., director of Fordham’s Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs, moderates a panel on the nature and scale of the disaster in Haiti, and the humanitarian response underway there. Panelists include:

• Paul Browne, New York City Police Department's deputy commissioner of public information and deputy director of the International Police Monitors in Haiti, where he helped establish an interim police force during the United States-led "Operation Restore Democracy" in 1994-1995.
• Rev. Ken Gavin, S.J., national director of the Jesuit Refugee Service, U.S.A.
• Robert Nickelsberg, American photojournalist whose work often appears in Time magazine, and who was embedded with the First Marine Division in the Iraq War in 2003.
• Ed Tsui, former longtime director of the New York office of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Thursday, Jan. 21, 1 p.m. | Keating First Auditorium, Rose Hill campus
Free and open to the public