Haitians need help; Kent diversity should spur us to make the call – Editor’s Note

If there is one thing about Kent I’ve come to appreciate, it’s the diversity.

We have more than 100 languages spoken in our schools here. Kent-Meridian High School, where my daughter goes, is predominantly ethnic.

Many of my neighbors, where I live in the Kent Valley, were born somewhere else, and a number of them speak English as a second language. Some of them speak multiple languages, many of them fluently.

That diversity is one of the reasons I love living in Kent. My grandparents were Irish immigrants, and Kent’s melting-pot sensibilities, combined with a tough work ethic, click with me in the same way as did my grandparents’ wish for the American Dream.

But there are others whose dreams, right now, have been shattered. They live in a country that was the second, in the New World, to throw off the shackles of colonial powers, after the United States did. In their case, they won their freedom from France.

They are residents of Haiti, and they are suffering in ways we will truly never be able to grasp.

Upwards of 50,000 people are feared dead, and huge swaths of the island country’s capital have been reduced to rubble.

People are desperate for the basic tools of survival: water, food, shelter. They are out of those things. They are out of even body bags in which to place their dead.

We have Haitians living in Kent, and their children go to our schools. They are a part of our remarkable patchwork quilt of a thriving immigrant population here, working hard to make their way.

We can reflect back to Haiti what people are achieving here.

There are simple ways you can help, and they don’t require much more than a cell phone call, or a Web site visit.

Right now aid organizations are gladly accepting monetary donations. According to the Red Cross folks I have been talking to, money donations are the most important things people can be contributing, because there are highly specific things that these groups are supplying: aid kits with high-calorie biscuits, new, clean blankets and clothes, clean water and medical supplies.

If you want to help, here is what you can do:

The American Red Cross has a cell-phone donation system. Simply dial 90999, type “Haiti” into the message, and you’ll make a $10 donation, via your cell-phone account, to the group’s Haiti operations.

You also can log onto the Seattle Red Cross Web site at www.seattleredcross.org/Donation/funds.aspx to make a donation.

World Vision, another organization out of the Puget Sound region, has an intensive donation effort going on. Log onto their Web site at www.worldvision.org.

Lastly, I am seeking any leads readers may have about Kent residents working or helping out in Haiti, or Haitians here who may have family still there.

I would very much like to share their experiences with the rest of our readers. Please contact me!