Sorry guys, no witty/musical title on this one.
How would you react if your roof suddenly fell in on your living room, with you and your entire family inside? Or if a flood destroyed most of your belongings beyond saving and took the rest of them with it on its unforgiving path? If something took your children from you in a single moment and there was nothing you could do to save them or reverse what caused it. If you lost everything in an irreversible catastrophic or personally tragic event, how would you feel? What would you do? How would you react? Who would you turn to?
A catastrophic earthquake all but leveled Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital. Schools tumbled, hospitals fell like leaves, at least one prison collapsed. This is the worst seismic event to hit the region in more than two centuries. The unconfirmed casualty estimates range from fifty thousand people to two hundred thousand. There are tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people dead in a country with almost no resources at all, and little hope of any foreign aid.
I know it isn’t pretty. I know it’s hard to think about. I know it’s easier to simply move on with one’s own life than to think of thousands of dead and millions of injured, homeless, helpless, poor people in a country so far from home. I know all of these things. But just take a few minutes. Just a few moments of your time to read and let me paint you a picture of exactly what this means to those people, what it could mean to you and your friends and family and loved ones if it were to happen in your home.
Imagine living in one of the least developed and poorest nations in the western world. Imagine working until you can’t feel anything but exhaustion anymore. Imagine barely being able to keep food in your family’s mouths and clothes on their backs and a roof over their heads, or even any one of those things, despite having worked yourself to the bone. Imagine watching your family, your children, your spouse suffer in unthinkable hell every day before you finally manage to fall asleep.
It isn’t a pretty picture is it? You don’t want to think about it, do you? But what can you do, right? What can you possibly do to help people so far away, whom you don’t know and may never even lay eyes on? It isn’t hard. None of us like opening up our wallets right now, I know. None of us like to think about any of the tragedy because we may begin to feel guilty.
But if you can find it in your heart to give money to strangers, then I’m providing one more way that you can do so.
The HP Alliance is currently holding an event called Helping Haiti Heal. The way this works is this: You go to the following URL: http://thehpalliance.org/haiti/prizes/ and choose the paypal donate button next to the prize(s) you would most like to win. I would like to establish that this IS a raffle, you are not purchasing the items outright. You may multiply your donation in order to make it more likely that you win the prize(s) you would like. This event ENDS on February 6th. Please, go help those in Haiti before it’s too late for you to also benefit from it.
Again that is http://thehpalliance.org/haiti/prizes/ and the event is called “Helping Haiti Heal”.
- Persephone OUT! (@patientes or Amanda)
UPDATE: As of this moment if we raise another $20K for Helping Haiti Heal, the cargo planes that are being sent full of supplies for the relief fund will be named Harry, Ron, and Hermione. So if you happen to be a heavy HP nerd (Like I am) Please go and donate any amount to Helping Haiti Heal.
