ONE Haiti phone conference

Hi, all:

I'll have a food blog up tomorrow, but I wanted to comment on ONE.org and the phone conference that we just finished.

While it wasn't as informative as I was hoping for, and while there were a lot too many people promoting their own organizations, it was an interesting and thought-provoking hour. Bill Frist has been down there for a week, operating on people and helping get the hospitals and clinics back into some sort of shape to resume helping people. Rep. Meeks spoke on the international communities and his work to get them to forgive Haiti's indebtedness so that the work of rebuilding can go forward without interruption. He also spoke about the need to get a non-corrupt government into place, so that the Haitians can finally move forward in self-governance. Dr. Joia Mukherjee from Partners in Health talked about the need to educate women on health issues. David Meltzer from the Red Cross was also online, talking about what was going on with their relief efforts.

ONE is a great organization. I'm looking forward to seeing just where they go with this one. I would have liked to hear more concrete ideas, but this was just, basically, a get-acquainted set up. The ONLY thing that I wanted to hear that wasn't brought up was just who was going to be accountable for the flow of money, and how it was spent. Maybe that will be addressed in another phone conversation. I'm certainly going to suggest it.