SAN GABRIEL VALLEYWIDE NEWS
Winston Chua

ARCADIA – Cities in the West San Gabriel Valley, including Arcadia and Alhambra, along with local churches, are weighing in on the crisis that lies in Haiti. Around 200,000 people have died and hundreds of thousands of people are now homeless. Though the methods of people willing to help may be different, they are united in intention.

Arcadia City Councilman Gary Kovacic said of the positive response to the crisis, “It truly demonstrates what a family we have in the entire world. It’s good toknow that we are available and motivated to help out in a time like this.”
Tuesday night Kovacic urged Arcadia to give by texting H-A-I-T-I to 90999. Every text contributes $10 to the relief effort.

Although there may be nothing but goodwill in giving, Mandarin Baptist Church of Pasadena pastor Ray Petzholt said people should exercise caution in terms of how they give.

Working with victims of Hurricane Fifi in the 1970s, he saw resources squandered by people who mismanaged charitable contributions. He also experienced this in other missions to El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico during that same decade, where lives were shattered.

“When we went through Latin America after the hurricanes,” Petzholt said, “the Guatemalan government aid was put in big bodegas. After some time had passed, we found all this rotten stuff in those same places.”

In his Honduras experience, Petzholt said that much of the aid designed for the less affluent goes to the people that do not need it, some through powerful connections. Sometimes those resources get wasted.

To fight that corruption, his church teams up with the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board to pool their resources specifically for 5,000 missionaries internationally, where they know more directly how food and essentials are distributed. World Vision and other religious organizations, he said, “get aid there to people that really need it.”

Petzholt is optimistic about Haitian recovery. The island is more receptive to aid than China was, and former Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush are lending their support.

The non-denominational Alhambra Church of Christ said it would take up a donation this coming Sunday and are open to contributing more than a one-time offering.