Another Way to Help Haiti

If you want to give money, Chris Blattman and Laura Freschi both have good ideas and useful information. However, if you can’t give as much as you would like, or find yourself wanting to do more, then I have one further suggestion: contact the White House and tell them that you support granting Haitians Temporary Protected Status (TPS) immediately.

TPS is a form of temporary humanitarian immigration relief given to nationals of countries that have suffered severe disasters, natural or man-made. (For example, El Salvador got TPS was after the country was hit by a terrible earthquake in 2001, Honduras after Hurricane Mitch in 1999, and Burundi, Liberia, Sudan, and Somalia were designated because of ongoing armed conflicts.)

More on this here.

AND HOLY COW [Text HAITI to 90999 to donate $10 to @RedCross relief.]:

The American Red Cross, which is working with a mobile donations firm called mGive, said Thursday that it had raised more than $5 million this way.

This definitely contributed to the $35 million that has been raised in total, surpassing the amount raised in the same time for Hurricane Katrina and the Indian Ocean Tsunami relief.

Side Note: Watch for all sorts of mainstream companies to have their ah-ha moment after this.  Those cheesy commercials to text ___ to number ___ for joke/picture/etc of the day are on TV for a reason…