As promised in the previous post, I want to provide a brief overview of how our little Haitian supply chain worked. How was it that this little operation managed to efficiently and effectively get stuff to where it was needed while the efforts of the big players were stifled and bottlenecked?
It all hinged on two key factors: 1) the relationships of Matt McCormick at the northern border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic (Matt is an American missionary who lives in Ft. Liberte, which is the Haitian city at that northern border); and 2) the connections with a Dominican distributer named Lorenzo in Santiago.
Most other operations struggled because they were trying to go directly into the airport at Port au Prince (PaP) where everything was being held up due to the sheer volume of stuff trying to get in there. And if they weren't trying to fly directly into PaP, they were trying to push stuff across the southern Dominican/Haitian border (which was very close to PaP). But again, just like with the airport at PaP, there was a huge volume getting pushed through that portal, so things easily got bottlenecked.
Matt and his group, however, were able to operate effectively because they were going through the northern border, where he had incredibly strong relationships with the UN, the border patrol, and the local Haitian government. Granted, it meant that the goods had to be shipped over a much greater distance. But at least they were able to keep stuff moving and therefore the supplies could eventually get to their destination.
Here's how it worked: the local organizations on the ground in Haiti would communicate with their home offices in the states and let them know what supplies were needed. Those home offices would then contact a group in Miami and "place an order" for the needed supplies. The folks in Miami would enter that order into an online collaborative document (using Gmail and Google Documents) where the team in Santiago would get the request and go out and get the supplies. This is where the Dominican distributor, Lorenzo, played a key role. Because of his connections in the city of Santiago, he was able to help the Santiago team procure almost anything they needed, and he helped them get it in record time. The phrase that was used to describe Lorenzo was, "He could pull a pink elephant out of his butt if we needed him to." He was truly invaluable.
Once the team in Santiago had the supplies purchased, they would stage them, load them onto trucks, and then ship them up to the border. The forward team would then get the shipments through the border and transported across Haiti down to PaP. This sometimes had its challenges, as the road from the northern border down to Haiti was a rough and treacherous one. The drivers were almost always escorted by armed UN forces. And even though it was only about 100 miles they had to travel, it could take almost 8 hours because the roads were so bad. It didn't help that the trucks they were using would break down ALL THE TIME. Every shipment ended up making it to its destination, though. Near the end of the operation, the focus shifted from PaP to the border town of Ft. Liberte, where thousands of refugees had fled.
Our operation ended up coming to a close sooner than anticipated for a couple of reasons: 1) the big boys were starting to get it figured out and were able to more effectively provide supplies to those in need, and 2) Matt, who was the key to the relationships at the border and with the Haitian government in Ft. Liberte, had to fly back to the States because his wife was already there about to deliver their third child. In all, there were 22 orders filled in a little over 2 weeks. Each of the organizations getting supplies was serving, on average, about 1,000 people. And they say in Haiti that each person being served by these organizations really represents about 8 people who he is taking food and supplies back to. Thus, it's estimated that over 176,000 people were being helped by this little supply chain cartel. All told, we shipped almost $200,000 worth of supplies across the border into Haiti. And lives were saved because of it (especially early on when the fuel shipments were being made to the hospitals to keep them up and running).
Matt posted an entry on the blog of the Miami team today that does a great job of wrapping up the operation. Check it out here. You can also see some of the photos that were taken by the team here.
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