Alliance for Global Justice [ http://afgj.org/ ]
Chicago Committee to Free the Cuban 5 Matching Fund for Hurricane Relief to Cuba – Please Donate Dear friends, The Chicago Committee to Free the Cuban 5 has a matching fund for Hurricane Sandy relief donations to Cuba. So far we have matched over $5000 in donations. Cuba is the country that sets the example of international solidarity. It has 38,000 medical personnel serving in 66 countries. Cuban educators have helped teach over 5 million in other countries to read and write. It has trained over 10,000 foreign students at the Latin American School of Medicine in Havana to be doctors, free of charge. Cuba provides the backbone of medical aid to Haiti, after being hit by the 2010 earthquake and now by the same hurricane that hit Cuba and the U.S. Cuba even offered to send 1500 doctors to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. While 1833 died in the New Orleans area, the US government refused the Cuban offer of aid. Yet the heartless US government continues to obstruct humanitarian aid to Cuba. Two organizations that have a licence send medical hurricane relief aid to Cuba are „Global Links“ and „MEDICC.“ Let us show the solidarity with Cuba in its present time of need that it shows to other peoples of the world.
* For MEDICC*, you can make a donation on line to: https://npo1.networkforgood.org/Donate/Donate.aspx?npoSubscriptionId=5278&code=Website%20Donations [ https://npo1.networkforgood.org/Donate/Donate.aspx?npoSubscriptionId=5278&code=Website%20Donations ] check the box: „Hurricane Relief for Santiago, Cuba‘ and in the Comments section write „Chicago Cuba 5 matching fund“ or mail a check with the same notes to: *MEDICC, P.O. Box 361449, Decatur, GA 30036.* * * *For Global Links:* * * *https://www.givedirect.org/give/givefrm.asp?CID=4894 [ https://www.givedirect.org/give/givefrm.asp?CID=4894 ]* *in Comments section „Chicago Cuba 5 Cuba hurricane relief matching fund“* * * or mail a check with the same notes to:
*Global Links
4809 Penn Ave., #2
Pittsburgh, PA 15224*
Hurricane Sandy devastated the heroic city of Santiago de Cuba, destroying houses, damaging public buildings and monuments, leaving the city without water supply, electricity, shops, markets and trees. There were no factories, schools, hospitals, grocery stores, money exchange centers, museums, cultural centers, sports facilities or anything else that didn’t suffer damage. Santiago is going to have to rebuild from scratch. There wasn’t a single tree still standing. Despite massive evacuations, it took a toll of some 11 human lives, an unusually high number in Cuba for hurricanes (mainly by collapsed buildings) – 132,733 houses were affected with 15,322 totally destroyed and 43,426 losing roofs. Massive damage, not yet fully calculated, was caused in Guantánamo and Holguín before the hurricane left this province near Banes, precisely where hurricane Ike had entered four years earlier. Hurricane Sandy also decimated the Cuban coffee crop, leaving between 20% and 30% of the coffee crop on the ground, damaged processing centers and felled thousands of trees upon plantations as it pummeled the Sierra Maestra Mountains, where 92 per cent of the crop is grown. Around 50 per cent of sugar cane in the region was damaged.. The Cuban people have joined forces and organized on a massive scale to clear roads, restore basic services, and repair damaged homes and schools. Just one month later, most of the rubble has been removed and electrical power fully restored. Schools and offices are open, normal commerce is returning, and an organized, collective effort is under way to repair and rebuild housing. No one has been left on their own.
*MEDICC and Global Links Send Hurricane Relief to Cuba* Global Links and Medical Education Cooperation with Cuba (MEDICC) have a joint humanitarian campaign to send hurricane relief to Santiago, Cuba, the country’s second largest city, devastated by Hurricane Sandy on October 25th.
As the United States battens down for Hurricane Sandy, Cubans have begun digging out from the devastation-with far fewer resources at their disposal, in part due to the US embargo. To restore power, 72 crews of linesmen work day and night. In the fields, farmers salvage the crops they can.
Trucks and trains haul food, 4,000 tons of cement and some 84,000 sheets of roofing eastward to Santiago. The province-including Cuba’s second largest city of the same name and the country’s highest mountain range-was the hardest hit. Today, over one million people there struggle to pick up their homes and lives amidst the ruins.
MEDICC and Global Links, with the aid of the Pan American Health Organization, are sending medical supplies and equipment, chlorine tablets, hospital furnishings and critical medical books for the medical school to Santiago and other provinces directly hit by the storm.
The two organizations have a strong history of successful humanitarian collaboration, including continuing support for building a sustainable public health system in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake.
Global Links and MEDICC are accepting donations for this relief effort. You can help the people of Santiago recover, your donations giving them the extra courage it takes to face such a disaster. Go to MEDICC to make your online donation.
Global Links is a Pittsburgh-based not-for-profit medical relief and development organization dedicated to promoting environmental stewardship in the region, while improving the health of underserved people in resource-poor communities throughout the hemisphere and here at home.
Global Links has provided more than $176 million in critical medical aid to developing nations since 1989. www.globallinks.org [ http://www.globallinks.org/ ]
MEDICC is a non-profit Oakland, California-based organization working since 1997 to enhance cooperation among the US, Cuban and global health communities aimed at better health outcomes and equity. MEDICC publishes MEDICC Review, the only peer-reviewed journal on Cuban health and medicine and produced the award-winning documentary ¡Salud! . MEDICC coordinates educational exchanges in Cuba for US health professionals and supports students and graduates of Havana’s Latin American Medical School. www.medicc.org [ http://www.medicc.org/ ]