ITNAC Haiti rescue mission
Brent Hector and his niece,Hadassah,at Itnac’s offices.
This little-known group has a presence in Haiti doing humanitarian work. The public has responded magnificently to ITNAC’s earthquake rescue effort.
“It’s awesome”, said the attractive middle-image woman standing in front of Jardine’s Mall on bustling Charlotte Street.
Foodstuff, bottled water, clothing, medical supplies were being off-loaded from trucks and brought into the building in response to the appeal for help for earthquake devastated Haiti.
Is This Not A Cause (ITNAC), a small voluntary grassroots organisation, has been collecting aid for Haiti since the earthquake struck-and the response, according to members, has been “simply overwhelming”.
“There has been a great response from the general public, people from all walks of life, including corporate citizens”, Brent Hector, a coordinator told Tntinsider.
The evidence was there to see ITNAC’s office was ,literally, overflowing with huge bottles and cases of water and clothing and elsewhere in the building, on the ground floor, and upstairs there were huge packages of foodstuff, clothing and medical supplies.
Trucks pulled up outside the building and ITNAC volunteers were kept busy hauling supplies to a huge storeroom upstairs, all day on Monday when we were there.
Hector, brother of Avonelle Hector-Joseph, founder of ITNAC in 2002, and others did all they could , literally, working around the clock to handle this telling demonstration of Trini compassion and generosity.
He said that they have had a presence in Haiti for several years, being there doing missionary work and have assisted when Haiti was struck by a hurricane or tropical storm.
Members have also been to New Orleans helping in the rescue effort when Katrina struck in 2005 and have done missionary work and humanitarian work in Kenya, Jamaica, Guinea, Venezuela, Zambia, India (following the 2004 tsunami) and Guyana. Hector, an information technology specialist, said that there were 14-year-old teenagers that had made trips abroad with the organisation.
Hector pointed out that they were not in “disaster response” mode but were involved in crisis situations and have visited Haiti 22 times.
The group has been quietly doing charitable work all these years, generally with assistance to Hector, from people of modest means.
He said they were aware of the logistics of getting supplies to Haiti and had hired an aircraft to fly to the Dominican Republic and would transport the aid by land across the border.
While the national and international media are reporting (and rightly so) on the response to the Haiti disaster by the major countries and prominent organisations like the Red Cross little or nothing is told about the work done by under-funded groups like ITNAC. Perhaps, the BBC and CNN should contact them.
The Hectors are the children of former National Association for Reconstruction (NAR) minister Margaret Hector, the late social worker who represented the Diego Martin West constituency.
ITNAC can be accessed at telephone numbers 490-0261; 489-8455 and 624-4162.