During her travels with Random Acts to Haiti, Random Acts Historian Rea Niessen bonded with the country and its people. When Rea learned that her friend’s family was struggling to support themselves, she knew she needed to help. With help from Random Acts, Rea found a way to support her friend’s family by donating food.
How it started
When Rea volunteered for a Random Acts project in Haiti, she visited a tent city in Port au Prince. The tent city housed Haitians that had lost everything during the earthquake in January 2010. There, Rea met Mardi, who helped organize the big tent city. After Rea’s stay, the two stayed in touch over social media.
During the COVID-19 Pandemic, Rea learned that Mardi’s family was struggling to support themselves. Some days the family had no food to put on the table. Rea wished to help her friend and started to hatch a plan.
Making Things Work
Box of support: Rea’s food donation arrived at Mardi’s home
Rea knew she wanted to support Mardi’s family with food. But the infrastructure in Haiti is difficult to navigate, and the public transportation is too expensive for Mardi and his family. This made it impossible for the family to go and get the food themselves.
The next step for Rea was to find a company that would accept payment from Europe and deliver the food to her friend’s family in Haiti. Unfortunately getting something to Haiti turned out to be difficult as well. Finally, after a lot of research, phone calls, and emails, Rea located a company that would deliver food to Haiti.
“I am happy I found a company that delivers the food in Haiti,” said Rea, relieved.
With help from Random Acts, Mardi and his family received two large food packages a few days later. Seeing Mardi’s message that the food had arrived filled Rea with so much happiness.
“I love how Random Acts and all our wonderful supporters enable us to go out into the world and help where it is needed the most! This makes such a big impact,” said Rea.