I am sure every one of us in the Postal Service has been shocked and saddened by the massive loss of life that has resulted from the January 12 earthquake in Haiti. Postal employees across the nation are well acquainted with the terrible toll in human suffering often inflicted upon those caught by natural disasters, whether hurricanes, tornadoes, floods or earthquakes.
Mindful of the needs of those affected, we are often among the first to respond to people in communities hardest hit by disasters.
As we begin a new year, I ask you to keep all those who have lost loved ones, or who are still searching for their loved ones, in your prayers. Tragedies like this, which in the past would have taken weeks or months for us to learn about, demonstrate how small our world has become and how fragile we all are.
Many local and national charities are hard at work providing relief to the victims of this disaster. I encourage you, if you see fit, to work with your local disaster relief groups to provide financial support to those people in desperate need.
In a memorandum to federal agency heads, John Berry, director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), noted that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has recommended cash contributions as the most effective way to provide relief assistance.
USAID provides a listing of nonprofit agencies working to provide assistance at http://www.usaid.gov/locations/latin_america_caribbean/country/haiti/eq. You also will be able to link directly to this site from our intranet, blue.usps.gov. Liteblue.usps.gov will also enable employees to use their personal home computers to access the USAID site.
We will also include the USAID link at usps.com.
Jack Potter
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