READING, Pa. - Two Haitian-led organizations in Reading are gathering money to send to disaster-stricken Haiti after the country was hit by an earthquake and a tropical storm within a week.
Brothers James and Alexander Civil plan to fill a van that will be shipped from New Jersey to Haiti. James Civil is the founder of Companion in Christ of Pennsylvania in Reading and Alexander is director of another nonprofit, Bring the Change.
They are gathering things like tents, flashlights, and canned goods.
It will cost $2,000 to ship the van.
“When we're sending that van over there is going to be for my staff that are going to be taking care of it and then they're going to be the one distributing it is not going to be people that we do not know. It's people that already start doing those things way before the earthquake,” James Civil said.
Local staff from James Civil’s nonprofit will distribute the supplies to the southwest part of the country.
“We are already in Haiti for the past two years with my organization where we feed the homeless, we pay for kids school, you know, we help people like we got a fisherman program where we have people, we build stuff houses for them,” he said. .
Civil’s cousin, whose house was damaged by flooding after the earthquake forced him to sleep in the street, is helping to distribute. More than 2,000 people in Haiti have died due to last weekend’s earthquake.