Haiti hurricane appeal raises more than £100,000

World Jewish Relief’s emergency appeal following the devastation caused by Hurricane Matthew in Haiti has raised more than £100,000.

Donations are still urgently needed to support more than 1.4 million people in urgent need of food, water and shelter.

The charity’s first programme will support families on the island of La Gonave to buy food for three weeks. Prices of many basic goods have increased as a result of the disaster.

The programme will also provide money to repair their homes with a new roof. Half of all homes were destroyed by the hurricane. World Jewish Relief’s assessment team chose La Gonave as it is being overlooked by the majority of NGOs who are focusing on Haiti’s mainland.

Humanitarian programmes manager Mireille Flores, who has just returned from Haiti, said:

“I met an elderly couple in their 70s and 80s whose house is now just rubble. When we arrived they were both sitting outside. Their clothes were all over the place, hanging in the trees and strewn across bushes. They told me what had happened to them with tears in their eyes and showed me what was left of their home. I asked them where they were now living. They told me they had got hold of some corrugated metal sheets and made a little hut from it. Then a neighbour came and offered them the house of her dead mother – she’d died in the hurricane. It was a deeply humbling moment.”

Donations can still be made via www.worldjewishrelief.org/haiti or by calling 020 8736 1250.