Posts Tagged ‘Petionville’

Guest Post: Water and Supplies Continue to be Distributed in Haiti

Each day a new set of opportunities, setbacks, advances and delays unfolds in and outside Haiti. The UN is obviously a major player in the relief and recovery effort. As previously noted we have worked closely with them especially in connection with President Clinton, Special UN Envoy to Haiti, and his Deputy Special Envoy Dr. Paul Farmer.

They have an absolutely enormous job on their hands and while all of our efforts are helpful to them, we have decided to provide more direct and immediate assistance in a form I believe will be exceptionally productive. We have agreed to second John Weis, our Associate VP, Private Destinations, to Paul Farmer for three months. John did a phenomenal job getting Labadee ready for Oasis of the Seas prior to the earthquake, and since the earthquake he has done a exceptional job of mobilizing our relief effort. While we will certainly feel John’s absence, we are proud to contribute him in this fashion. I have asked him to comment on this new twist in his relationship with Haiti:

I want to convey my thanks to Royal Caribbean, Adam and Craig Milan for giving me the opportunity to take on this challenge. My wife Stacy also supports this so I want to thank her as well. Over the past 3 three years, I have had the opportunity to do a lot of work in Haiti, so I have made many friends there and have grown to appreciate the friendliness of the people, their ingenuity and their endurance. So in short, I have a huge amount of gratitude for the team supporting this relief effort and the opportunity to work on something I have a great passion for.

My first and immediate task is to look at the logistics framework from a long-term perspective and establish a storage and distribution depot here in South Florida. I will share more details on this in the weeks to come.

The relief and rebuilding effort will be monumental and it is going to be completed one step at a time. Looking at everything that needs to be done to rebuild an entire city that has been destroyed can be daunting. People on the ground, like Maryse Kedar, and people back here, like Richard Pruitt, who is coordinating the relief effort on the Royal Caribbean side, will make sure this becomes a reality. I wanted to share with you some of Maryse and her team of eight’s efforts - which includes two crew members that went to her for help and are now playing a big role in the water distribution.

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BY:Adam|24th January, 2010 123 Comments

Guest Post: Update on Royal Caribbean’s Relief Efforts Taking Place in Port-au-Prince

I am proud of what our people and our ships are doing and below John Weis gives some very specific examples of great contributions being made by great Royal Caribbean people and their family members

The ships going back to Labadee, including Navigator of the Seas today, are obviously making a very valuable contribution to the relief effort by offloading supplies at Labadee. The media understand this and generally have written and spoken about the relief effort in positive terms. But in the last 24 hours, sparked by an article in the Guardian in the UK, a different and more critical view has emerged that questions how our guests can justify having a good time in Labadee when there is such misery less than 100 miles away.

My view is this — it isn’t better to replace a visit to Labadee (or for that matter, to stay on the ship while it’s docked in Labadee) with a visit to another destination for a vacation. Why? Because being on the island and generating economic activity for the straw market vendors, the hair-braiders and our 230 employees helps with relief while being somewhere else does not help. These 500 people are going to need to support a much larger network of family and friends, including many who are in (or are missing in) the earthquake zone. Also, the north is going to bear a good part of the burden of the agony of the south, and the more economic support there is to the north, the better able the north will be to bear this burden. People enjoying themselves is what we do. People enjoying themselves in Labadee helps with relief. We support our guests who choose to help in this way which is consistent with our nearly 30 year history in Haiti.

To John:

The team has been working through this holiday weekend and has been in contact with several people on the ground in Port Au Prince so I wanted to focus this blog on the efforts that are taking place there. We have all come to appreciate the resilience of the Haitian people and I think its important to share with you some of the positive things that are happening on the ground that are being coordinated by regular people like you and I.

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BY:Adam|18th January, 2010 221 Comments