Helping Haiti

Next month, WNC is proudly doing its part to support the people of Haiti. We plan to donate 15% of all subscriptions made during February to Wine to Water (www.winetowater.org).

The organization, which specializes in bringing clean drinking water to impoverished area, is run by a Boone local name Doc Hendley (profiled in our October issue: http://www.wncmagazine.com/feature/local_knowledge/ambassadors_of_hope).

Since the terrible earthquake devastated Haiti a few weeks ago, Doc has been preparing to go down there to help support those who are suffering from lack of water. This morning, I received an email from Wine to Water, written by Doc who arrived in Haiti this week.

I'm not going to get into the horrors of this place because I have neither the time nor the energy. But I will tell you of our awesome progress.

I was airlifted back in to Port-au-Prince via helicopter yesterday to start working with our new partners based out of the Dominican Republic "Filter Pure Filters" (FPF) we are distributing 500 filters that wine to water purchased with the money coming in for the crisis. Also, we will be working with FPF to build a water filter factory right here in Haiti to continue building and distributing water filters long after all the emergency teams leave.

FPF is a great org run completely volunteer by a lady named Lisa Ballentine. Together we will be able to make a huge impact on the lives of these earthquake victims. The 500 filters we are working to get out will give 5000 people clean water for over 5 years at a purity of 99.95 percent. They are amazing. My hope is that in the next few weeks we can have enough money to build a few thousand of these filters.

I will be back in touch with tons of pics and videos whenever I make it somewhere with power. I've been sleeping on the ground and surviving off of protein bars :)

This is such a bad situation and these people are completely broken. But I am encouraged because of the huge impact that we are able to have on their lives in such a simple yet vital way. These filters are literally saving the lives of thousands of people right now, and it is all because of everyone back home making this happen.

Much love and encouragement!
Doc

We’re very proud to have a person like Doc living as our neighbor, and WNC magazine is excited to have this opportunity to help him do this noble work.

If you know of any other local fundraisers to help Haiti, please post them in the comments are below. We want to make sure that every attempt to help the survivors is a tremendous success.