This local nonprofit partied its way to over $50,000 in donations for Haiti!

Today, we are excited to be featuring Karen Buck, fundraising for St. Luke for Haiti.  Karenjoins Adriana Lima and fundraisers around the country who are raising support for this Haitian run medical facility. Through a series of Christmas parties in major cities such as New Orleans and New York, this fundraising team is building awareness and seeking donations  to cover the urgent needs of the organization. These parties have already raised over $52,000 and counting!

Hi Karen! Thank you for taking the time to share your fundraiser with us today. We are excited to learn more about St. Luke for Haiti and the Christmas Party you are hosting.

How did you first become involved in St. Luke for Haiti and what has your involvement looked like? 

I first heard about the foundation shortly after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. My longtime boyfriend had volunteered to fly medical and relief supplies back and forth to the Caribbean. He mostly dropped off items to a staging warehouse in Nassau, but did make one trip into Les Cayes in Haiti.

His pilots group stayed active with the stories coming out of Haiti, including the terrible outbreak of cholera that followed the earthquake. One doctor in the group had been volunteering up to one week a month in Haiti. His stories about the foundation’s effectiveness in Haiti struck many of the pilots as something worth visiting in person.

In the fall of 2012, planning started to organize a group of Cirrus (a type of small plane) pilots to caravan from Fort Lauderdale to Port-au-Prince. Each plane was packed to the gills with more medical supplies and other donated items. I went along for the ride.

What has your experience been working on the ground in Haiti? Can you share a favorite story with us? 

To call what I did in Haiti “work” would be a stretch. We simply took the time to tour and witness the foundation’s programs on the ground. We saw their clinic in Cite Soleil as well as their extensive network of schools, hospitals and training programs in the Tabarre sector of the city. We stayed at guest houses run by the foundation to house medical staff that rotated through to train Haitian doctors and nurses.

Many scenes imprinted on my brain, from the naked children using a rainstorm as a chance to take an open air shower, to the utterly simple and effective treatment for cholera offered at the clinics and hospital, to the realization that St. Luke Hospital itself was nothing more than plywood walls with a simple metal roof. In open-air wards, Haitians accessed basic healthcare that we take completely for granted. Many, many hospitals fell in the 2010 earthquake, and facilities like St. Luke, as basic as they are, fill a grave need.

Can you tell us more about the mission of St. Luke for Haiti?

St. Luke provides healthcare, education and economic development programs for residents of Port-au-Prince. Further, they are Haitian led organization, employing more than 1,800 residents. It’s this idea of grassroots, sustainable, locally based work that appeals to me. Instead of an international NGO coming in and dictating what is required, it is Haitians themselves who direct the foundation’s work.

Of course, funds from outside Haiti support this work. But something unique about St. Luke is that they rely on volunteers for administrative and fundraising tasks here in the U.S. That way, all donations can go directly to programs.

Is this the first year New Orleans will be holding the All-for-One Christmas Party? How did this idea come about?

After we returned from our visit this summer, Wynn Walent reached out to me to see if we could help him capitalize on our group’s visit. His idea was to ask many of the pilots and other visitors, as well as longer-term supporters of the foundation, to plant the seeds of awareness about St. Luke in their communities. Wynn had already secured a matching gift of up to $250,000 for the initiative. He thought that more than 25 friends could be recruited to host events in their cities.

The greatest need for the foundation right now is operating budget for its St. Luke Hospital. So the parties are designed to fund the urgent and critical healthcare programs the hospital provides.

We discussed how crowd funding and social media could help us accomplish our goals. As a marketing communications consultant with a long history in nonprofits and higher education, I was familiar with Razoo and some great case studies.

By hosting a party or a fundraiser page, hosts could share the news and good work that the foundation was doing. And it didn’t matter if new friends could give $10 or $10,000, every new supporter would extend the St. Luke network.

That said, Wynn definitely had hopes that the parties in New Orleans and New York could be flagships for this effort. We set a $20,000 fundraising goal. New Orleans and Haiti have so many commonalities in culture, going back to the days of colonization and unfortunately the slave trade. Our music, our food, our drinks, our architecture, the French language…

Every location will have a different set up for their party. Some may gather at a home or a local pub, others may rent out a formal space. The New Orleans party will be at the home of our co-hosts, Nolan and Chip Grant. Chip is a physician who traveled with us this summer as well in his Cirrus. We’ll have Haitian-influenced food and drink, with many local businesses agreeing to donate products to help defray costs. The hosts have agreed to pick up all party expenses so that all donations can go to the hospital.

How can people help that aren’t able to attend the Christmas party?

That’s the beauty of using a fundraising platform like Razoo. Even if our friends and family can’t make it to the party, they can use Razoo to show their support by making an online donation, writing words of encouragement for our fundraiser and team, and more! Every penny counts.

[Learn More About New Orleans All for One Christmas Party, St. Luke Foundation for Haiti]