A fundraiser is planned as updates await about two Ben Avon sisters who remain in a Haiti orphanage with 150 children.
Avonworth Communities Together, a community group, is hosting an event Wednesday from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at the Mayernik Center in the Avonworth Community Park on Camp Horne Road.
Jack Connors, of Ohio Township, said he already has $5,000 for the BRESMA orphanage from members of the community.
"Three or four months from now, when this is out of the news, these girls are still going to need lots of support, and particularly financial support, no matter what the outcome was," Mr. Connors said.
On the North Side, Brother's Brother Foundation, a Pittsburgh-based international charity, spent the day collecting buckets and hygiene products to send to Haiti. They've also raised more than $2,000, said Karen Dempsey, vice president of development. They hope to send the first shipment of goods to Haiti tomorrow.
Donations of items such as buckets, nonliquid soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste, combs and brushes can be made Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. at 1200 Galveston Ave., Mrs. Dempsey said.
The foundation's medical director, Chip Lambert, of Sewickley, is planning to get some supplies to Haiti today by taking a private plane from Pittsburgh International Airport to Port-au-Prince.
Mr. Lambert, a physician who works with the Houston-based Medical Benevolence Foundation, a validated partner of Presbyterian Church USA, hopes to make it to Hopital St. Croix in Leogane, Haiti. The hospital was badly damaged by the earthquake, he said, and he has heard reports of 5,000 injured patients being treated outside on the hospital grounds.
First Published: January 18, 2010, 10:00 a.m.