Kris Allen (who won last year's American Idol competition) and UN Foundation CEO Kathy Calvin travelled to Haiti last week. The trip is part of the television show's forthcoming episode dedicated to Haiti, which will air on Thursday and help raise funds UN relief efforts.
At the UN moments ago, UN Special Envoy for Haiti Bill Clinton launched the a $1,441,547,920 humanitarian appeal for Haiti. This is the UN's organization's largest ever appeal for humanitarian assistance following a natural disaster.
Time.com ran an article yesterday that addressed a tough question – what is going to happen to amputees in Haiti? What happens to a culture that has traditionally excluded amputees when suddenly 100,000 people lose limbs? And how do those amputees get the medical care that they need? One answer might be an affordable prosthetic foot developed in India.
Wired magazine ran a piece today about the Hexayurt, a six-sided structure designed to be cheap, durable, and easily assembled. It’s not a new design; it was created years ago by Vinay Gupta and promoting it has been a longstanding project for him. However, the Wired article suggests a new and interesting use for the Hexayurt – emergency housing in Haiti.
Presidents Bush and Clinton team up for a new public service announcement for Haiti relief efforts.
The Haitian government has not issued a mortality estimate since January 28, when the government said that 112,405 had died. However, on February 3 the government said that as many as 200,000 may have been killed in the earthquake. Meanwhile, one of the major new developments of the past week has been a mass exodus from Port au Prince to rural areas. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates that over 400,000 Haitians have fled Port au Prince for rural areas in the past two weeks. Food distribution is still a challenge.
The author of The Bottom Billion, Wars Guns and Votes sits down with me to talk about Haiti reconstruction. Collier has something of a front line view of this effort. He was tapped by the secretary general to write a report on Haiti's recovery for the United Nations last year. In the diavlog, Paul explains the roots of Haiti's poverty and explains how best the international community can manage Haiti's recovery.
UNESCO announced today that it is launching a campaign to protect the cultural heritage of Haiti. Amid the carnage, this may seem like a low priority, but, as Director General Irina Bokova explained:
This heritage is an invaluable source of identity and pride for the people on the island and will be essential to the success of their national reconstruction.