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How to help rebuild Haiti

Donations can be or sent to the AGC Oregon-Columbia Foundation – Haitian Relief and Reconstruction or the Oregon Community Foundation – Colas Foundation Fund, at 9450 S.W. Commerce Circle, Suite 200, Wilsonville, OR 97070.

For more information, call Zoya Kumar Ufford at 503-682-3363 or e-mail [email protected].

Both are 501(c)(3) charitable organizations, and gifts to either are deductible to the extent allowed by law.

Having grown up in Haiti, Hermann Colas Jr. wants to see the country rebuild after last month’s earthquake. As a builder, Colas knows he can help.

Although it’s hard to be in Oregon when there’s so much need in Haiti, Colas said, for now he can do more good here.

“If I was there, I could only be thinking about what I wanted to do, but I wouldn’t have the means or the materials to do so,” he said.

Colas, the owner of Colas Construction Inc., started a fund to help relief efforts. He turned to his fellow contractors for help.

Randy Williams, chief financial officer for R&H Construction, got to know Colas when their respective companies worked together on projects including the remodel of the Washington Square Nordstrom store. He heard about Colas’ family in Haiti and that country’s struggles.

“The earthquake in Haiti became personal,” Williams said. “A lot of times, you’ll have a disaster somewhere on the globe, but you’re not as connected to it.

“When the earthquake hit, I thought, ‘Oh my gosh. I hope his brothers are OK.’ ”

Colas and his son Andrew brought a personal appeal to Associated General Contractors members during the Oregon-Columbia chapter’s annual business meeting last month. The chapter’s charitable foundation had decided to offer a $7,000 match for any donations for Haiti.

“I told them, as far as I’m concerned, I made them all Haitians,” Colas said. “And they reacted with the same feeling of trouble I felt.”

Members donated $38,000, for a total of $45,000 with the match, foundation President Dale Campbell said. More money still is coming in. “Considering the state of the economy in Oregon, it’s kind of an overwhelming response,” Campbell said.

Half of the money goes to the Colas Foundation Fund, which supports Medical Teams International, Mercy Corps, Oxfam America, Partners in Health and Doctors Without Borders. The other half will go toward efforts to rebuild the country.

Ted Aadland, the incoming president of the AGC of America, is using Oregon’s success raising money for Haiti to challenge all 92 AGC local chapters. “We’re contractors, so what we’re looking at doing is the reconstruction of Haiti,” he said.

Although Haitians need food, water and other help immediately, they have longer-term needs as well. “But what always happens is that something happens somewhere else in the world and the spotlight shifts from Haiti,” Aadland said.

“We want to be there to help them get their homes, their schools, their hospitals back.”

Construction also can provide needed jobs for Haitians, said Larry Sitz, president of Emerick Construction Co. and a friend of Colas’. “We think we’ve got it tough here, but unemployment there is above 50 percent, and it was even before the earthquake,” Sitz said.

“Haiti needs for their people to be working and rebuilding themselves to a place that is better than before the earthquake happened,” he said.

That’s a challenge Colas will face when he next visits Haiti. He’s working with a manufacturer to develop a simple steel-framed building prototype to take to Haiti and show people how to assemble. “I want something solid and light,” Colas said, “that can resist hurricane winds and, at the same time, have enough flexibility that if there’s an earthquake it doesn’t kill all the people inside of it.”

Right now, even people with homes are afraid to use them for fear of collapse, Colas said. “Most everyone is afraid to sleep in buildings made of concrete.”

They end up sleeping outside. That also worries Colas.

“People all have those sheets on those tents, and it’s simply to keep the sun from them,” he said. “As the rainy season approaches in the next week or two, those sheets are not impermeable. They’re all going to be getting wet.

“Something that can keep people dry is one of the things I’ve been thinking about.”