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Volunteer Margaret Grayson sorts medical supplies at Medical Bridges Tuesday, Aug. 17, 2021 in Houston. Medical Bridges will send medical supplies, along with a Texas Aggie Medical Clinic to Haiti to help with earthquake and tropical storm relief.

Volunteer Debbie Ayers sorts medical supplies at Medical Bridges Tuesday, Aug. 17, 2021 in Houston. Medical Bridges will send medical supplies, along with a Texas Aggie Medical Clinic to Haiti to help with earthquake and tropical storm relief.

Wendy Socarras sorts medical supplies at Medical Bridges Tuesday, Aug. 17, 2021 in Houston. Medical Bridges will send medical supplies, along with a Texas Aggie Medical Clinic to Haiti to help with earthquake and tropical storm relief.

Volunteer Debbie Ayers sorts medical supplies at Medical Bridges Tuesday, Aug. 17, 2021 in Houston. Medical Bridges will send medical supplies, along with a Texas Aggie Medical Clinic to Haiti to help with earthquake and tropical storm relief.

Ashley Ponce sorts medical supplies at Medical Bridges Tuesday, Aug. 17, 2021 in Houston. Medical Bridges will send medical supplies, along with a Texas Aggie Medical Clinic to Haiti to help with earthquake and tropical storm relief.

Ashley Ponce sorts medical supplies at Medical Bridges Tuesday, Aug. 17, 2021 in Houston. Medical Bridges will send medical supplies, along with a Texas Aggie Medical Clinic to Haiti to help with earthquake and tropical storm relief.

The interior of a Texas Aggie Medical Clinic, a complete doctor's office inside of a 40-foot shipping container, is shown outside Medical Bridges Tuesday, Aug. 17, 2021 in Houston. Medical Bridges will send medical supplies, along with a Texas Aggie Medical Clinic to Haiti to help with earthquake and tropical storm relief.

Volunteer Lang Tran sorts medical supplies at Medical Bridges Tuesday, Aug. 17, 2021 in Houston. Medical Bridges will send medical supplies, along with a Texas Aggie Medical Clinic to Haiti to help with earthquake and tropical storm relief.

Volunteers Margaret Grayson, left, and Debbie Ayers sort medical supplies at Medical Bridges Tuesday, Aug. 17, 2021 in Houston. Medical Bridges will send medical supplies, along with a Texas Aggie Medical Clinic to Haiti to help with earthquake and tropical storm relief.

A set of Texas Aggie Medical Clinics, a complete doctor's office inside of a 40-foot shipping container, are shown outside Medical Bridges Tuesday, Aug. 17, 2021 in Houston. Medical Bridges will send medical supplies, along with a Texas Aggie Medical Clinic to Haiti to help with earthquake and tropical storm relief.

When Jonas Hilaire, senior pastor of First Haitian Church of God of Houston, learned that a magnitude 7.2 earthquake had devastated Haiti early Saturday morning, he felt compelled to act.

His native country is still recovering from residual effects of the 7.0 quake in January 2010 that claimed up to 120,000 lives — and, the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse last month on July 7. And Tropical Storm Grace was about to drop nearly 10 inches of rain on displaced Haitians and the search for survivors.

“The situation is really harrowing,” Hilaire said.

By Sunday morning’s sermon, his congregation of 120 Haitian Americans had weighed the options.

“We met and we had a special moment just to pray,” he said. “It’s so sad to see people, like kids and old people, with nothing at all, not even a small tent. The thing is, if we say we’re going to ship something it will take weeks. We want to send money right now.”

They set up a Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund on GoFundMe with a goal of $10,000. By Wednesday donors raised half that amount.

One company offered clothing, but Hilaire had to decline. He says their Alief-area church has no place to store them. “If we had a ship or a private airplane, we would take them and go right away.”

Instead, he plans to focus energy on raising money, consoling parishioners — one church-goer has already lost several family members — and entrusting ministers in hard-hit Les Cayes and Jeremie to distribute funds where they’re needed most.

With an estimated 8,000 Haitians currently living in Houston, a number of local non-profits are providing aid to on-the-ground relief efforts by sending funds, hygienic and medical supplies, or both. Many organizations rely on Haitian churches and missionaries to distribute donations and essentials.

Living Water International, based in Stafford, has completed thousands of sustainable water, sanitation and hygiene projects in Haiti since 2004. A team of 18 staff members, all Haitians, are headquartered in the country’s northern region, away from Saturday’s devastation.

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The challenge with the most recent earthquake is the damaged road infrastructure and transportation of goods, said Mike Mantel, president and CEO of Living Water International. Gang activity related to the recent political disruptions has made distribution efforts dangerous.

“I’ve experienced quite creative road navigation,” he said. “When you engage with local churches, there’s usually enough relational currency and goodwill — they’re typically more effective than other attempts.”

Through Facebook posts and a personalized email to donors, Living Water International raised $150,000 in three days. Mantel’s goal is to purchase, transport and distribute several thousand personal hygiene supply kits containing soap, hand sanitizer, COVID-19 protection masks and other cleansers to 5,000 people in Haiti’s most affected areas this weekend, and over 25,000 in the next 30 days.

To move that product efficiently and effectively, his team will lean on local churches.

“When the earthquake hit we were able to connect with a church network, Evangelical Baptist Mission of South Haiti. They have 400 churches that we’ve previously worked with,” Mantel said. “A number of wells have been damaged. So in the second, 60-day phase we’re working with Habitat for Humanity, key churches and partners to rehabilitate those broken water points.”

Medical Bridges, which provides medical equipment and supplies from the Texas Medical Center and surrounding areas to underserved communities worldwide, is also counting on a number of partners to help transport a life-saving parcel to Haiti.

Annually, students at Texas A&M University construct five mobile Texas Aggie Medical Clinics.

“It’s a doctor’s office in a 40-foot shipping container,” said Walter Ulrich, Medical Bridges CEO. “You can move them, set them down, open the door and immediately start treating patients.”

The containers are typically transported via ship, but given the pressing need, Ulrich is in communication with the Denton Program, a Department of Defense service that moves humanitarian cargo to developing nations. With any luck — and a military air freight — the mobile Texas Aggie Medical Clinic will arrive in Haiti by next week.

Rotary International’s Houston club, District 5890, has indicated that they’ll provide some of the funding to make that happen, Ulrich added. The value of the emergency shipment is an estimated $100,000.

Since 2013, Medical Bridges has supplied Haiti with $1.2 million worth of wholesale medical equipment and supplies:.“Personal protective equipment, gloves, masks and gowns,” Ulrich said. “We equipped a hospital with a birthing bed, ultrasound machines — anything a hospital would need to operate, we’ve been able to send it to Haiti.”

Immediately following the 2010 earthquake, Raleigh Jenkins, owner of ABC Home & Commercial Services, flew to Haiti to help control pest infestations in hospitals and medical tents.

“The thing that spoke the loudest to me were the children living on the streets, living in garbage,” he said. “There’s not a real good structure to support orphaned and abandoned children. We were being led into that space to do that work.”

So he founded A Child’s Hope, a Christian-based orphanage, school and community in Haiti with the mission of giving lost, orphaned and abandoned children a home, family and future.

“Thousands of kids were orphaned and never found their families,” said Elizabeth Bird, director of A Child’s Hope, of the previous earthquake. “The orphan and social orphan issue has grown exponentially. In Haiti, kids will be given to other family members or friends with a higher economic status in return for service — that kid washes the dishes in order to earn their keep. Here we call it childhood slavery, but for them it’s what they do out of desperation.”

The orphanage is currently home to 16 children. Another 300 are enrolled in the school. “One week before this earthquake we built a wall around our school and orphanage. We work with and teacher farmers to raise rabbit and chicken farms,” Jenkin said.

He and fellow leadership raised $400,000 at A Child’s Hope’s gala in 2019. Those funds were applied toward operational costs, community activities and food drives. Their next fundraiser isn’t until October 2021 at Houston Oaks — until then, the organization is directing donors to Mission of Hope in Austin.

“We’ve leaned on them for times when we’ve needed support and boots on the ground in Haiti,” Jenkins said. “They’re a group that will not work with the government, but rather missionaries funding and overseeing projects.”

Ever since the presidential assassination last month, organizations have encountered issues with corruption and officials not wanting to cycle out of office.

“People there need medical supplies, pharmaceuticals, MREs, water filters… I’m in the group that’s trying to build this needs list,” Jenkins said. “There’s an efficiency to what we do.”

Amber Elliott covers arts and society for the Houston Chronicle.

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