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Hands Across the Water
By Mitchell Beer | January 14, 2010
On the meetings circuit, Haiti is not a place that often comes to mind.
The now-devastated capital of Port-au-Prince is just 713 miles by air from Miami, 960 miles from Cancún, but it might as well be a universe away—in its infrastructure, in the opportunities open to its citizens, and in its visibility to people who organize and attend meetings and events.
Haiti placed 149th out of 182 countries in the 2009 Human Development Index, with an adult literacy rate of only 62.1%, and gross domestic product of US$1,155 per capita. According to the World Bank’s World Development Indicators, Haiti’s life expectancy was 60.9 years in 2007. Compare that with expected lifespans of 80.6 in Canada and 78 in the United States.
And that was before the earthquake earlier this week—measuring 7.3 on the Richter scale—destroyed the country’s already fragile infrastructure, claiming anywhere from 50,000 to 100,000 lives, and affecting at least one-third of Haiti’s nine million inhabitants.
Right now, one of the survivors’ most immediate, dire needs is for clean drinking water. Before the quake, uncontaminated water was a rarity in Haiti. Now it is impossible to find. And that doesn’t even take into account the staggering need for food, medicine, and safe shelter.
Which is why I read carefully, and with mounting horror, when Knitters Without Borders went live with an urgent and detailed call for donations to Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), one of the world’s leading humanitarian relief agencies.
KWB was launched in response to the 2004 tsunami by Canadian knitter and blogger Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, aka the Yarn Harlot, whose passion for knitting and fibre arts captured our managing editor’s attention a few years ago.
Incredibly, through KWB, the Harlot had already raised more than $600,000 for MSF (Canada here, United States here, other countries can find their site here) before the earthquake. Not 24 hours after she posted the special appeal, hundreds of replies had poured in from readers who had sent donations, large and small. By midnight last night, the interim tally had surpassed US$25,000. It continues to climb today.
I expect our finance manager might have thought I’d taken leave of my senses, but we’ve donated $1,500 to the relief effort—$500 from the company and $1,000 from our household.
I could claim that it’s because MSF Canada is one of our favourite clients.
I could point out that a dollar spent in a developing country goes so much farther than the same amount spent in an industrialized economy.
I could try to tell you how important it is for meetings and hospitality to think about countries like Haiti and Philippines. They’re two of the countries that supply a work force that rarely factors into our industry’s strategic thinking, but provides essential support for anything we do in just about any hotel that hosts a meeting.
But it’s more than that.
Our firm was as glad as anyone else in the industry to see the end of 2009, but we’re under no illusion that we’re bearing the real brunt of the economic crash. Haiti had too much violence, too little clean water, too high a level of child mortality, and far too much environmental degradation before the earthquake crushed much of their infrastructure and many of their people. Their future looked dim enough last week. It looks far worse today.
A tragedy like the Haiti quake puts a different, much broader twist on any discussion in our industry that might seem urgent. We’re beginning to see a practical response from some meetings industry suppliers, and at least one MPI chapter, but this is a moment when each of us can and should step up.
We have shelter and clean water. We even have telephone and Internet access. That’s why we’ve made a donation to MSF, and you should, too.
Topics: Corporate Social Responsibility |
Comments Feed
January 15th, 2010 at 2:06 pm
SUPPLEMENT January 15: Our industry colleague MaryAnne Bobrow of Bobrow Associates posted this to an online forum for meeting professionals:
“The U.S. government has a group of veterinarians who can be called to duty in crisis (think Katrina and the rescue of animals). I have often wondered why they don’t have a group of meeting professionals who could be called in to organize efforts during times of crisis. Isn’t this one of our
skill sets?”
January 15th, 2010 at 4:10 pm
As of last night, the tally on the KWB site had risen to nearly $46,000. Knitters rule. And I say that with no hint of bias.