Haiti

The situation on Haiti has of course impacted work on WFP quite a bit. As I'm in the logistics division, some of my closest colleagues are very much involved. Several are working day and night on site in Haiti, coordinating the logistics not only for WFP operations but also for the whole UN organization and humanitarian partners, as WFP is the lead agency of the so called Logistics Cluster. Many colleagues left behind in the office have also been working close to 24/7. I haven't been involved myself, and understandable my ongoing projects aren't really top priority at the moment. But it is definitely very interesting to see such a huge operation from the inside, and the outstanding effort to save lives. The will to go to Haiti and help on site has been tremendous, not even close to all WFP staff that have volunteered have been available to go. When I leave WFP and go on in my life, as large humanitarian disasters struck the world I will immediately think about my friends at WFP, and have at least some perception of the huge food distribution machinery that instantly kicks in.

Some WFP staff didn’t survive the quake. Among the survivors there are some incredible stories, one of them you can read here, it’s about how a WFP staff dug three of his kids out – alive.