The Fi­fa Fi­nance Com­mit­tee, chaired by Fi­fa Vice-Pres­i­dent, Julio Gron­dona, held a meet­ing in Zurich yes­ter­day, dur­ing which it ap­proved a pro­pos­al to sup­port the Hait­ian foot­ball fam­i­ly with an ad­di­tion­al US $3 mil­lion fol­low­ing the earth­quake that dev­as­tat­ed the coun­try on Jan­u­ary 12, in which more than 200,000 were killed. Fi­fa had al­ready pro­vid­ed im­me­di­ate emer­gency aid of US$250,000 short­ly af­ter the earth­quake. Fol­low­ing a de­tailed re­port, dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 2 on the dra­mat­ic sit­u­a­tion in Haiti from Fi­fa Vice-Pres­i­dent and Con­ca­caf Pres­i­dent, Jack Warn­er, who vis­it­ed the coun­try last week, the mem­bers of the com­mit­tee unan­i­mous­ly de­cid­ed to set up a Spe­cial Projects Fund of US$3 mil­lion.

This fund will be ded­i­cat­ed to as­sist­ing the Hait­ian foot­ball fam­i­ly in ar­eas such as the re­con­struc­tion of the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion's head­quar­ters, tech­ni­cal cen­tres and re­gion­al youth fa­cil­i­ties and to sup­port­ing the as­so­ci­a­tion's leagues and youth com­pe­ti­tions by pro­vid­ing ba­sic foot­ball equip­ment. Fi­fa Pres­i­dent Joseph S Blat­ter said, "Just like every­one else, I was deeply moved by the re­ports com­ing from Haiti. We will con­tin­ue to eval­u­ate the sit­u­a­tion very close­ly with the Hait­ian Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion and will do every­thing in our pow­er to as­sist them in their hour of need."

Ex­cerpt of Warn­er's re­port to Fi­fa

In­tro­duc­tion

On Jan­u­ary 12, 2010, Haiti was rocked by an earth­quake mea­sur­ing 7.0 on the Richter scale.�In the af­ter­math of the earth­quake there was al­most to­tal de­struc­tion of the build­ings and in­fra­struc­ture and close to 200,000 thou­sand lives lost at the most re­cent count.�

Among the lives lost were 32 mem­bers of the Haiti Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion who were at­tend­ing var­i­ous meet­ings in the Fed­er­a­tion's Head­quar­ters in the cap­i­tal city of Port �au � Prince when the earth­quake struck. The build­ing was al­so to­tal­ly de­stroyed re­sult­ing in a to­tal an­ni­hi­la­tion of that coun­try's foot­ball re­sources.

Pres­i­dent of the Fed­er­a­tion, Yves Jean-Bart bare­ly man­aged to es­cape with his life and was able to make con­tact with his col­leagues of the Ja­maican Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion to give an ac­count of the sit­u­a­tion in Haiti. Cap­tain Ho­race Bur­rell, Pres­i­dent of the Ja­maica Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion was one of the first per­sons of the Caribbean Foot­ball Union of which Haiti is a mem­ber to wit­ness first hand, the ex­tent of the de­struc­tion wrought by the earth­quake and filed a re­port to me on the sit­u­a­tion.�

Based on Cap­tain Bur­rell's re­port, an ap­peal for as­sis­tance to Hait­ian foot­ball fam­i­ly was made to me and I im­me­di­ate­ly pledged $100,000 of my own re­sources to the be­lea­guered Fed­er­a­tion.� This was fol­lowed by pledges of fi­nan­cial sup­port from Fi­fa and oth­er mem­bers of the Fi­fa fam­i­ly in­clud­ing Dr Chung Moon an­oth­er Fi­fa Vice Pres­i­dent.�Pres­i­dent Blat­ter, al­so agreed to raise the is­sue of Haiti at the Fi­nance Com­mit­tee meet­ing of Feb­ru­ary 4, 2010 to be held in Zurich and in­clude it on the Agen­da as a mat­ter for ur­gent con­sid­er­a­tion. In my ca­pac­i­ty of Pres­i­dent of Con­ca­caf of which Haiti is a mem­ber, I took the de­ci­sion to vis­it Haiti to get a first hand view of the sit­u­a­tion there and present my ob­ser­va­tions and rec­om­men­da­tions to the meet­ing of the Fi­nance Com­mit­tee.�

Sat­ur­day Jan­u­ary 30, 2010

On the morn­ing of Sat­ur­day Jan­u­ary 30, 2010, to­geth­er with a small del­e­ga­tion com­pris­ing of three oth­er per­sons,I de­part­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go on a pri­vate jet to Kingston, Ja­maica where we were met by Cap­tain Ho­race Bur­rel.�Cap­tain Bur­rel was re­spon­si­ble for mak­ing the arrange­ments that were sup­posed to have tak­en us in­to Haiti that same day. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, due to some lo­gis­ti­cal chal­lenges our small par­ty was on­ly able to get to Haiti the fol­low­ing morn­ing on Sun­day Jan­u­ary 31, 2010.�

Sun­day Jan­u­ary 31, 2010

Our small par­ty de­part­ed Kingston on Sun­day morn­ing at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 11:45 am with a small quan­ti­ty of sup­plies to take to Haiti that we hoped would pro­vide a small lev­el of re­lief to our col­leagues.�We ar­rived at the Tou­s­saint L'Ou­ver­ture In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port at 1:00 pm, where we were met by Pres­i­dent of the Haiti Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion Dr Yves Jean Bart and a del­e­ga­tion com­pris­ing of oth­er of­fi­cials of the FHF. Among the mem­bers of the Fed­er­a­tion who sur­vived was Nan­cy Le­scou­flair, Pres­i­dent of the Hait­ian Women's As­so­ci­a­tion, and wife of that coun­try's Min­is­ter of Sport.�

On our way to the rav­aged city, Pres­i­dent Jean-Bart gave an ac­count of his ex­pe­ri­ence and ex­plained that the earth­quake struck just as he was about to walk�out of the build­ing fol­low­ing a meet­ing of of­fi­cials to elect per­sons to var­i­ous foot­ball com­mit­tees. As we jour­neyed to Port-au-Prince, all around us was ev­i­dence of the de­struc­tion that took place. This in no way how­ev­er pre­pared us when we ar­rived at the site of the head­quar­ters of the HFF. Where what was once a five-storey build­ing, was now a huge mound of bro­ken blocks, sand, ce­ment, wood and oth­er rub­ble.�

This was the site where thir­ty-two mem­bers of the Fed­er­a­tion lost their lives, some of whom�are still buried un­der the rub­ble.�

In an at­mos­phere filled with grey dust, scores of mem­bers of the foot­ball fra­ter­ni­ty and oth­er Haitians took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­lay to me their tales of sur­vival. Even with the sto­ries of de­spair, what stood out most for me was op­ti­mism and hope.�The tour of the city and our meet­ings last­ed just un­der two hours and end­ed with a vis­it to the out­skirts of the cap­i­tal where, in the road­way, housed the lone ra­dio sta­tion out of where much of the in­for­ma­tion is re­layed.

Op­er­a­tions of the FHF

Even in the ab­sence of any sup­port sys­tems and the abil­i­ty to con­duct any ad­min­is­tra­tive func­tions, Pres­i­dent Jean Bart and the re­main­ing foot­ball of­fi­cials con­tin­ue to be a source of strength to the foot­ball fra­ter­ni­ty.�The "Hait­ian foot­ball of­fice" is run from the Pres­i­dent's black­ber­ry phone, the on­ly piece of equip­ment that re­mains from the Fed­er­a­tion.�Pres­i­dent Jean Bart con­tin­ues to do what he can with what is avail­able and has al­ready tak­en the de­ci­sion that foot­ball in Haiti will not be al­lowed to suf­fer any ma­jor set­backs as a re­sult of this un­fore­seen dis­as­ter.�For­tu­nate­ly for the Fed­er­a­tion, mem­bers of the var­i­ous na­tion­al teams were train­ing when the dis­as­ter struck and there was no loss of life among them.�

�

The de­ci­sion was tak­en that:

(i)�There would be no with­draw­al of any team from par­tic­i­pa­tion in CFU and CON­CA­CAF qual­i­fy­ing tour­na­ments.�

(ii) Of­fi­cials will at­tend all Fi­fa, CON­CA­CAF and CFU meet­ings �

Based on the ob­ser­va­tions made, it is clear that we must do all in our pow­er to as­sist the peo­ple of Haiti and our foot­ball fam­i­ly in over­com­ing the chal­lenges which they face at this time.� The task is a daunt­ing one and the chal­lenges are many, but these are not in­sur­mount­able.�