A charity music event to help re-build Haiti

Ashley Cooper with his Compassion sponsor child Rose who is from Haiti - as of yet Ashley doesn't know if she has survived

To raise money for Compassion projects that have been destroyed in Haiti due to the disaster, NXT Ministries in conjunction with a number of other groups is organising a special charity music event - Heart For Haiti - on Friday 12th Feb. With 200,000 people estimated to have died in the quake and up to two million homeless Cross Rhythms is getting behind this special concert. Jonathan Bellamy caught up with organiser Ashley Cooper, a local minister in Stoke-on-Trent.

(If you'd like to donate £5 to Heart For Haiti now you can text NXT to 82010. Terms & Conditions apply, see end of article.)

Jonathan: Raising funds to support family projects in Port-au-Prince in Haiti, loads of great bands are coming to Stoke-on-Trent. All artists and speakers are giving their services free, making their own way here. Held at the Victoria Hall we're all hoping to see it packed out. YFriday are coming; Blush UK are coming. Abundant Life Worship from Bradford are coming down; and Kev Whitmore is going to be there as well. Along with Andy Hawthorne; it's going to be an awesome night. Ashley we didn't know about this a couple of weeks ago. Suddenly out of the blue there it is. What happened?

Ashley: Just over a week ago I didn't know anything about this either. Of course we were all kinda shocked to watch the news and images over the last few weeks. I remember lying in bed and seeing the breaking news as it was literally unfolded, and realising the devastation this was going to cause. I was in Haiti twelve months ago with Compassion. Andy Hawthorne and I travelled together to Haiti to see some of the work of Compassion in some of the poorest areas of the country.

Jonathan: Describe a little bit of that; the poverty there; because this is before the earthquake.

Ashley: Correct. It was and it is a country that kind of just feels in a mess really, because there's no infrastructure - living accommodation is poor. There's no kind of sanitation; running water's few and far between. It was a difficult place prior to this earthquake, so when you start to see that most of the place has now crumbled, you realise that actually this is going to have a massive impact for years and years to come. We've seen that on the TV screens that we've watched over the last few days.

Jonathan: And it's not just the infrastructure impact, which you say is weak anyway; it's the emotional trauma for those who've survived.

Ashley: Absolutely, because every families impacted. Every family is going to have lost somebody in this. You've got the grief issue to deal with and how do you put a country back together again. Where do you start with that?

Jonathan: Now Compassion UK has got a big heart for Haiti.

Ashley: It has. It sponsors hundreds and hundreds of children throughout Haiti. There's over three hundred projects at work right across the country. Over thirty in the centre of Port-au-Prince itself; where they're dealing with some of the poorest families, bringing medical care, food, clothing, and support - family support into what were really difficult situations anyway. What we don't know at the moment is the state of many of those projects. It's been very difficult to get information. I was chatting with some of the guys from the Compassion UK office, who are trying to get that information. In terms of the sponsored children, there's very little information around at all at the moment.

Jonathan: So that was nearly two weeks ago now; and then out of the blue, this event's turned up. What happened?

Ashley: Well, I was in conversation with Andy Hawthorne and Ken Riley from YFriday and we were chatting together because Ken had been out to Haiti in November and we were talking about it just a few weeks ago. He was sharing some of his experiences and their journey had matched ours. It was kind of - it was actually fun sharing stories together at that point. But as soon as I saw this news, I picked up the phone to Andy and to Ken and said look guys what do we do about this. Is there something that we can actually do that's going to make a difference? We can't solve the nation's problems; we can't do that; it's too big. It's going to be a massive problem for generations to come: as you seek to rebuild a whole nation and start from scratch. But what can we do that will make a difference? So what we are going to try and do is identify a couple of projects - perhaps just two in the centre of Port-au-Prince and say actually we can rebuild those. We can raise enough money to rebuild two projects; get them working again. Get them supporting families; help them to rebuild in those communities. We can't do everything, but we might do two. So we can say, well how much will that cost. So we put up a target of £20,000. I have to say as I sit here before the concerts taken place we've got £10,000 now in that pot already!

BlushUK

Jonathan: Wow that's fantastic.

Ashley: This is just from gifts and donations of folk in local churches; which is really encouraging. So I'm now - my head's beyond the £20,000.