The Nexus

Disaster has struck the poorest country in our hemisphere.

Haiti has felt the wrath of a magnitude 7.0 earthquake which has shattered the everyday life that Haitians have come to know. The infrastructure of Port-au-prince, has been damaged beyond recognition. Buildings have fallen into the streets, transforming what once was a bustling city into a field of rubble.

And beneath all this rubble, beneath the failure of the infrastructure, lies countless people.

This is one of the worst natural disasters the world has seen in recent times, with the death count endlessly rising, and every day the recorded toll of those lost in the rubble rises.

And to make matters worse, Haiti’s military was disbanded in 1995, giving the country little organized effort of its own that it can utilize. All it has in that area is a 9,000-person police force at its disposal, a force not nearly large enough to even start to handle the problems the country is currently facing.

It is not just our government’s duty to intervene for the Haitian people, but the responsibility of individuals, as members of the global community.

We as Westview students must take note of this destruction, and help however we can. Everywhere there are organizations whose sole purpose is to collect donations to help provide aid in Haiti. There are organizations that are working on collecting supplies for those who have been impacted by this tragedy.

Throughout our school, we are constantly having fundraisers and donations set up for various causes that seem rather removed from our everyday lives, whether it be collecting money for vitamins for the poor in Africa or collecting toys for orphans here in the states. And this is because we at Westview have a strong sense of being part of a global community, to being connected to others. We realize that in the chain of events, people at Westview are bound to be impacted by any disaster around the world.

People across America have relatives living in Haiti, and are anxiously waiting to see if their family members made it out of the catastrophe alive. Also, there are a great number of Americans who were just visiting Haiti at the time and got trapped by the earthquake.

So yes, the destruction may seem like it is just far away, on some island we’ve barely heard of in the past. It may seem to be completely removed from our lives.

But in reality, we are affected by this horrible event. And we are lucky enough to have the resources to help. Almost every student at Westview is in ownership of a cell phone, allowing them to make a valuable contribution to help the aid in Haiti.

One only needs to text ‘Haiti’ to 90999 in order to donate $10 to the Red Cross’ efforts in the region. While this may not seem like much, every cent is needed. $10 could mean the difference in whether or not a person goes hungry, or goes without medical aid.

Your donation could mean the difference between a person’s life and their death.