Dedham’s 45-foot-long relief trailer for Haiti has been “filled up” with food, medical supplies, and clothing, and will be shipped to the stricken island nation on Monday.
“It’s full now, and it’s been delivered over to U.S. Customs and it’s now on a ship in East Boston waiting to depart for Haiti,” said Adrienne Albani, who has coordinated the town’s effort to help Haiti, working with Philippe Emmanuel Joseph, the pastor of the Dedham Temple Haitian Seventh-Day Adventist Church.
“They had to wait for all the storms to blow over,” Albani said of the ship’s departure. It is due to arrive in Port-au-Prince Sept. 17, and from there the trailer will go about 35 miles to Petit Goave, a small community that has “not been able to access a lot of the aid that has been pouring into Port-au-Prince,” she said.
The medical supplies will go to the Hospital Notre Dame de Petit Goave, and shoes, clothing, and accessories will be distributed on as-needed basis to Haitians through three churches there. Joseph and two members of the Dedham church are traveling to Haiti to oversee the effort.
“Our trailer has a definite destination spot, and we know that everything in that trailer is going to be distributed by hand by the ministry team to the folks that need it,” Albani said.
The town’s relief effort began in January, following the earthquake that devastated Haiti, which was already the poorest country in the hemisphere.
Albani said the second Town Hall bake sale, held last week, raised almost $700, which will help pay for the travel expenses of Joseph’s ministry team. In all, $8,700 has been raised.
“It was $6,100 to ship the container. That was a huge victory,” Albani said.
She thanked the many people who have made contributions, saying, “Everybody really pitched in and did what they could to make this relief effort a success.”
For more on this story, see next week’s edition of the Dedham Transcript.
Dedham Transcript staff writer Edward B. Colby can be reached at 781-433-8336 or ecolby@cnc.com.
