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Fiona Jeffery on Haiti – What Just a Drop Can Do
Tuesday, 06 Feb, 2010
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SEE VIDEO: www.travelmole.tv/watch_vdo.php
Fiona Jeffery is leading “Just Help Haiti”, the appeal run by travel trade water charity Just A Drop to help rebuild community infrastructures in Haiti at the ground level up.
The World Travel Market Chairman says that she’s been overwhelmed by the travel trade offering donations and help, but that now needs to come in so that work can really begin.
Where Just a Drop is different is that its role is not to interfere with the work being undertaken by the big aid agencies dealing with the imperative emergency relief. Just a Drop comes in when the chaos starts to settle down and you have thousands of displaced people living in make-shift refugee camps with nowhere else to go.
The charity will then help encourage communities back into their homes, villages and schools and this is only achievable where they have access to clean safe water and sanitation, which is what Just a Drop is all about.
Just a Drop will reinstall and improve water and sanitation systems into local communities which it has a great deal of experience and completed very successfully post the Tsunami and Hurricane Mitch in Grenada where at a local level village water and sanitation systems were rebuilt and left in both instances with a better facility than they had before.
Just a Drop sends in specialist engineers. They are experienced water engineers having worked with the British army and know how to operate in difficult environments and circumstances, and are also expert at working with the local communities which is very important.
They will assess the situation and will then work with local construction companies and local people to develop and build new systems. The project work required at a local level will be assessed and what we can deliver effectively on the ground. Just a Drop will only do what it can viably deliver and can afford to do based on funds raised.
The travel & tourism industry is traditionally very generous in such circumstances and we have seen this in some of the response we have seen from both the big operators such as Thomas Cook and TUI Travel, together with smaller operators and industry suppliers.
However one of the challenges is fragmented use of funds and resource. All Just a Drop is trying to achieve with the Just Help Haiti campaign is to unite the industry and its support into a key area of tremendous need under the circumstances – the provision of clean safe water and sanitation for the people of Haiti.
Good needs to come out of bad and Haiti is certainly now on the world map. With the opportunity for reinvestment and development there is the opportunity to put Haiti on the road to economic recovery by rebuilding its infrastructure.
The Charity is aptly named, Just a Drop can really help £2 a month will provide a family with drinking water for life.
NOW VISIT: www.justadrop.org/
Valere Tjolle
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