Suffolk company to send peanut butter to Haiti

SUFFOLK

The idea came quickly, almost as fast as the overwhelming urge to help.

Peanut butter. Truckloads of it. The perfect food for Haiti now. Nutritious. Filling. No need to refrigerat e.

The money came almost as quickly. Word spre ad throughout the peanut indus try and by Saturday morn ing, more than $52,000 had been raised, almost enough to send two container loads, or about 84,000 12-ounce jars.

"We've got the money, we've got the peanut butter," Jeff Johnson, president of Birdsong Peanut Company in Suffolk, said Friday. "We've got everything but how to get it there."

By Saturday afternoon, after e-mails and phone calls with charities that have connections in Haiti, they had even that.

The first shipment is expected to head out Monday to the organization Food for the Poor and the second to Catholic Relief Services. Both nonprofits have a longstanding presence in Haiti.

In the immediate aftermath of the ea rthquake, individuals and organizatio ns such as Birdsong are trying to figur e out how to help Haiti for the long haul.

The first point: Think things through.

When Ron Sconyers, president of the nonprofit Physicians for Peace in Norfolk first heard about the earthquake, his impulse was to go now. "Twenty-eight years in the milit ary, you betcha I did, " said Sconyers, a retired Air Force brigadier general. "We are all helpers and we want to be where there is need. But it's got to be measured. It's got to be planned."

Sconyers said the best way for mo st people to help is to give money, because it can be used to buy supplies as the needs aris e. Now, the crisis is at the stage where only people skilled in emergency response should be th ere, Sconyers said. In the next stage - we eks, maybe months away - the need for most volunteers will be greates t.

"Lay people, non-medical people can play a role," Sconyers said. "Manpower will be needed to help physically rebuild schools, churches - sweat equity."

Physicians for Peace does medical training missions around the globe, including a prosthesis program in Haiti for amputees called Walking Fre e. While the group has organized fundraisers for its partners in H aiti, Sconyers sai d, i t won't send a tea m for Walki ng Free until the needs are more clear.

Birdsong's Jeff Johnson said one of the reasons the peanut industry has organized its dri ve is that peanut butter has a shelf life of 18 months. "After all the hoopla has died down... this stuff will still be there," he said.

Birdsong Peanut Co. already had a connection to Haiti. For the past year, it has donated and shipped peanut paste to a charity there called Meds & Food for Kids, which makes a therapeutic fo od to combat severe malnutrition.

Sally Wells, Birdsong's logistics manager for the southeast divisi on, took on the role of turning the impulse to feed the hungry in Haiti into practical action.

"We all just started making phone calls and sending e-mails," Wells said.

Being in the peanut industry meant that getting the product, at cost, was easy. The devastation in Haiti brought out the money.

"You feel like you have a connection," Wells said. "There's nobody who can't be touched by this."

Nancy Young, (757) 222-5559, nancy.young@pilotonline.com