Dear Friends,

It’s been a very intense week at the St. Clare’s rectory where thousands of people are receiving relief thanks to your donations.  The food program team served over 3,000 meals of rice and beans every day this week.  Thousands more received canned food and water.  The trucks continue to arrive and provide desperately needed nourishment and hope to the people.  Your donations are making this possible.

As I look to the weeks and months ahead, and the need to grow the size of the What If? Foundation so we can continue to respond to the critical needs in the St. Clare’s neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, I want to invite you to join our Tell-A-Friend campaign. Please use our new Tell-A-Friend forward button (on the left column) to forward these emails onto your family and friends.  Spreading the word in this personal way will make a huge difference.  Your recommendation of the What If? Foundation is the most powerful way we can expand our donor base and thus our ability to work with the community of St. Clare’s to provide relief and then rebuilding in the weeks, months, and years to come.

I continue to be in touch daily with Lavarice Gaudin, our program coordinator, and tireless leader of relief efforts.  He told me yesterday that he is working to find tents for the thousands of families living outside in the neighborhood.  In tears he described conversations he’s had with people who are walking for miles to the rectory in search of food and water.  They’ve lost their homes, their parents, their children, and still have received no aid from all the planes flying into the Port-au-Prince airport.  Coming to the St. Clare’s rectory for a meal is their only hope right now of getting the food and water they need to stay alive.  To learn more about the current situation in Port-au-Prince, click here to read a report sent to me today from Bill Quigley, a friend of the What If? Foundation.

Thank you for all of your support and encouragement over the last 2 ½ weeks.  It’s extraordinary what we’ve been able to accomplish together.  And thank you for joining me in our Tell-A-Friend campaign.  This simple, but important volunteer effort will make a huge difference over time.  If each of us tells 10 people about What If, and then those people tell 10 people, and then those people tell 10 people… Piti piti na rive!  Little by little we will arrive!

To see new pictures of your donor dollars in action, click here.

With love and hope,

Margaret