Two weeks ago I attended the Southern Interior Peace Coalition’s annual conference, where I was introduced to an excellent non-profit group.

Pure Water for Haiti provides bio-sand filters using local materials to communities in Haiti. There are three Nelson volunteers in Haiti doing the work, who didn’t let the earthquake break their stride.

One of the most impressive things is that while international aid was mired in bureaucracy at the airport, the volunteers were able to keep going, delivering clean water to where it’s needed the most. In fact, Rick Valentine, an Argenta-based fundraiser for the organization, said it took 18 days before aid began to trickle down to the poorest neighbourhoods following the earthquake.

In the past 22 months, the Pure Water for Haiti has installed 4,000 filters and provided clean water to 205,000 children.

As discussion continued, we learned from one of the members that the funds the federal government promised to match donations have yet to be distributed. The group passed a resolution urging the government to release these funds.

Although the argument could be made that the government needs to find out where the money can do the most good in building long-term services and infrastructure, the reality was there wasn’t enough money being spent when it was needed, and a lot of the aid available took its time to reach the most poverty stricken neighbourhoods.

It’s safe to say that when Canadians respond with their dollars to such emergencies, they expect their money to be used to alleviate the immediate crisis. That’s not to say long-term proposals shouldn’t be funded, but the basic needs of people for food, shelter, medical care and water need to be taken care of first.

Another argument one sometimes hears is that if one drives into an area with a truckload of food and water, people will riot. Despite the scarcity of aid there was very little of this type of disturbance. In fact, many of the stories that came out of Haiti were of local people continuing to dig through the rubble to help their neighbours in areas that armed international police and military considered too dangerous.

Hopefully the international community will learn from their mistakes in Haiti and can start building local relationships with non-profits and local people to ensure that aid be released in a timely manner following such large-scale emergencies.