Earthquake in Haiti: An Afternoon at Heart to Heart International

I decided to volunteer some time to help Heart to Heart International get things ready to ship to Haiti during this week. They need help collating the donated materials and getting them ready to ship. Mainly they need help making the hygiene kits for the people in Haiti to use. They have a warehouse in Kansas City, KS and this is where all the donations are taken. Some donations are kits ready to go, others are kits that were made to different specs and need to be checked and modified and some were the raw materials of the kits: soap, toothpaste, tooth brushes, small towels and wash clothes, wide toothed combs and small bottles of shampoo. It's not a hard job to make the kits, and many hands make light work.

Volunteers make hygiene kits and also organize supplies. The lady at left is putting together baggies of band-aids for the kits.
Some of the raw materials for kits: soaps, soap dishes, baggies of band-aids.
Making the band-aid baggies, trying to assemble useful sizes of band-aids, not those tiny ones!
The raw material of a hygiene kit: most of these items will go in a kit, except for the toothbrush holder. The kits have a very specific recipe. Shipping overseas means that every i must be dotted and every t crossed, so the kits have to be pretty uniform in content.
Finished kits, double bagged in strong zip lock freezer bags, ready to be put in shipping boxes.
A Heart to Heart employee does the final check and seals the boxes for shipping.
More donated hygiene kits that will be readied for shipping in the coming days.

Here's Heart to Heart's founder, Dr. Gary Morsch, in Haiti.

If you are interested in donating or volunteering, go to www.heartoheart.org. This was a great way to spend an afternoon, and I plan on going back for more!