Mass. Haitians Mobilize To Help Victims

BOSTON -- Members of the large Haitian community in Massachusetts geared up to help their homeland as they struggle to get word about loved ones, WCVB in Boston reported.
Boston will open a crisis center Thursday for the city's Haitian population. The city is home to an estimated 50,000 to 60,000 Haitian-Americans.
Translators and crisis counselors will be on hand, providing phone lines for families who need help contacting loved ones.
Hundreds of Boston's Haitians gathered at the city's Cathedral of the Holy Cross Wednesday night, filled with uncertainty.
"No contact at all, so it's kind of nerve-wracking. We're just waiting, hoping." Edna Laurent-Tellus said.
"One of my nephews, OK, gone. And I got a nephew, a niece, with no place to stay," said a man sitting in one of the packed pews.
Many at the service had cell phones pressed to their ears, anxiously waiting for word.
"You are frightened for your families, you are worried. I am here to tell you: You are not alone. You are not alone," Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick told them.
Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry spoke to the gathering in both English and French, telling them that one of the obstacles in the way of delivering aid to Haiti has been the loss of communications. He said several U.S. Navy ships were on the way to the Caribbean nation with search and rescue and medical crews.
State Rep. Linda Dorcena Forry reminded the gathering to make sure if they're donating funds to help to make sure they're giving to credible charities.
"It is important that we support organizations that are going to get the funds, the clothes and the food to Haiti and to the people," she said.
In the wake of the devastation, however, many members of the community were also turning their fears into action. Boston's Cardinal Sean O'Malley called for local parishes to collect relief funds for Catholic Relief Services during next weekend's services. Many state charities are still trying to determine how they can best help.
"People who are experts are on the ground trying to do assessments and find out what's going on, so it's very hard, right now, to start mobilizing supplies and those sorts of things, to send to Haiti," said Deborah Jackson of Boston's Red Cross.
Haitian business owners in the city's Mattapan neighborhood were organizing a Haitian relief task force and are creating teams to collect supplies and counsel local families.
"This one is a young kid they are trying to pull from his school," said Jacques Jean, a Haitian who has been glued to Internet pictures on his computer at the small technical school he runs in Mattapan since the quake shook his homeland Tuesday night.
He was relieved to get word that his father and eight brothers and sisters are OK.
"I don't trust any news that I'm getting until I can talk to them. I can hear their voices," Jean said.
He said he knows his neighbors feel the same anguish as they see the grim photos of the devastation in Haiti.
"We may have half a million people die in Haiti," he said.
He has put together a plan to learn the fate of the missing, with members of his school sending four volunteers to Haiti to try to get information.
"They going to have somebody go to that address and find the person, whether they dead or whether they're still alive. They will call me or send an e-mail to me, telling me, 'This is what happened to the family,' and I will call that family here," Jean said.
In less than a day, he put together a database of 300 names of local residents who are trying to get news of loved ones. His entire family is helping with the effort.
"I just hope that the people who have a breath out there can get some kind of help, because this is my country, too," his daughter, Nadine Jean, said.
Jean said no news is worse than bad news.
"I think everybody is ready for the bad news, because what we see in the news, we know we're going to have a lot of loss," he said.
A Massachusetts woman was among 14 students enrolled at a Florida university who was in Haiti during the earthquake. Her elated parents received word Thursday morning that she had been found alive.
Britney Gengel, 19, of Rutland, is a social work major at Lynn University in Boca Raton. Her group had been staying at the Hotel Montana in Port-au-Prince, working on a public service project with Food for the Poor, a non-profit organization.
She was not listed in initial reports of those who had been found alive, but her father Len said she was located and en route to Port-Au-Prince.
"There is such positive energy around here. We are just thrilled. We can't wait to go to Florida and bring her home," Britney's mother, Cheryl Ann, said.
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