Grass-roots Haitian-relief agency maps its own route to success

A half-dozen cartons of bottled water donated for the parched victims of the Haiti earthquake crashed to the warehouse floor because Albert Gomez was driving the forklift like a madman.

Doesn't mean you shouldn't have fun while being a do-gooder.

Gomez and two of his associates from a Miami Beach grass-roots charity for Haiti spent a recent afternoon unloading boxes of Poland Springs water from a panel truck and stacking them in the corner of a warehouse. Receiving the water, part of a $1 million donation from Nestlé Waters North America, called for sweaty, stevedore labor as they tossed the heavy cartons hand-to-hand from the truck to pallets on the loading dock.

But then, perspiring heavily through his expensive dress shirt and slacks, Gomez got to transport the pallets across the warehouse on a forklift, which he did with gleeful disregard for the forklift safety manual.

The fun factor was also big in the launch of 1st & Alton, a start-up relief agency Twittered and Facebooked to life by a group of South Beach professionals moved by the Jan. 12 disaster in Haiti.

DONATION LOCATION

Named for its donation drop spot on a vacant lot at First Street and Alton Road in Miami Beach, the charity enterprise began with one Facebook call for donations to 10 friends of one of the organizers. Now, its Facebook page lists 1,279 fans, and Gomez says 1st & Alton has collected and delivered at least $20 million worth of relief supplies to Haiti.

``Not only was it a fun and beautiful outpouring of community support,'' said Gomez -- whose day job is as vice president of Industrial Components Inc., a family business based in Doral -- ``it was the only place you could bring your stuff and it would be in Haiti the next day.''

The group is so new that it does not yet have Internal Revenue Service recognition as a charity. To get around this, the group has asked Reggae Is Life, an established charity with similar goals and IRS recognition, to handle its money.

1st & Alton wasn't the first grass-roots relief effort for Haiti, or the first to begin with a stockpile of supplies that it couldn't deliver. But, as the organizers tell their story, they marshaled their business and networking skills and used creative problem-solving to crash through obstacles that, they say, stymied mainstream relief agencies.

The first challenge: getting to Haiti in the first place with their cargo of food, water, and hygiene and medical supplies donated by their South Beach pals and legion of Facebook friends. Group members say they talked their way aboard the small jets that were flying University of Miami medical missions out of Turnberry Aviation and began leapfrogging more-established relief groups with their deliveries of relief supplies.

A core group of eight 1st & Alton organizers remained in Haiti to help the Miami doctors build their field hospital, and they used that time to develop contacts and establish a delivery system from the airport to the huge homeless camps where supplies were needed.

According to real estate developer Jeff Feldman, one of the group leaders who went to Haiti, 1st & Alton left the Red Cross, other nongovernmental organizations and the big state-sponsored relief efforts in the dust.

``They have all these processes and paperwork and forms to fill out,'' Feldman said. ``We just go for it and fill out the paperwork later.''

A DIFFERENT VIEW

Analysts of the Haiti relief effort agree that bureaucracy has been a problem, but not always as 1st & Alton saw it.

``Large NGOs do get hung up in how they do things for reasons that may not be obvious but make institutional sense,'' said Jock Menzies, president of the nonprofit American Logistics Aid Network (ALAN), which helps NGOs impose business and supply-chain discipline on their disaster zone operations.

ALAN works closely with the Red Cross. Menzies, when he returned from Haiti, said the criticism may no longer be accurate because the organization has streamlined itself to balance its expenses in Haiti.

``They've had to skinny up in the way they operate,'' Menzies said.

Meanwhile, 1st & Alton continued its work by developing simple solutions to complex problems.

In the days after the earthquake, when attempted food distributions were turning into riots at the relief truck tailgates, it developed a safe feeding system by sending core group member Edward Manning into the shattered streets in the middle of the night. Like a doomsday Santa Claus, Manning would cruise the neighborhoods, leaving gifts of food wherever he found homeless Haitians sleeping on the sidewalk.

``We gave out five truckloads,'' said Manning, a drapery and interior contractor in Miami Beach. ``They'd just wake up and they had food.''

EVADING BLIND SPOTS

1st and Alton says its developing in-country smarts helped it spot cultural blind spots that interfered with the delivery of relief by mainstream providers. Some earthquake victims were given military rations called MREs, with confusing preparation instructions printed in English.

``What the heck were they supposed to do with this MRE?'' Feldman wondered. ``And, anyway, they don't eat pot roast and potatoes and green beans.''

1st and Alton is still shipping relief supplies, mostly by sea now that the Haitian ports have reopened, but it also has long-term aid plans for Haiti. It is raising money for two projects, a pediatric amputee rehabilitation center and a children's feeding program.

``It all started with one truck and one e-mail on Facebook,'' said Feldman. ``And from there, it exploded.''

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/05/20/v-fullstory/1638243/grass-roots-haitian-relief-agency.html#ixzz0oW1Z7mHr