Artist starts relief fund to provide food, water and other essentials following storms.

September 11, 2008

      *Wyclef Jean has launched the "Haiti Storm Relief Fund" to provide food, water, purification tablets, tents, blankets, medical supplies, hygiene kits as well as funds to a number of non-profit organizations working on the ground to respond to the emergency.      

       "My country is facing a serious catastrophe at the moment," said Wyclef in a statement, "and we urgently require assistance. But the long-term catastrophe is that we have less than two percent tree cover, and without restoring our forests we will always be susceptible to mudslides and flash floods from storms and hurricanes."       

       Yele's Storm Relief Fund has already sponsored food, supplies and water to assist victims in the South-East, including Jakmel, Cayes-Jakmel, Marigot and La Vallee. A second wave of support is currently underway in and around Jakmel in cooperation with the Mayor of the resort community.       

       Containers with emergency supplies are being shipped into the country over the next few weeks as individuals and corporations begin responding to Wyclef Jean's call for donations. Within days Yele Haiti's teams will begin an intensive operation of emergency food distributions with food staples supplied by the World Food Programme. Donations can be made online at www.yele.org.       

       The storms that have battered Haiti in the past few weeks have left more than 500 dead and wreaked havoc in the lives of more than 600,000 people who have been displaced by flooding or cut off from food supplies. Haitian President Rene Preval has appealed for help from the international community, saying the country faces a "catastrophe".