Charity seeks volunteers to help build homes in Haiti
Haven, set up by Cork entrepreneur Leslie Buckley, is looking to recruit 250 volunteer builders, tradesmen, cooks and cleaners for the initial trip to the Caribbean nation in late October.
Mr Buckley and his wife Carmel officially launched the organisation yesterday with a personal donation of €1m.
He is hoping to bring on board major corporate donors and has also made an application to Irish Aid for state funding, which is under consideration.
Mr Buckley, an associate of billionaire businessman Denis O’Brien, made his fortune from involvement in O’Brien’s Esat Telecom and as co-founder of Digicel, the dominant mobile phone operator in the Caribbean.
He previously travelled to developing countries with aid agency Goal, of which he has been a long-time supporter, but said it was his repeat visits on business to Haiti that prompted him to set up his own charity. “While some people say that after a while you become immune to the poverty in the developing world, I don’t think I’ve ever been able to do that,” he said.
“I have never seen poverty like I have seen in Haiti.”
Labelled the poorest country in the western world, Haiti is only a third the size of Ireland, but has a population of 9 million, two-thirds of whom are wholly dependant on agriculture.
Devastating tropical storms regularly lash the area, washing away top soil and crops and destroying bridges, irrigation canals and pumping stations.
Hunger is widespread and the most recent hurricanes, in August and September last year, left 800,000 homeless.
Those homes that survive the annual onslaughts rarely have any sanitation or indoor cooking facilities and are usually made of mud bricks with scrap metal or straw roofs that regularly leak or collapse under the weight of heavy rainfall. “Entire families live in shacks that we would not dream of putting an animal in,” Mr Buckley said.
His plan is to build 1,000 new homes and refurbish 2,000 others by the end of 2011 both by employing and training local labour and bringing over Irish volunteers.
Modelled on the Niall Mellon Township Trust project which builds homes in South Africa, the volunteers are being asked to raise at least €4,000 each to take part in the programme and give up a week of their time over the Hallowe’en mid-term.
Haven’s chief executive Hugh Brenna is former chief executive of Mr Mellon’s organisation.
Foreign Affairs Minister Micheál Martin praised the initiative.
“We know in Ireland from the Niall Mellon Trust that there is a significant appetite for people to contribute their time and energy as well as money to developing countries. Organisations like Haven will tap into that,” he said.
havenpartnership.com
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