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When 'every child becomes a street child' - Port-au-Prince (ANS – ROME, 15 January 2010 , austraLasia #2574) – Today is the feast of Blessed Luigi Variara. Not all that far from Haiti in geographical terms he made 'victim' into 'virtue' and began a movement which became the first of the 'modern' members of the Salesian Family to be recognised officially, his Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary (HH.SS.CC). That thought might help sustain people as we see the tremendous operation being mounted at the moment, under the name 'Salesian', in many parts of the world, to help Haiti . Just from this desk alone, the amount of time spent in response to yesterday's austraLasia would stagger the mind of the reader - along with the eventual result in financial and materiel (sic) terms, and we are mere conduits.
But one of the lines that hit this reader the hardest, trawling through the stuff coming in, was this: "the humanitarian aid organization [the reference is to the Salesians in this instance] has its work cut out for it as all children in Port-au-Prince are now street children". It is this reality this is moving people and moving hearts and moving material. One reader, all the way, would you believe, from the US Senate Building in Washington , wrote this morning saying simply 'I was a volunteer in Petion Ville this summer. I want to try to find out what they need and how I can help'. We directed this person to the people who can give the answers. Further to yesterday's info about a bank account, some asked for the actual bank address. Here, then, is the complete info once again:
Citibank |
Again
I repeat, keep en eye on ANS which does its best to update the situation as
scarce hard facts come in - but if there are to be hard facts, our men and
women on the ground will be providing them. And some are very 'hard'
indeed. There is no update on the 200 kids buried under the prestigious
National School of Arts and Trades which the Salesians run, and no news in
this case is unlikely to be good news, though we live in hope. We know that
the mother of two Salesians, a priest and a brother, died in the
earthquake. We have heard from the FMA Sisters that the Sisters in the
communities there - they have five or six communities in and around P-au-P -
were not harmed.