Sean Penn renews call for Haiti aid and reconstruction

Sean Penn renews call for Haiti aid and reconstruction

Sean Penn told reporters in Vienna today that the world is slowly forgetting what happened to Haiti one year after the country was hit by a powerful earthquake.

The Academy Award-winning actor also said coordination problems between government and relief officials are slowing down relief efforts.

"There's far too much duplication, far too little communication," the actor said. "There are competing cultures in the international relief world...It's one of the basic embarrassments and failures in the aid community."

A fundraising gala was held in Vienna organized by Power of Hope for the Jenkins-Penn Haiti Relief Organization (J/P HRO) which the actor co-founded to help the impoverished Caribbean nation.

Karl Pumper, Power of Hope founder, said they hope to regain the attention of media and the world to the plight of Haitians. "This is not a celebrity issue, it's about getting Haiti back in the media and also using Sean Penn's popularity to do so," Pumper said.

Sean Penn underscored the importance of their relief efforts by doing them the right way. "I think we have an opportunity to keep Haiti from being the old kind of headline and give it the opportunity to be the new kind, of really encouraging triumph, Haitian resilience and the potential success of international relief."

The January 12, 2010 earthquake that struck Haiti was so strong it leveled much of the country's capital Port-au-Prince, killing 316,000 people and leaving hundreds of thousands more homeless.

Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann and Austrian business and media executives have also organized a dinner to discuss Austrian aid efforts through the relief organization of Sean Penn.

Posted by Kade Quinn on Wednesday February 16 2011, 4:26 AM EST. Ref: Inquirer. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under Entertainment, Featured News. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0