Combat Haiti's Spreading Cholera Crisis

We urgently need your help again. Please continue to support us in providing sustainable access to clean water for Haitian families in need. After a tragic year in which two of our friends and colleagues at International Action have dealt with life-changing health concerns, we are ready for a year of hope and prosperity.

Your support has enabled us to provide 380,000 individuals in Haiti with clean, safe water for years to come.

But we are determined to do more. Despite the adversity we have faced this past year, we have made some excellent progress in bringing our Haitian friends sustainable access to clean water. We need your assistance in moving forward our two most important projects:

1.)    We have recently installed chlorinators, water pumps, and water tanks in the Artibonite Region of Haiti. They are providing 80,000 people with clean, safe water. To enable 30,000 more Haitians to gain access to clean water in the region, we need your help rebuilding three wells. It will cost $12,400 to fix the wells with concrete and steel 

2.)    The construction plans for the Chlorine Distribution Center are complete -- the system by which communities purchase and transport the chlorine they need with their own resources. Furthermore, the elected community representatives have been trained and are excited to begin. We now need to provide the Center with a year’s worth of start-up chlorine and prepare for a year-end evaluation. The evaluation is vital as it will enable Haiti’s governmental water agency to actively fund the Chlorine Distribution Center, further ensuring its sustainability. We need your support to purchase the $40,000 of chlorine we need and the $6,000 we need for the evaluation.

The most important aspect about both of the projects is that they are community-created and eventually will be completely community-operated. In both cases, leaders in the neighborhoods came to us seeking help. They want their access to clean, safe water to be completely in their hands after our help with design and installation is finished. They want to be self-sustainable. To be able to see the empowered, determined attitudes that our friends in Haiti have is a gift that I want to share, so let me tell you about Angie.

Angie, a resident of Haute Feuille in the Artibonite region, is 17 and has aspirations to be teacher and a comedian. She is quite a hit at her school. Before her town leaders came to us asking us to install chlorinators, Angie and her family used small chlorine tablets to treat the water, given to them by a another small non-profit. They were protected from waterborne diseases.

However, Angie was overjoyed when she heard about the chlorinators and that the community itself would be in charge of maintaining, operating and sustaining the clean water systems. She was excited because she knew that at any time the non-profit that had been providing the small chlorine tablets could leave and her family would be without clean water. It had happened before. She knew that the chlorinators were different. She knew that the success of the chlorinators was going to be dependent on her and her neighbors, not an outside group.  The smile on her face in the picture attached to this letter shows how empowered and happy Angie feels now, a sentiment that many of her neighbors now share.

The desire that Angie and her fellow Haitians have, to be in control of one’s own access to clean, safe water, is what drives us at International Action. We have had a challenging year with two of our top staff becoming ill and understandably needing to leave the group to focus on their own health. It has been tough personally and professionally. But we are committed to Haiti for years to come, and will continue to help the Chlorine Distribution Center flourish and provide Haitians communities with access to clean water. Your support is essential to us achieving these goals faster and effectively, and it is most appreciated!

Attached are pictures from the communities we work with in the Artibonite region as well as a showcase of the Chlorine Distribution Center.

All the Best,

Zach Brehmer, Executive Director