Mother Nature is treacherous.  In 2010, she visited a massive earthquake on Haiti that reduced much of the island to rubble.  Six years later she targeted a direct hit by a monster hurricane on the same tiny island.

When the earthquake hit, as a father, I was moved to tears by a photo of a man carrying the lifeless body of his little girl.  She could not have been more than 4 years old—at the same time my daughter was four years old.  And I wondered, “Is there a more hopeless man in the world?  What is he to do?  He cannot just leave her?  He cannot carry her forever?”

Then Matthew came to call, killing hundreds, visiting desolation on towns and villages, destroying infrastructure, and leaving despair and cholera in its wake.

Thinking of Haiti has often filled me with despair—relentless despair.  But despair does not bring about change, not does it tend to the sick, feed the hungry or provide shelter for the homeless.  So, we—me and my beautiful and charming wife, who, like me, is a lawyer—decided to do something.

So, my law firm, Ichter Davis, challenged her law firm, Huff Powell & Bailey (HPB) to match a contribution to support aid efforts and humanitarian assistance to Haiti. And it worked!  Both firms participated. HPB has donated $1500 to CARE, and Ichter Davis contributed $1500 to Food for the Poor.  We then talked the local legal paper, The Fulton County Daily Report, into running a story by which we challenged local law firms to do the same.  The response was immediate, and while we are unsure of how many firms have positively responded at this point, we know we have had an impact.

Now, dear reader, it is your turn.  No matter how divergent our individual business interests, political leanings or personal histories, here we can find common ground.  This cause transcends all as a humanitarian effort to help those who are existing in conditions that I dare say none of us can even fathom.  Making a sacrifice to help someone who you will never meet and from whom you do not even expect a “thank you” says something about you. It says you have a soul—a place where goodness and kindness reside.

Over 96 percent of contributions to Food for the Poor go to programs that directly assist those in need.  Some 90 percent of funds contributed to CARE go to help those in need. Please consider helping.  If you Google the names of either of these organizations, you will find it quite easy to make a contribution. So start typing.

“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson