By Amanda F. Korman for The Women’s Peace Collection

An earthquake centered 10 miles south of Port-au-Prince has ravaged Haiti, with estimates of the dead nearing 200,000. Hundreds of thousands more have survived, and now they require urgent medical help and supplies to get through the trying days, weeks and months until the country can rebuild.

During a crisis like this one, finding the right place to pledge your money can seem daunting. For the next five weeks, the Women’s Peace Collection will be directing 5 percent of all sale revenues to Partners in Health (PIH), an organization which leads the charge of bringing medical aid and supplies to the people of Haiti. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Tracy Kidder recently called PIH “one of the truly effective organizations working in Haiti.” Since last Tuesday, Partners in Health has been disseminating services throughout the devastated Port-au-Prince region, and has also offered the unique service of numerous fully functioning facilities in Haiti’s Central Plateau and Artibonite Valley, countryside locations to where many Haitians have fled seeking medical attention.

Zanmi Lasante (“Partners in Health” in Haitian Kreyol) originally formed in 1983 in the Central Plateau region of Haiti, and four years later, PIH established themselves as an international health-related aid organization in Boston, Mass. Granting access to medical services regardless of ability to pay to more than half a million impoverished Haitians, Partners in Health is now one of the largest nongovernmental health care providers in the country. In the aftermath of the devastating earthquake, they are one of the organizations most capable of enacting quick relief for those who require immediate medical attention, and the Women’s Peace Collection is proud to support their efforts.

Since 2005, the Women’s Peace Collection has made a commitment to meaningful enterprise by working with female artisans in regions of conflict and post-conflict. In the Darfur region of Sudan, hundreds of thousands of people still live in refugee camps, but out of the shadows of war, groups of talented weavers come together to create beautiful baskets for the Women’s Peace Collection. Similarly, amidst catastrophic natural disaster, Haitians demonstrate their resilience by offering aid to one another, the kind of human strength of spirit that WPC champions. Partners in Health, which is staffed largely by Haitians, efficiently brings necessary supplies—everything from food and water to pain killers, gauze and antibiotics—into the country. These provisions are crucial for health professionals to treat the thousands of wounded and ill who have still not received proper medical attention since the earthquake struck seven days ago.

By purchasing a beautiful, hand-crafted product from the resilient hands of female artisans that work with the Women’s Peace Collection, you can support the people of Haiti as they endure through this catastrophe.