Source: HollywoodReporter - One year after the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake, how Sean Penn, Paul Haggis, Maria Bello and their friends are still fighting for Haiti’s survival amid unspeakable horror… SEE MORE PHOTOS HERE
“There’s a great thing Paul Newman said about his long marriage,” he says wryly. “ ‘As it turns out, we still love each other.’ That’s how I feel: ‘As it turns out, I’m still here.’ ” If he seems perpetually tired, who can blame him? He’s ordering supplies, arranging funds, supervising staff and figuring out what to do if a hurricane hits, as it almost did just weeks ago. Deep gashes of sleep deprivation line his face. His eyes seem half-closed with fatigue. And yet he keeps on going, chain-smoking his American Spirits like lifesavers.“He’s crazy,” says one of his volunteers. ”He’s a genius,” says another.
Recently, after spending most of his time in Haiti, he has started to take breaks, alternating a few days in Malibu with a few days here. He’s also taken several weeks to shoot a film, This Must Be the Place. But always, he returns.
He speaks of a future when he might leave the camp in others’ hands, then wavers. On some level, he belongs here. “Let’s face it,” he admits, as the daylight begins to fade, “I’m a person that feels pretty alienated from the rest of the world and never felt understood by anyone...”
It’s night now. As we stroll through the camp one last time, bathed in newly installed lighting, pools of brightness intersecting with the dark, half-seen figures loom out of the shadows — children carrying pails of water, a woman nursing her baby. “Bonsoir!” a man calls happily from behind the flap of his tent. “Bonsoir,” Penn replies. The man has no idea this is a movie star. And no idea of the sacrifice it’s cost him to help.
But Penn knows the difference he’s made. And knowing this means he’s stuck here. Forever. “There’s no end point,” he says, drained to the point of collapsing. “This is where I’ll be when I’m not working, for the rest of my life.”
Source: voanews - The United Nations has announced a new strategy designed to help support the government of Haiti's response to a cholera epidemic. In a statement Friday, the U.N. says Haiti's cholera outbreak continues to spread, with more than 800 people dead and more than 12,000 hospitalized since the outbreak was first confirmed late last month.
The U.N. says the new response strategy includes projects from 42 non-governmental agencies, five U.N. agencies and the International Organization for Migration. Haiti's Ministry of Public Health and Population would continue to lead the effort. The strategy includes public outreach, rapid response, access to health services, and ensuring clean water, sanitation and waste management. To fund the effort, the U.N. is making an appeal for about $164 million in aid.
Ten cholera deaths have been confirmed in the capital, Port-au-Prince. Health workers fear an explosion of the disease in the crowded city, where hundreds of thousands of people have been living in squalid tent cities since January's devastating earthquake.
What's included
The U.N. says the new response strategy includes projects from 42 non-governmental agencies, five U.N. agencies and the International Organization for Migration. Haiti's Ministry of Public Health and Population would continue to lead the effort. The United Nations anticipates as many as 200,000 people will show symptoms of cholera in Haiti, ranging from mild cases of diarrhea to the most severe dehydration. The World Health Organization says the bacteria that causes cholera will be in the country for a number of years, and the goal is to reduce the public health impact of the outbreak. WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl says the current fatality rate of 6.5 percent is far higher than it should be.
Spreading quickly
The deputy director of the Pan American Health Organization, Dr. Jon Andrus, says Port-au-Prince is "ripe for the spread of cholera" because of the poor sanitary conditions. He predicted a large upsurge in the number of cases.
Haiti's Health Ministry has said the vast majority of the deaths and hospitalizations have come in the more rural north and central provinces.
The outbreak was first reported in the Artibonite region north of the capital. Cholera is spread through contaminated food and water. It causes vomiting and diarrhea, and can quickly lead to severe dehydration and death. Read more at voanews.
Source: Ecorazzi - Sean Penn might occasionally lose his temper, but his passion for social causes keeps him resting steady as one of our favorites!
On Thursday, The Huffington Post hosted the 2010 Game Changers — an annual event celebrating “100 innovators, mavericks, visionaries, and leaders who are changing the way we look at the world and the way we live in it.”
According to Arianna Huffington, “Game Changers operate in multiple worlds but, whatever the arena, they share a common trait: a willingness to look at things and take the risk of saying, ‘I think I have a better way.’”
At the ceremony, Penn — a game changer in many ways — was honored by Anderson Cooper for his work in Haiti.
Since the earthquake struck Haiti earlier this year, Penn has been working relentlessly to help rebuild the country and even founded the JP Haitian Relief Organization with philanthropist Diana Jenkins.
While accepting the award, Penn asked donors to be more discerning about where they send their money and suggested to entrepreneurs that Haiti would be the perfect location to create green tech jobs.
Check out the clip below to watch Penn’s entire acceptance speech:
Source: CNN - Editor's
note: CNN's Moni Basu followed Sean Penn in Haiti on May 4, documenting
the celebrity's life as an aid worker, including his efforts to save a
boy with diphtheria.
At base camp, Sean Penn sits under a lampshade made with discarded Chef Boyardee packages and pulls closer a Bic lighter dangling from a rope.
It's not quite 7 a.m. and Penn is smoking another Marlboro Light. He brought Nicorettes with him to Haiti, but quickly gave up on the idea of refraining from cigarettes.
He runs his hands through disheveled hair, takes another drag. Wrapped in an embossed white towel and barefoot, he says no hellos, makes no attempt at niceties.
He starts telling a harrowing tale from the day before.
He hunted every corner of Port-au-Prince for an antitoxin for Oriel, a 15-year-old boy who contracted diphtheria, an acutely infectious disease spread through respiratory droplets.
The American Red Cross didn't have it. Nor did any of the major hospitals. Penn even had the U.S. military on the search.
The United States stockpiles the vaccine and antitoxin. But in Haiti, it took Penn -- even with his star power -- 11 hours to get his hands on one dose.
It was at a medical warehouse and Penn wrested the head of the World Health Organization from bed to unlock the door at a late hour.
"This country is not ready for an emergency," he says.
"Three months in and nobody in the major hospitals knew where to find the immunoglobulin. That kinda says it all to me."
Oriel had been brought to a clinic at the encampment of earthquake-displaced people at the Petionville Golf Club, which Penn's newly formed aid agency J/P Haitian Relief Organization has been helping to manage.
The boy had started feeling symptoms six days earlier. Doctors quickly realized that he had diphtheria. No hospital wanted to admit the boy, Penn says. They did not have the capacity to prevent infection. Penn hand- carried him to General Hospital, the city's main medical care facility, where doctors finally agreed to place Oriel on life support.
Penn feels personally responsible -- for the boy, for the entire camp, for the city. Diphtheria could spread lightning fast through the congested tents and shanties.
Haiti grapples with diphtheria and other killer diseases every year, but after the quake doctors feared the worst. Oriel was the first case of "the worst" discovered at the golf course camp.
Early on, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had urged immediate vaccination against diphtheria and recommended having the antitoxin on hand.
Penn cannot comprehend why, with an abundance of aid agencies working in Haiti, prevention like this has to be so difficult. He is not one to shield his anger, or mince words. "If the boy were to die," he says, "this would be murder."
Celebrity in a foreign land
Penn is hardly new to heroic endeavors. He's flown to the eye of a hurricane, to the front lines of war. A few years back, he traveled to Iraq and Iran and wrote about both countries for the San Francisco Chronicle.
He was in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina -- his right arm bears a tattoo that says: "NOLA, Deliver Me."
His presence in all those places and now in Haiti draws skepticism and ire from those who think that celebrities use tragedies to burnish their public images. Penn has been mocked and caricatured by filmmakers, writers and talk-show hosts for taking up causes.
But he brushes it all aside. Someone, he says, has to get it done.
He landed in Haiti a week after the earthquake, he says, with a genuine concern. He insists he will be here for the long haul, that he's more than a celebrity goodwill ambassador who has dropped in to smile with orphaned kids for a day.
No stunts. No gimmicks. His staffers say the actor is simply following his heart.
The Oscar-winning star has shed his life of comfort and glamour for the unassuming role of aid worker. For the past few weeks he has been helping manage 50,000 displaced Haitians living in the camp that sprouted on the nine-hole course at the capital's once-exclusive golf club.
Perched atop a hill that affords a view of Port-au-Prince, the star of movies like "Dead Man Walking," "Mystic River" and "Milk" might have been a guest here in former years, sipping a rum punch on a balmy evening. These days, he's sleeping in a tent along with a small proletarian staff. They wear navy blue shirts with the J/P HRO logo loudly emblazoned -- and answer only to Penn. Void of the bureaucracy common at the United Nations and other major humanitarian agencies, Penn says his J/P HRO, is often able to get things done faster.
The group's work began in the weeks after the quake with the disbursal of critically needed aid. Then Penn noticed the tremendous need at the crowded golf club camp, one of the city's largest and completely vulnerable to rain and treacherous mudslides.
Penn called in the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne Division to help secure the hills with gravel and sandbags.
"Pretty soon, we were managing a camp," he says. "Then you find you are filling a gap and you feel responsibility to keep going."
He negotiates the terrain in a bright red golf cart that says "SEAN PENN" in the front, though few recognized him when he first arrived. Even now, some camp residents barely recognize the name.
"Yes, I know," said one. "He is Madonna's first husband."
Penn, who will turn 50 this year, found it liberating to move without paparazzi or fans asking for autographs.
It was the anonymity he once knew growing up in southern California, before his breakthrough role in the 1983 film "Fast Times at Ridgemont High."
Then came his turbulent marriage to Madonna, a barrage of bad tabloid headlines and jail time for punching an extra who tried to snap his picture.
Learn more about Haiti relief efforts on "Impact Your World"
But he's no bad boy here at the Petionville Golf Club.
"He is helping us. He is a good man," says camp resident Junior Vital.
Penn's group relocated about 5,000 people to safer ground at Corail, a new temporary camp on the outskirts of the city, where flooding and mud will not threaten them in the rainy season.
In the landscape of Haiti's tragedy, Penn's accomplishments are small. But things don't happen quickly here.
In that context, aid workers here gave him kudos for his successes.
"It was a Band-Aid measure," Penn says. "But it meant a lot to us."
Still, he recognizes he's a newbie to the aid business. And a possible diphtheria outbreak is not the kind of emergency the Hollywood actor is used to addressing... Read More at CNN.com
Source: CelebsGoneGood - After just donating a whopping $1 mil to help Haiti last month, Leonardo DiCaprio is already at it again!
There’s no surprise as to why he made the top 10 on our Top 20 Celebs Gone Good list back in November. He’s teamed up with Chace Crawford, Emmy Rossum, Justin Long, Jason Bateman, and more in a special video for “This is Our Moment” to mobilize the country towards working towards a cleaner, greener future.
“This is Our Moment” is the Natural Resources Defense Council’s new web-based video campaign that encourages Americans to actively participate in preserving the community by speaking to their legislative representatives via email and online videos. The campaign pushes for citizens to urge their senators to help pass climate legislation that is essential to help recharge the economy, reduce pollution and curb global warming, and create more jobs.
Seize the moment and check out what the A-list supporters have to say about how you can help to get the “Clean Energy, Jobs and American Power Act” passed in the Senate!
