Hello all just wanted to take a second and let you know what we have been up to as of late.  I am on a flight returning from our last Haiti trip which was a short one but we accomplished a lot!

We finalized our search in finding the perfect person that lives in Port au Prince to run and coordinate all the projects and meetings we have when we are not down there! Cassenouve is an amazing guy that we have worked with over the past 4 years! He is fluent in English, Creole and French.  This is such a huge step in our efforts to improve our project management and shipping process into the country. 

On our last trip we met a guy name Gracia Delva who is the top recording artist of Haiti. He told us of his projects he has in his home Village which is located about 3 hours to the north of Port au prince.  We traveled with him out to that area yesterday and were amazed at what he is doing out there! He has schools that he supports and clubs that he has started to motivate the children to do more and to be the ones that change Haiti! Upon arrival to his city we were blown away by about 1,000 children that are in his program that were so beautiful! Several of them showed there talents to us in the way of Music, dance, drama, and poetry! It was truly so amazing to see Gracia not only educating these children but bringing out the creative side of them! Project 81 has decided to assist in his efforts and form a partnership in feeding and delivering water to the schools on a monthly basis! Very few of the 1,200 children in the program eat daily and there was NO clean water anywhere near by! Today a shipment of food was delivered to the children as well as 50- 20 gallon containers of water through Project 81! We will be assisting in scholarships for the children that beg to go to school but have no option of this due to the parents having no money! The cost is $10 a year for a child to be in school!!! That is ridiculous that children are unable to be in school because of less than a dollar a month! The scholarship program will start in the fall due to school finishing in the near future!

This trip we went to a technical school that we have had a relationship with in the past in Port au Prince and were able to fund 50 students for a semester of school to learn English and Computer skills.  All of the students do not have any resources to attend school and due to P-81 funding them they will be able to find a job when they finish the semester!

We distributed 70,000 meals in coordination with the Mayors office and the police of Port au Prince.  This distribution was supposed to take place in the tent city but due to threats and violence the Mayor moved the distribution about a mile away from the tent city next to the main police station. When we arrived at the location it was amazing how the line went on forever! It was a very peaceful setting and the line curled through the streets in a single file.  Who says that distributions are impossible? 

We made a partnership with a top radio personality that is starting a movement of young people in  Port au Prince called the “Sunday Project”. This is an exciting opportunity to work side by side with several young Haitian people that are not willing to just sit around and watch there city and people suffer anymore! empowerment of people has always been the P-81 mind set and this is one huge step in that direction!

We are working hard on our Greenhouse project that will employ hundreds of people per greenhouse.  Not sure on when we will launch this project, just waiting for the timing and resources to accomplish this project.

Exciting stuff happenning and I thank all of you who have been supportive of Project 81 and just know things are getting better and your time and energy is not going to waste!

Thanks so much,
Jared and the P81 Team
“U R the Project”

 - sent down another Container of 335,000 …or 44,000lbs of meals from Kids Against Hunger and it should arrive in Haiti middle of next week!

-A shipment of 800 lbs of Prosthetics has been donated from Montana with a value of $135,000.00 and that will be shipped out in the next couple of weeks. This will truly help so many Haitians that lost limbs in the Quake!

-A company that has Apartments all around the Country on college campuses has donated 1,500 beds, 1,500 frames, 1,500 desks, 1,500 dressers, 1,500 chairs from a remodel they are doing in Richmond, Virginia.

-Sagicor Corp. recently has commited to donating $5,000.00 towards the next 2 containers we are sending down and possibly several more in the future!

-Meeting with Pearl Jam Monday night after their concert in Kansas City to hopefully build a stronger relationship with them and thank them for their donations in the past.

-Held a Gala in Mankato, MN and it was a huge success! Sold out the event and raised a huge amount of awareness and made enough to send down another container.

-A Project 81 basketball tournament has been planned by Jim Cearley in Missoula, Montana in the end of May.

-The beginning plans of a 1 million meal pack throughout the state of Montana with the support of Senator Max Baucus is in the planning stages with Kids against Hunger directed by Jim Cearley, and should take place later in the summer.

 -The Crossing Church in Brandon, FL has taken on Project 81 as one of its main missions and is going to implement a P81 group in the Church and develope several programs in the community of Tampa and create huge fundraising projects for our Haiti projects!

-DWO in Republic, MO has made plans of building the first Project 81 Dream Center. They have a grant writer working on getting enough money approved for the project within the next couple of months. The Dream center will include the following: Supplying Groceries on a weekly basis to the needy in the community, it will be a youth center, it will be a Missions training center that people from all over the country will come for training on how to create change in their own communities and the world through Humanitarian work, and it will have a Kids Against Huger packing center so the community can pack meals for Haiti and our P81 partners around the world.

Besides these projects there are many other smaller things always happening but I thought I would update you on some of the bigger things in the works! We need as much help as possible with making these a reality so please spread what P81 is doing to people around you and try to bring as much awareness to create support and awareness of the situation! We truly are making a difference in this world and it is due to all of you guys and all of our partners working together to make it reality! Thank you so much and please forward this to everyone you can!

Jared Brown

Project 81 President

A Project 81 team returned from Haiti April 3rd.  Much is still needed to provide the Haitian people with resources to meet their basic needs in life.  Many thousands of people still lack even a simple tarp for shelter.  Crude structures of bed sheets and cardboard remain the only shelter for many.  As the rainy season sets in these shelters will become useless.  More tents and tarps and more space for these encampents can not come fast enough.  The people are forced to stuff as many people as possible into every shelter.  The shelters are jammed together so close that on the pathways meandering through the encampments you must step aside if you meet someone coming down the path.

Health services remain scarce.  Many people continue to be ill with easily cured maladies.  Simple antibotics are needed to cure a variety of bacterial infections.  Many, many people are still dealing with the stress and shock of the quake and their current situation.  As the rainy season sets in, the overall health of the people will likely continue to deteriorate as water born illnesses will likely spread throughout the over crowded, unsanitary camps. Malaria is also concern.

Even the people fortunate enough to have a proper tent are mostly living in areas with little or no sanitation.  Latrines and outhouses are few and far between.  Camps of several thousand people have only an outhouse or two.  Garbage is scattered everywhere.  There is no real system of disposing of waste.  Much of it is piled in the streets, empty lots, or waterways and periodically burned. 

So much work still needs to be done to help the amazing people of Haiti!

The main tasks for the team on this trip were food distribution and medical clinics. The team met a container of 44,000 lbs of food (285,000 meals). The food was packaged by Kids Against Hunger and shipped/distributed by Project 81 in the greater Port-au-Prince area and the rural countryside near St. Marc.  Another container containing medical supplies, basic goods and hygiene products, clothes, shoes, tents, tarps etc… was also shipped.

The team worked in cooperation with Delmas mayor Gael Jean once again.  The mayor provided much of the logistics,  transportation, security and planning for the food distributions and medical clinics in the Port-au-Prince area.  The medical team treated hundreds of patients in several days of clinics.  The team distributed approximately 17,500 lbs of food in a Delmas tent city and roughly 5,000 lbs of food in rural villages in the St. Marc area, including the namesake village 81. Project 81 friend Pastor Marcel assisted the team in the rural areas.  The team visited the amazing children at Destiny Village orphanage while in the countryside and several of the children helped as translators for the team.  The remaining food was stored in a warehouse and will be distributed in regular intervals to needy people in the tent cities.

Another container of Kids Against Hunger food will soon be on its way to Haiti!  The need is still immense!  The media coverage is largely gone but the aftermath of the overwhelming disaster persists!  Project 81 is desperately trying to help the people of Haiti as much as possible!  It is a race against time and the weather to give the people the proper resources to ensure their basic needs are met!  Your help and support is desperately needed!  Thank you for making these trips possible!  The Haitian people are so gracious!

Project 81 Team

The team will will be distributing this massive amount of supplies, setting up medical clinics, visiting a partner orphanage, and visiting the namesake village 81 among other things.

Jared, Annie, and Clay have spent countless hours planning and organizing this undertaking.  They have assembled a very good team to carry out these efforts and soon that hard work will have a positive effect on a countless number of gracious Haitian people.

Thank you to everyone that has helped make this possible!  Your support is greatly appreciated!

(From the UCH Insider) – by Todd Neff

“For UCH Nurse, Brief Stay in Haiti Saves a Life”

The man on the porch was holding his 10-month-old daughter and a photo of a young woman. His wife, the baby’s mother, had died in the earthquake that struck Haiti on January 12.

It was February 9, a Tuesday. The child, still breastfeeding, had had scant nourishment since. “She’s so sick, so sick,” the man said in Creole. The child looked half its age, Stephanie Houghton thought to herself.

Houghton told the English-Creole translator tagging along with her relief team to ask the man to wait. “I can help you,” she told him, hoping she could. He sat down in one of eight chairs lined up on a cement porch in the Delmas section of Port au Prince, his daughter resting her head on his shoulder. The girl’s life now depended on a box of infant formula packed in Colorado a few days earlier. But where was it?

Project 81. Houghton, 32, does not normally practice her craft on a cement porch under beating sun in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. She is a University of Colorado Hospital nurse in the Surgical Intensive Care Unit. But she went to nursing school with a woman named Annie Brown who in 2007 had co-founded a Haiti-focused relief organization called Project 81 with her husband Jared and her brother Clay Nylund. When Houghton saw the devastation on TV, she e-mailed her old friend. They were going down to Haiti, Jared Brown responded. We could use your help.

Houghton and her fiancé John Hudson, a St. Anthony Central Hospital neurosurgeon who did his residency at UCH, began organizing medical supplies, mainly through word of mouth, she said. Chickens cackled, tarantulas crept, dogs fought in the distance. It was a small taste of what more than a million homeless Haitians were living every night. SICU nurse Stephanie Houghton. “I would walk down the hallway and see a wound care nurse and ask, ‘Do you have any extra this-or-that?’” Houghton recalled. “And that person would lead to someone else.”

Soon, they had eight trunk-sized boxes filled with IV fluids, dressing-change and surgical supplies, and medical equipment. One box was filled with cases of premixed Enfamil infant formula.

Others in the Project 81 group, which would number 18 people from around the country, arranged for 700 tents, 500 flashlights, pallets of water, soccer balls for Haitian kids and other supplies. The idea was to set up a clinic outside of one of the many tent cities – each with 7,000 to 10,000 people packed into them – and also help distribute rice and water. Their contact in Haiti, Delmas mayor Jean Gael, said three days on the ground would suffice – they would get in, give, and get back out. Staying longer would just be too difficult, he advised.

Houghton and Hudson left Denver on Saturday, February 6, paying their own way to Miami, Fla. United Airlines, upon learning of their final destination, volunteered to carry their eight massive boxes free of charge. In Miami, they were to catch a U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) jet to Haiti arranged by U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., a fan of Project 81’s work.

The couple arrived in Florida with a wall of boxes around them and 8,000 doses of antibiotics in their backpacks. There was, however, no USAID jet to be seen. A blizzard had trapped it in Washington D.C.

Super Bowl Sunday. They spent the night in Miami, where football fans were arriving in for the Super Bowl, which was played the next day. As football fans poured in, the Project 81 team tried desperately to pour out. They found a cargo carrier willing to drop the bulk of their supplies in Port au Prince on Tuesday for $3,000.

Deal.

They fought football traffic to Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport. Officials from Banyan Air Service, who happened to have a private jet whose services had been donated for Haiti relief, said the airline could ferry seven of the Project 81 group, plus three of the eight boxes medical-supply boxes, to Port au Prince.

When they landed, Houghton said, “It was like being on a different world.”

There were soldiers everywhere – American, Russian, United Nations, Japanese. Seriously injured Haitians awaiting medical evacuation lay on gurneys in hallways. The humidity was stifling. The Project 81 group had less than half their team, a fraction of their supplies, and no clear idea how they might use even those.

They spent Sunday night in tents in Gael’s dirt yard. The still air was a heavy blanket. Chickens cackled, tarantulas crept, dogs fought in the distance. It was a small taste of what more than a million homeless Haitians were living every night. It was, Houghton said, “just horrible.”

On Monday, the group went to United Nations warehouses for supplies they would distribute. They were presented with 12 pages of forms to fill out – in French – requesting specific details on what they needed, how much, and why. Supplies would be made available three to five days after they were properly filled out, a U.N. official explained. They looked around at a country in rubble. Even the structures still standing were cracked, weakened, uninhabitable. They felt like “tourists in a devastated country,” as Houghton put it.

Clinic on a Porch. Meanwhile Gael got in touch with a New York physician, Junie Bertrand, MD, who had been visiting Haiti when the earthquake struck and had set up a makeshift clinic outside a tent city not far away. She could use some help, Gael told the group.

The clinic was on a front porch, a flat area semi-enclosed by a cinder-block wall. Houghton and the rest set up eight mismatched chairs, some from the dinner table inside the home. Voila – a clinic! Word spread quickly.

A snaking line formed. Some, particularly the young and the old, were carried in by friends or loved ones. A local man at the gate wrote a person’s name, age and health problem in English on a small sheet of paper. The patient sat in one of the chairs while one of the two Project 81 volunteer paramedics measured blood pressure and pulse and wrote it on the patient’s hand. Houghton and Hudson, the sole medical professionals of the group, then went to work.

They saw cholera, shigellosis (a bacterial infection), worms, urinary tract and upper respiratory infections, hypertension and anemia. All were Haitian mainstays, the products of dehydration, malnutrition, and woeful sanitation that were now exacerbated by the cataclysm. Serious wounds had either added to the rising death toll of 230,000 or had been treated already, Houghton said, though she did many dressing changes.

 In all, she and Hudson saw 225 patients that day. As darkness fell, two had conspicuously remained, having waited for hours in one of those eight chairs: the widowed man and his infant daughter. “Every time I walked by him, my chest would just get heavy,” Houghton said.

“Please come back tomorrow—we’ll have something for you,” Houghton asked a translator to tell the man. She knew the truck with their remaining supplies was on the way. She just didn’t know when it would arrive.

Houghton watched as the man walked away, his infant girl in his arms, then asked one of translators to call the truck. It was, the man relayed back, two minutes away. Houghton ran out to call the man back. He didn’t understand her, but he followed. A dump truck, which had until recently been used to haul away the dead, was now filled with rice and medical supplies. She opened box number one – the Enfamil. The next day, the man came back to thank her. His daughter was taking the formula. Houghton watched as the man walked away, his infant girl in his arms. It was too much.

The primary goal of the relief trip team was to support mayor Jean Gael in his efforts to assist the 800,000 residents of Delmas district, Port-au-Prince.  Project 81 has been a friend and supporter Jean Gael´s for several years.  Under the direction of the mayor, the relief team was able to treat approximately 500 Delmas residents at a temporary clinic, distribute 5500 lbs of rice, deliver several thousand pounds of materials including two generators,  medical supplies, shoes, tents, tarps,  and canned goods.   Project 81 further funded the mayor´s program that puts street children in school and feeds them daily.  Project 81 also funded a free telephone service that allows the people to contact relatives in the United States.  But the lasting achievement was the  breaking down of  some barriers between  mayor Jean Gael and aid agencies and organizations.  In a relief effort system where the bureaucratic structure and red tape proved immensely  trying and frustrating for an American humanitarian organization, the situation is nearly impossible for a Haitian official wishing to bring aid to his people.  Of all the agencies and organizations Project 81 contacted, only one cut through the bureaucracy and opened their hands to the mayor Jean Gael.  The Love a Child organization is donating 70,000 meals weekly to the mayor for him to dispense amongst his people.

On the trip I saw the massive destructive power of the quake.   Buildings everywhere are little more than a heap of rubble.  Almost all of the government buildings are demolished.  Schools and churches far and wide are gone. Small stores and residencies disappeared. Some seemed to pancake, crushing anything and anyone inside.  Others were up heaved and appeared turned upside down.  The buildings left standing are almost entirely unusable.  At first glance they appear fine but upon further inspection it becomes apparent that often the inner walls and roof have collapsed leaving a shell of walls on the outside.  Others are still intact but have deep cracks that left them too unstable and dangerous for use.  The mayor´s house is still standing but due to several massive cracks, he lives in a makeshift tent in his yard with his family.

Several million people were left homeless by the quake. Most people live in large tent cities scattered throughout the large city.  Many people have left the city only to come back as resources in the distant communities become strained by the influx of people.   Some people are unwilling to leave their destructed property and have simply blocked off a piece of street in front of their house  and constructed a makeshift tent as new living quarters. They live here as cars and trucks rumble by on the dusty streets only a few feet from where they sleep.

The massive loss of human life was not nearly as noticeable as the physical destruction.  At least 250,000 people perished in the quake but I did not happen to travel by the mass graves or  places of mass incineration.  Undoubtedly there are many people still buried in the destructed buildings I passed by, but almost all are so deeply buried that their existence in undetectable. Other team members did pass by a building that had human limbs protruding from a crushed floor, fortunately I was not witness to that.

Under the direction of  the mayor Jean Gael our team set up a makeshift clinic to serve the Delmas residents; as many as 500 people were given medical attention.  Many did not show the physical wounds from the quake one would expect.  It was the added hardships and poverty that affected most people.  Dehydration, poor sanitation, and lack of basic medicines and immunizations proved wide spread.   The elderly and very young were in the most need.   One young father brought in a baby who´s mother had perished in the quake.  His child was getting very little sustenance, as it was still breast feeding at the time of its mothers death.  Fortunately cases of baby formula were a part of our supplies.   The young man had deeply blood shot eyes and his grief was unquestionable.  He carried with him a photo of his wife.

The local children appeared strong and resilient in light of the recent tragedy.  Most were able to smile as they happily savored a piece of candy as they waited in line at the clinic.  The teens, adults, and elderly were not as joyous as the young children, but they were enduring with relative hope.  These people lived in abject poverty before the quake.  What they faced now is unfathomable to us.   But they somehow have the ability to persevere.  Besides this massive quake, the Haitian people have endured through destructive hurricanes in the past several years as well.

Most of the people were remarkably clean.  Living in a makeshift tent on the dusty ground in a place with little sanitation or garbage disposal,  I would have assumed their appearance would be somewhat dirty.  But we were the ones who were dirty and grungy by comparison.    How they are able to properly bathe and wash clothes in those conditions is beyond me. Soon they will be fighting mud not dust though, as the wet season will begin and the people lack adequate structures to protect them.  The rain will bring streams and pools of runoff which coupled with the lack of sanitation will most likely spread disease.

Our team distributed 5500 lbs of rice from the back of a dump truck that only a week earlier had been used in the removal of the massive amounts of human bodies.  We utilized the mayor in deciding what location was most in need of food. Then the team had the local community organizers seek out the people in the deepest hardship and gave them the vouchers that would entitle the holder to a bag of rice.  When it was time to distribute, the community organizers had the people line up in an relative orderly manner as the Haitian police and mayor´s security team provided stability.  In ten minutes we methodically distributed 5500 lbs of food to that benefited several thousand people.  It was quick and systematic and further more we did it in the added obstacle of darkness.

Since the January 12th quake, the Jean Gael has struggled to aid his people.  A lack of Haitian resources and a lack of cooperation by  US government agencies and international aid organizations has undercut his ability to assist his people.   Being the leader of 800,000 people and basically being the only government ministry in full operation, it would seem obvious that his knowledge and abilities would be tapped by the foreign relief efforts.  This has not happened.  Sadly, it is often assumed that Haitian officials are all corrupt and inept.  It would appear that most government agencies and many international organizations have left the Haitian people standing on the side lines of the effort to aid their country and their people.

Everything our team accomplished was in direct cooperation with the mayor of Delmas, Jean Gael.  Without the input, organization, and support of  the Haitian people none of it would have been possible.   We faced a tirade of adversity on this trip from start to finish.   Nothing was done easily but I think we were able to accomplish what we did because we utilized the local people and their knowledge and eagerness to help themselves.

It was an amazing trip and I encountered remarkable people.  The rebuilding period will be indefinite.  Massive amounts of work and great strides will need to be taken to lift this country out of despair.  The foreign countries will need to show Haiti the road to recovery, but at the same time we could stop for a moment and learn a thing or two from these resilient people.

-Mark H Bergstrom-

Our organization has yet to have a trip that has not been met by adversity. On this trip adversity met us early, and we faced it head on. Adjustment and flexibility was a necessity, and this in turn led to perseverance. Thousands were fed and hundreds were treated. Our dear friend Mayor Jean Gael received the supplies he needed and because of President Jared Brown´s efforts, the Mayor´s people in the Delma region will receive 70,000 meals per week. Jared also was able to start the process for receiving UN badges which will allow Project 81 to receive medical supplies for the people on their future trips. Although some of the cracks in the current government relief system were exposed, we remain hopeful. Despite the politics, bureaucrats and big business organizations, we will be steadfast in our mission. Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, treat the sick and help our friends in their time of need. We will remain grassroots; composed of teachers, farmers, nurses and firefighters. All of which taking no salary for their time and efforts. We will continue to send a message of love through our actions and dedication. We will remain the PROJECT.

 Clay Nylund

Two generators were purchased for the Mayor’s clinic by a very generous team member today.  The mayor’s generator went down several days ago and he is in desperate need of a replacement. Because of the immense demand for generators in Haiti, he has been unable to secure one in country.  Tomorrow morning the last minute supplies will be purchased before the afternoon departure.

Upon arrival in Haiti tomorrow afternoon, the team will quickly unload the supplies from the aircraft and transport them to several awaiting trucks. The team will head immediately for the mayor’s compound to set up camp and a tent clinic. The mayor has determined that his buildings are at risk of possibe collapse and therefore unsafe.  The medical professionals on the team will begin treating patients as soon as possible. Other team members will assist them as needed and begin distributing supplies to the many Haitian people who have been camped out on the mayor’s yard since the quake on January 12th.  The remaining days will be spent at various locations  determined by the mayor to be in the most need, distributing supplies and and having tent clinics.  All team members are anxious to begin this  endeavor.

Jared Brown – President of Project 81 Incorporated (Mankato, MN)
-Clay Nylund – Treasurer and Co-founder of Project 81 Incorporated (Tampa, FL)
-Brian Mintie – Firefighter and Paramedic (Tarpon Springs, FL)
-John Hudson – Neuro Surgeon (Denver, CO)
-Stephanie Houghton – Registered Nurse (Denver, CO)
-Brian Monzon – Videographer – (San Diego, CA)
-Jim Cleary – (Missoula, MT)
-Mark Bergstrom – Photographer (Conrad, MT)
-Sofie Maher – USF and Southeastern University liason (Tampa, FL)
-Josh Wright – Pastor, C3 Church (Raleigh, NC)
-Eric Lars Tellefsen – Assistant Special Agent in Charge NC SBI (Raleigh, NC)
-Ben Montgomery – Journalist, St. Petersburg Times (Tampa, FL)
-Eliza Hall – Trauma Nurse – Wartime Nursing Experience (Reno, NV)

Young Haitians