GeekDad Fundraising Drive for Haiti Relief - $2,500 And Counting!

DONATE TO HAITI RELIEF THROUGH THE GEEKDAD GIVING PAGE!

We all know what has happened, and how desperate the need for medical resources is right now in Haiti. There are plenty of good avenues for charitable donations out there, and by no means to we mean to replace any of them, but all of us at GeekDad want to do our part as well. To that end, we have set up a donation page at First Giving in support of the medical relief organization MerlinUSA.

Merlin specializes in health, saving lives in times of crisis and helping to rebuild shattered health services. Merlin works within existing health systems to realize everyone’s right to accessible, appropriate, affordable health care. We are committed to helping build lasting health services which are used and championed by everyone. We are specialists in rapid medical response and rebuilding health systems, effectively taking countries from emergency to recovery. We are undaunted by the challenges of providing health care to vulnerable people living in the most difficult, forgotten and remote corners of the world.

We are determined to make health a global priority; giving people caught up in conflict, disaster and health system collapse the chance to lead healthy lives. We care or people at risk, for the lives of the people we work to save, and for the safety of our staff. We are accountable to our patients, partners, supporters and donors. And we keep our promise: to stay on, beyond the crisis, for as long as we are needed.

They were on the ground in Haiti in hours to help:

Merlin’s eight strong Emergency Response Team left on the first available flight to Haiti. Their initial task is to assess the most urgent needs, which are likely to be water, sanitation, shelter, disease prevention and restoration of basic health services. Our team is likely to concentrate immediately on distributing essential shelter kits, as well as medical equipment such as hygiene kits and blankets, supporting local health staff and mobilizing communities to ensure disease outbreaks are prevented. We are mobilizing all necessary resources now.

Now is your chance to donate to the relief effort (or donate again). Through our First Giving page, we hope to raise $15,000 in support of the relief efforts on the ground in Haiti. And as an incentive (not that we need any more than the desire to help people in a time of great need), for every $15 you donate, you'll earn one change to win a geeky giveaway item. We're still compiling the prizes, but to start we have a batch of seriously cool stuff from John Kovalic, and some rather significant gift cards from our good friends at ThinkGeek. This means we just need a thousand GeekDad readers to donate $15 each (but you're welcome to donate more if you can).

UPDATE: The amazing John Kovalic has pledged that for every donation of $100 or more, he will send the donor an autographed and specially-doodled copy of the first Dork Tower compendium. How cool is that?!?!

DONATE TO HAITI RELIEF THROUGH THE GEEKDAD GIVING PAGE!