My last post highlighted the efforts of the U.S. military to assist the Haiti relief effort and now I’m turning to the commercial and private sector, they have really stepped up to make it easy for people to donate to earthquake relief. Many major U.S. media companies have created special donation portals to allow the public to quickly make donations. Google, for example, has put together this site with disaster relief informaiton. Large cell phone companies like AT&T and Verizon have waived text charges to encourage people to donate money by text messages. Apple has crafted an online site to allow subscribers to donate from within the iTunes store with the donation billed to your iTunes account and the major news media companies have created sites (CNN, for example) showcasing various methods of contributing to the relief effort. The relief effort received a major boost days ago when President Obama appointed former presidents Clinton and Bush to lead the private fundraising effort. In the below video from MSNBC, President Obama makes the announcement flanked by the former presidents:
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In this op-ed in Sunday’s New York Times, former President George Bush and former President Bill Clinton write about why they joined together together to lead the fundraising relief effort for Haiti and why they are hopeful for the country’s future. The extraordinary combination of public and private aid efforts gives hope that the people of Haiti will soon receive the food, water, medicine and supplies they need to recovery from this major disaster.
