Haiti

Nicholas J. Carroll, a former civil rights specialist with the U.S. Department of Education whose life was defined by fighting for social justice, died July 30 of a heart attack at his Crofton home. He was 87. Mr. Carroll, whose father was a purveyor of altar wine and mother was a homemaker, was born in Philadelphia and raised in Overbrook, Pa. He attended Waldron Mercy Academy in Merion Station, Pa., and graduated in 1941 from St. Joseph's Preparatory School in Philadelphia.

Six months ago, when the earthquake hit Haiti, approximately 2 million people were living in the metropolitan area of the capital city of Port-au-Prince. (The country's total population is almost 10 million.) The capital city was overcrowded. Haitians have always moved from the outlying departments to Port-au-Prince because it's the only place in the country with jobs and most basic services. The biggest employer in Haiti, the Haitian government, has most of its offices in Port-au-Prince.

Chris Milligan had less than two days to pack up and get himself to Port-au-Prince. "I bought some shirts, paid my bills and went," the Baltimore native says over the telephone from the Haitian capital. It was far from Milligan's first visit to a crisis zone — the U.S. Agency for International Development veteran has worked in Iraq, Zimbabwe and more than 50 other countries. Still, he says, he was struck by the devastation the January earthquake had wrought. "The scale of the destruction can't be overstated," says Milligan, 44. "It's overwhelming, even today."

Trapped in the darkness of a wrecked Haitian hotel, choking on the dust of crushed concrete, Richard L. Santos wondered whether anyone would ever find him and his five colleagues, two of them badly hurt. At one point, the thump of a helicopter's swirling blades gave them hope, only to fade into silence. As he awaited rescue from the Jan. 12 earthquake that shook Port-au-Prince to its core, Santos made a vow. "We knew the whole city must be devastated, and I realized that the rebuilding of Haiti would take decades," he recalled.

When state schools Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick called on Maryland students to pitch in after the devastating earthquake in Haiti this year, they responded. But none quite like the seventh-graders at Severna Park Middle School. The Anne Arundel students were celebrated Thursday afternoon for raising $12,000 for relief efforts in Haiti — the most of any school in Maryland — in the statewide Maryland Kids Care Campaign, Operation Haiti: Collecting Pennies (and More)

Andrés Duany, the Miami-based architect and "new urbanist" who led the design team that came up with the Katrina cottages as an alternative to the toxic FEMA trailers, has developed something similar, though perhaps not as cute, for the homeless survivors of the Haiti earthquake. Duany and InnoVida, a manufacturer of fiber composite materials in Florida, have collaborated on a series of durable, inexpensive "Haitian cabins" that can be assembled in a day. Retired U.S. Army Gen. Wesley Clark and former Miami Heat star Alonzo Mourning have backed InnoVida's plans to build a factory in Haiti to produce thousands of the cabins per year.

Today in New York, donors will be asked to provide $11.5 billion to help Haiti recover from the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake. Since the U.S. government has already provided more than $700 million in assistance -- a number that will likely rise -- some might ask: Why should we give more? To these skeptics, I have two responses. First, more is getting done than you think. And second, more needs to be done than you can imagine. Nearly two months ago, I left my home in Montgomery County bound for Port-au-Prince to lead the relief and recovery efforts of the international aid agency Mercy Corps.