Standing in Solidarity with Haiti

Haitian civilians receive assistance in a camp set up by the Brazilian Army in Port-au-Prince, in the aftermath of the 2010 Haiti Earthquake.

Courtesy: Wikipedia.

The Catholic Student Center, along with the Archdiocese of St. Louis, is standing in solidarity with the millions of people of Haiti who are suffering from the effects of the earthquake on January 12, 2010. Our prayers are with the people of Haiti and we mourn with them for the thousands of people who have died. Being in St. Louis you may feel helpless in regards to this disaster, but we encourage you to do three things.

What You Can Do:

1) Pray compassionately for the people of Haiti (in particular you can find a list of things to pray for on the Catholic Relief Services website written by Father Jean Jadotte, associate pastor of Miami's Notre Dame D'Haiti parish, http://www.crs.org/).

2) Inform yourself about the situation so that you can genuinely know the situation and stay connected to the suffering of the people of Haiti by reading news articles and keeping up to date with the relief effort through websites like www.crs.org, http://www.standwithhaiti.org/haiti, or your news agency of choice.

3) Donate to the relief effort. In these desperate times there are many organizations that do great work to aid those in need, but unfortunately there or some who use these times to take advantage of the generosity of others. If you choose to donate make sure to check the legitimacy of the organization you are donating to. The Catholic Student Center and the Archdiocese of St. Louis specifically recommends donating to Catholic Relief Services (http://www.crs.org/), which is the official international humanitarian agency of the U.S. Catholic Church. Catholic Relief Services is well established in Haiti and already had 300 staff persons working in Haiti before the earthquake. They were able to respond immediately by distributing supplies to people and because Haiti is a predominantly Catholic they have an effective network of partners in the various communities of Port-au-Prince.

Fundraising Effort

The Catholic Student Center in response to the disaster is taking up a second collection at Mass on Sunday, January 17th to support Catholic Relief Services.