With a generous donation from Give Them a Hand Foundation and JetBlue, a registered nurse from New Jersey is headed to Haiti this evening, the Embassy of Haiti and Greater Washington Haiti Relief Committee (GWHRC) announced today.

Jocelyne Lawal, a certified nurse midwife with Newark Community Health Center who has delivery privileges at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center, volunteered to travel to Haiti to help with relief efforts earlier this week. Late yesterday afternoon the GWHRC staff learned of seats available on a plane from Miami to Haiti due to depart at 7:00 a.m. this morning. Staff immediately began making phone calls to local travel agencies to find an available flight from New York to Miami. Eventually, with the support of Give Them a Hand Foundation and JetBlue, the GWHRC successfully booked a flight for Lawal.

Lawal is traveling to Haiti this morning to use her skills as a registered nurse and provide much needed medical assistance to the people of Haiti that were injured by the 7.0 earthquake that struck the country on January 12, 2010.

The Greater Washington Haiti Relief Committee is continuing to organize events and volunteers to assist the massive relief effort currently underway in Haiti, including coordinating with the Embassy of Haiti to ship already donated supplies down to Haiti. GWHRC, with the assistance of the Embassy of Haiti, are expecting to send more medical professionals to Haiti this weekend and early next week.

The Greater Washington Haiti Relief Committee is a coalition of local and international organizations developed with the support of the Haitian Embassy in Washington D.C. to streamline efforts during disaster relief. GWHRC was first convened in 2008 to respond to the series of Hurricanes that hit Haiti that year.

Embassy of Haiti, The

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