utah haiti relief is awesome

First of all, THANK YOU so much to all of you who have already ordered some of our little flowers for Haiti! You are all so incredibly sweet and we appreciate your support more than you could possibly know!!! Our plan to cover the world in flowers is off to a great start.

I know somewhere earlier I mentioned that my friend Ty was still actively involved in helping down in Haiti (with Utah Haiti Relief). Well, he is and I wish everyone could see the amazing things that they are continuing to do down there. Oh wait, they can here on my wonderful blog.

Clearly, one of the biggest problems since the earthquake is how to house the approximately one million displaced persons in and around Port-au-Prince. Thanks to incredible world-wide donations, most of these people are now living in giant tent cities. While the tents are definitely better than nothing, the threats of disease, crime, heat, hurricanes, etc. make them extremely dangerous for these large groups of homeless people to live in for much longer.

A few months ago, Ty (and company) went down to initiate the construction of some styrofoam houses in these tent cities. Yes folks, styrofoam houses. These buildings are made entirely out of foam panels, glued together, and then covered in a concrete composite solution. They can withstand winds of up to 150 mph and hold up to 2,000 pounds on top. An amazing alternative to the tents, these foam houses will provide safe shelter that will hold out during hurricane season.

In these photos they were building a four room foam house to be used as a women’s medical clinic/delivery room in Sean Penn’s camp (around 50,000 displaced people are living in tents in Mr. Penn’s camp). As they were building, Haitians were learning how to construct the houses themselves, an awesome skill for them to have.

Each house costs a few thousand dollars to build. A minuscule fraction of the cost of a normal house, but still requires significant investments to create these shelters for large numbers of people. They are working on generating more funds to keep these houses coming. Ty just informed me that they are also coming up with other domed structures that are cheap and fairly simple to construct. I will keep you posted when I get more pictures!

Pretty amazing what a few good people can do when they put everything they have into a really good cause.

If you want to learn more about Utah Haiti Relief, I have a link to their site in my right-hand column. There is also a youtube link to see a video of the construction of the foam houses down in Haiti.

Ty (far left) & Company

Mr. Penn