As a poor and small island struck by a natural disaster, Haiti and the world were not prepared for the level seven earthquakes that shook the small nation. Not far from America and in dire need of assistance, it only made sense that our president would send money to Haiti to help with the relief.
Requests for funding are popping up everywhere, from MySpace to small application games all over the Internet. Just about every Web site on the Internet has a Haiti relief fund but are all of them legitimate? Sending money through a Web site game really isn’t the greatest idea, because people could get scammed. Even though they may claim 100 percent of the donations will go to Haiti, it isn’t necessarily true. Everyone sees how much money is being thrown into Haiti, so some people may simply use the disaster as a means of making their own profit instead of passing it along for humanitarian relief.
Even with all the money coming in, it will be a slow process to help Haiti. Their harbor has been destroyed, making it almost impossible to get on to the small island except by air. Things have to be airlifted onto the island. And even this week people were still under the rubble waiting to be rescued.
The problem with this whole scenario is that some people are complaining about not enough being done. In reality, rescuers are working as hard as they can. Some American parents with kids still missing have appeared on talk shows saying that rescuers are not doing enough to find their kids. They just don’t understand that everyone is trying, and, at the moment, there are a lot more people than just their kids lost under huge slabs of concrete. Though it is a sad and tragic dilemma, it should just be understood that America is doing what we can.
Then of course there are the people who think that we are putting too much money into Haiti while we are in a recession. If we were in a time of need during a natural disaster, we would probably be complaining about people not helping us enough.
In President Barack Obama’s speech on Haiti, he explained that the government would give them only $100 million, which isn’t enough money to cover Omaha’s new baseball stadium. Even though we are giving them money, it was needed to help everyone realize the crisis in Haiti. If President Obama hadn’t started the call for humanitarian assistance, then other countries might not have cared about Haiti.
He essentially opened everyone’s eyes and made people aware that money and help was needed. As one of the biggest role models for other countries worldwide, how would it look if our government did little to help Haiti?

Casandra Brindisi is a student at Bryan High School. The Bellevue Leader will periodically publish a column written by journalism students at local high schools.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS