How Kim Kardashian Gave Back in Haiti (US Weekly)

December 13, 2011 By

We Advance kim kardashian & kris jenner in haiti 12132011

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Forget about her messy love life. Kim Kardashian put the drama behind her for several days last week and over the weekend — when she and her mom, Kris Jenner, visited Haiti for a pre-holiday humanitarian mission.

In a new photo from Saturday, Kardashian, 31, and Jenner, 56, look on serenely with a local Haitian child (wearing colorful beaded jewelry and a “Spread the Joy” t-shirt) at an event.

The mother and daughter were visiting the impoverished nation — still rebuilding from the devastating January 2010 earthquake — as part of We Advance, the organization cofounded by actress Maria Bello.

Along with Bello, fellow actress Patricia Arquette and designer Donna Karan, the reality stars visited the Artists for Peace and Justice School, helped replenish supplies at We Advance clinics, checked out a fashion show launched by local women and designers and celebrated at the Sow a Seed Christmas bash, where 500 local orphans were treated with gifts. The final stop on the agenda: An intimate meeting with the President of Haiti, Michel Martelly.

According to its website, We Advance strives to “advance the health, safety and well being of women throughout Haiti,” working in “some of the poorest slums in all of the Western Hemisphere.”

Kardashian — in the midst of an ugly divorce from Kris Humphries — had an “amazing” experience on the mission, a pal told Us.

To read the full article on usmagazine.com, click here or on the image below:

US Weekly Kim Kardashian Gave Back to Haiti

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How to Advance Our Money in Haiti (Huffington Post)

January 12, 2011 By

 

Maria Bello guest writes on Huffington Post…

A few days after the devastating earthquake in Haiti on January 12, 2010, I was on the Larry King show talking about the country that I love and had been working in for some years.

One of the celebrity guests who I shall not name was speaking for a large aid organization about how people can help and how their money will be well spent. She seemed to really know what she was talking about and so I asked her if she would be flying down. She looked at me agitated and said, “No, and neither should you, the last thing they need is another mouth to feed. You should go six months later when they need the press.” I asked, “Have you ever been to Haiti? She said NO. I then said, “Well, my friends on the ground are telling me that they are doing amputations with no anesthesia because they are not getting supplies.” She looked at me agitated and said, “Well, I work with one of the largest humanitarian groups in the world and that’s just not true!”

A week later I was in Haiti holding the hand of a 16-year-old boy having his leg amputated with nothing but Advil and local numbing solution for the pain.

To read the full article on HuffingtonPost.com, click here or on the image below:

How to Advance Our Money in Haiti

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Rebuilding Haiti, Starting Today (Huffington Post)

January 26, 2010 By

This is Part Three in a series of blog posts by Maria Bello, who is traveling with Artists For Peace And Justice in Haiti. Read Part One and Part Two of the series now.

It’s almost impossible to explain what I have witnessed over the last week in Haiti. How to relay the depth of sorrow and devastation of the Haitian people and acknowledge the sheer beauty of a community coming together to help their fellow man?

Three days ago, at St. Damien’s hospital, I held the hand of a 16-year-old boy as his leg was amputated with nothing more than local anesthesia. His screams of despair, I believe, were not only from the physical pain but from the knowledge that his life as he has known it would never be the same. Haiti was a hard place to survive before the earthquake. Now, with one leg, perhaps impossible. And there are thousands of men, women and children just like him. Missing arms, legs, paralyzed from spinal cord injuries, brain injuries… and the list goes on.

How will these people survive?

To read the full article on HuffingtonPost.com, click here or on the image below:

Rebuilding Haiti, Starting Today

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On the Ground in Port-au-Prince (Huffington Post)

January 21, 2010 By

This is Part One in a series of blog posts by Maria Bello, who is traveling with Artists For Peace And Justice in Haiti. Read Part Two of the series now.

The acrid smell of death is not the first thing that hits you landing in Port-au-Prince. It is the screams and wails of mourning that are overwhelming. The cries of mothers, fathers, neighbors and friends who have lost so much and so many in the last week. The Haitian people whom I have come to know over the last year are a strong, compassionate, resilient bunch who mourn with the same passion they live by.

Paul Haggis and I landed this morning with a team from the JP Haiti Relief Organization, a private foundation created by Sean Penn and Diana Jenkins to help in the rescue efforts. They have gathered 10 doctors, nurses and surgeons, a water specialist, logistics people and two cargo planes filled with medical supplies, food, tools, thousands of water filters and generators to help existing institutions and set up a clinic that will service those in need. They are generously supplying our group, Artists for Peace and Justice, with medicine we desperately need to get into the hands of our friends at St. Damien’s Hospital in Port-au-Prince. For the last 48 hours, operations have been performed without anesthesia, children are dying from dehydration and simple wounds have become so infected that many require amputation.

We have been called here by our dear friend, Father Rick Frechette. A doctor and priest in Haiti for the last 22 years, Rick defines the power of one man’s call to action. He and his Haitian colleagues have built and run the only free pediatric hospital in Haiti, the only hospital for disabled children, two orphanages, 20 street schools, free medical clinics in the poorest slums of the city, Cite de Soleil and most recently, New York City, a job training center that includes a bakery and shoe factory. He supplies the only free drinking water to the people of Cite de Soleil and feeds thousands of people a day in and around Port-au-Prince.

To read the full article on HuffingtonPost.com, click here or on the image below:

On the Ground in Port-au-Prince

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