found this on board member Lewis Lucke
Austinite helps lead U.S. relief efforts in Haiti
Lewis Lucke had retired from his globetrotting aid work - until earthquake hit.
Just six weeks before an earthquake devastated Haiti, Lewis Lucke was on his old stomping grounds of Port-au-Prince, visiting a friend's church mission that brought medical care and new farming methods to Haitians. Lucke, who had served as the mission director of the U.S. Agency for International Development in the Haitian capital during 2000-01, remembers those weeks before the quake as being filled with optimism.
"It was the most hopeful period I had experienced in Haiti, with new investment, shops and stores opening, streets repaired and people upbeat," he said.
When the quake hit on Jan. 12, Lucke, 58, was in his Austin home, enjoying retirement from a 27-year career with the State Department and USAID — an independent agency that provides economic, development and humanitarian assistance around the world in support of U.S. foreign policy goals — while running a consulting business for companies seeking to operate in the Middle East and Latin America. The next day, as the historic scope of the damage became clear, USAID officials asked him to come to Washington to lend a hand.
Lucke said he thought he'd be advising relief officials. Instead, the father of three found himself on a plane bound for Haiti, tapped to head the U.S. government's massive effort and getting a new title: U.S. response coordinator for Haiti .
He now works feverish 16-hour days trying to solve daunting medical care and shelter shortages, make the relief effort more efficient and transparent, and manage nearly $300 million in USAID funding for Haiti's recovery. In many ways, his job is a race against time: The rainy season begins in May and could make life even more hellish for hundreds of thousands of Haitians if they don't get adequate shelter.
"My instinct was to come back to this place that I know so well and do what I could to help," Lucke wrote in an e-mail to the American-Statesman. "I would have done practically anything to help."
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