Help for Haiti

[firefly124]

Reposted from bethbethbeth, some ways to send help to Haiti.

I don't know if you've seen the news yet, but a massive earthquake - the worst in 200 years - hit Haiti last night (7.0 at least, with at least two major aftershocks measuring 5.5 and 5.9). Television news reports are estimating that thousands of people have died, with millions more displaced (in a country of 9,000,000) with the capital, Port-au-Prince hit particularly hard. Hospitals, police stations, homes, supermarkets, churches and the U.N. headquarters have all been reduced to piles of rubble, many roads are impassible, and communications are spotty at best.

Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere (average income is about $2.00 a day), and even without a disaster of this magnitude, there's always been great need. But now...rescue services, medicine, ready-made food, water: all are needed urgently. If you can donate anything at all, consider some of the following:

*UNICEF

*The Red Cross

*An updated list of many organizations needing help on SFGate

(note: The link to "Wyclef Jean's Haiti initiative to assist his native Haiti" has been timing out for me, but information about how you can text donations to this initiative or to other groups can be found in this post from Vulgarweed)

Also, I discovered you can donate $10 to the Red Cross by texting "HAITI" to 90999. (I double-checked, and while their main website doesn't reference that means of donating, that is the official Twitter account, linked from the RC website.)