Like people across the planet, the team at Reach And Teach has been heart-broken watching the nightmare that hit the people of Haiti. In addition to contributions Reach And Teach immediately made to several organizations that are now working on the ground in Haiti, Reach And Teach and Putumayo Records is donating 100% of our proceeds from the sale of Caribbean Playground and French Caribbean to continued relief efforts. Putumayo will give their donations to the Red Cross and Reach And Teach will give our donations to the Rainbow World Fund.

Caribbean Playground features diverse music such as zouk from the French Caribbean, soca from Trinidad, reggae from Jamaica, bomba from Puerto Rico and more. International stars Taj Mahal, Desmond Dekker and the Wailers are featured alongside some of the Caribbean's most popular artists such as Kali, Atlantik and Luc Leandry, as well as other exciting new discoveries. Caribbean Playground includes full-color liner notes in English, Spanish and French with song descriptions and cultural information.

Putumayo takes listeners on a musical cruise of the French Caribbean with a selection of fun, upbeat zouk, compas, twoubadou, biguine and more. With French Caribbean, Putumayo revisits the French Creole islands of Haiti, Guadeloupe and Martinique which have been experiencing a roots revival in recent years. The French Caribbean is a place where music is imbedded in the landscape: whether it is compas or zouk blaring out of storefront speakers or the variety of sounds that enliven carnival celebrations and street festivals. Acoustic traditional styles like Haitian twoubadou and Martiniquean biguine have recently earned a place on trendy dance floors alongside flashier zouk and compas.

Click here to purchase Caribbean Playground - Earthquake Relief for Haiti

Click here to purchase French Caribbean - Earthquake Relief for Haiti

The Rainbow World Fund specifically reaches out through the GLBTQ community and its straight friends and allies to coordinate relief efforts and donations for a variety of peacemaking causes, including relief efforts in Haiti. They have had an ongoing involvement in Haiti which preceded the recent earthquake. Click here to learn more about Rainbow World Fund.

Our friends at the National Radio Project have a program about the situation in Haiti from their Making Contact series. Click here to check out that program where you can listen to portions or download the entire podcast.

Reach And Teach will also donate 100% of the purchase price of our "Take One World" poster. With words written by Robert McAfee Brown and art by Khalil Bendib, this poster provides a recipe for world peace that we could all learn to cook. 

Take one world:
A globeful of people, most of whom are victims;
A handful of people passionately committed to justice;
A God overseeing and supervising without usurping total control;
An exemplary human life, in which the globeful of people and the handful of people and the overseeing God are united,
so that the particular human life is uniquely transparent to the divine;
A healthy respect for the past and a healthy skepticism about institutions that have an unhealthy respect for the past;
Human hearts in which anger and love are two sides of the same coin;
A willingness to risk judgments that might be wrong;
And an ultimate optimism combined with a provisional pessimism.
Mix well, and see what happens!

TEACHERS: Teaching for Change has put together terrific resources for teaching about Haiti. Click here to check out their materials and suggestions.

As members of GreenAmerica.org we are connected to a huge number of people and organizations that work on issues of peacemaking, social justice, and emergency relief locally, nationally and internationally. Our friends at GreenAmerica.org just released this message, with links to ways all of our partners in peacemaking can help the people of Haiti right now and for the long term. We're pleased to share this information with you. 

A Letter from GreenAmerica.org

Our hearts go out to the survivors of the devastating earthquake in Haiti last week. There's both immediate disaster recovery to do, along with longer term rebuilding work.

First, if you haven't already, please consider giving to an organization that is doing recovery work right now in Haiti. Our friends and allies at groups like Mercy Corps and Haiti Partners are working on addressing key issues such as clean water and shelter for children. Our allies at Network for Good put together a list of organizations on the ground doing direct relief work today. With one click, you can donate to one, several or all of them.

Second, we'd like to point you to the resources in our online community investing center for ways you can invest your money to help Haiti rebuild over time. As you know, community investment intitutions are in the business of making loans to low-income and underserved populations. Below we point you toward a number of institutions already doing work in Haiti, where they will be poised to make a huge impact on the rebuilding process.

If you've been thinking of "breaking up with your bank," because you're tired of the business-as-usual mega-banks, consider directing some of your dollars toward financial institutions you know will be using your money to help survivors in Haiti to rebuild their lives. (Click here to see how community investment banks helped survivors of Hurricane Katrina rebuild their lives here in the US.)

At our online community investing center, you can search for the investment institution that is right for you by sorting criteria like issue area (health care, education, refugees, etc.), organization type (loan fund, housing developer, venture capital fund, etc.), or geographic impact area (any US state, or any nation). Searching for "Haiti" provides the following list of organizations already doing work on the ground in that nation:

1. ACCION International – Microfinance
2. Calvert Social Investment – Loan fund
3. Catholic Relief Services – Microfinance
4. Developing World Markets – Bank
5. Emergency Liquidity Facility – Venture Capital Fund
6. FINCA International – Microfinance
7. Fonkoze – Microfinance
8. Freedom from Hunger – Microfinance
9. Habitat for Humanity International – Housing developer
10. Mennonite Economic Development Associates – Venture Capital Fund
11. Oikocredit – Loan Fund
12. SERRV International – Social Enterprise

Thanks for investing in communities, at home and around the world,

Alisa Gravitz,
Executive Director,
Green America