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Dedham’s Haiti earthquake relief effort has reached its third and final phase with the arrival in the St. Mary’s parking lot of a 45-foot trailer that is gradually being filled with shoes, clothes, hospital sheets and blankets.
“The needs in Haiti are really, really huge. And we still need a lot of supplies. We need money,” Philippe Emmanuel Joseph, the pastor of the Dedham Temple Haitian Seventh-Day Adventist Church, said in an appeal to selectmen and the community at large.
Joseph said that since the trailer arrived June 4, they’ve collected shoes, clothes and towels. He said non-perishable foods like rice and dried beans are needed, as well as walkers and “crutches, because we have a lot of amputees in Haiti.”
And if you have old bicycles you want to get rid of, “the trailer will welcome them,” Joseph said, prompting laughter from selectmen at their meeting last week.
He presented a fast-moving slideshow of images of Haiti before and after the Jan. 12 earthquake, before beginning his talk.
Adrienne Albani, who has been coordinating the town’s effort to help Haiti, working alongside the pastor, said the container was donated by Recycling Solutions, which operates Dedham’s transfer station.
“It was our plan to ship this container in the middle of June, and I’m learning quite a bit about the international shipping business, and there are no schedules and no times,” said Albani, who is a part-time town employee. “We were told there was a ship leaving June 10 that has been delayed and delayed, and it’s still being delayed. We are working on getting the container filled and getting it shipped.”
She said phase 1 of the effort was establishing an account at Needham Bank to raise funds for the mission trip, and phase 2 “was a clothing drive which garnered hundreds and hundreds of bags of clothing, medical supplies, and even 20 hospital beds. And the third phase was the procurement of the container, and raising funds to ship it to Haiti.”
Joseph left Haiti in 1977, and has been pastor of the Dedham Square church on Washington Street since September. But he plans to return to his home country and distribute the trailer’s materials in September, as he takes a month’s sabbatical. Town Administrator said he is “perfectly fine” with leaving the container on the town-owned portion of the St. Mary’s lot “for the summer, so we can get it filled and then send it off in September,” after Joseph said it would take more time to fill than initially thought.
Dedham’s Haiti earthquake relief effort has reached its third and final phase with the arrival in the St. Mary’s parking lot of a 45-foot trailer that is gradually being filled with shoes, clothes, hospital sheets and blankets.
“The needs in Haiti are really, really huge. And we still need a lot of supplies. We need money,” Philippe Emmanuel Joseph, the pastor of the Dedham Temple Haitian Seventh-Day Adventist Church, said in an appeal to selectmen and the community at large.
Joseph said that since the trailer arrived June 4, they’ve collected shoes, clothes and towels. He said non-perishable foods like rice and dried beans are needed, as well as walkers and “crutches, because we have a lot of amputees in Haiti.”
And if you have old bicycles you want to get rid of, “the trailer will welcome them,” Joseph said, prompting laughter from selectmen at their meeting last week.
He presented a fast-moving slideshow of images of Haiti before and after the Jan. 12 earthquake, before beginning his talk.
Adrienne Albani, who has been coordinating the town’s effort to help Haiti, working alongside the pastor, said the container was donated by Recycling Solutions, which operates Dedham’s transfer station.
“It was our plan to ship this container in the middle of June, and I’m learning quite a bit about the international shipping business, and there are no schedules and no times,” said Albani, who is a part-time town employee. “We were told there was a ship leaving June 10 that has been delayed and delayed, and it’s still being delayed. We are working on getting the container filled and getting it shipped.”
She said phase 1 of the effort was establishing an account at Needham Bank to raise funds for the mission trip, and phase 2 “was a clothing drive which garnered hundreds and hundreds of bags of clothing, medical supplies, and even 20 hospital beds. And the third phase was the procurement of the container, and raising funds to ship it to Haiti.”
Joseph left Haiti in 1977, and has been pastor of the Dedham Square church on Washington Street since September. But he plans to return to his home country and distribute the trailer’s materials in September, as he takes a month’s sabbatical. Town Administrator said he is “perfectly fine” with leaving the container on the town-owned portion of the St. Mary’s lot “for the summer, so we can get it filled and then send it off in September,” after Joseph said it would take more time to fill than initially thought.
Keegan thanked Albani “tremendously” for her effort. She said it will cost about $5,600 to ship it “and we’ve got about $3,000, so we are getting there.”
Donations can be made to the Haiti Relief Fund at Needham Bank.
Albani said “Russell Disposal has donated a very substantial amount of money towards the shipping,” and donors have also included Peter Zahka, the Rotary Club, and other businesses and individuals.
The container will go to a small town outside the Port-of-Prince area that has not received much aid. Albani said the container “is going to be put on a ship, brought to Haiti, rolled off, and brought over to a site, and it will become a permanent distribution site there for the folks that need help. And the pastor and his ministry team will be directly distributing those materials.”
Dedham Transcript staff writer Edward B. Colby can be reached at 781-433-8336 or ecolby@cnc.com.
