Lemon Aid

Bowling for Haiti

2010-07-07

Save lives while enjoying a free game of tenpin bowling

Lemon Aid and Bowlplex have teamed up to provide you with a free game of tenpin bowling whilst raising funds to rebuild the hospital on the Haitian island of Lagonave.

Lemon Aid has been working on the island of Lagonave, just of the coast of mainland Haiti, for 3 years now. The island has a population of over 150,000 people and just one 33 bed hospital. This hospital was damaged beyond repair in the earthquake on 12 January and the subsequent aftershocks. We have a target of $1 million to raise to allow us to rebuild the hospital, and are almost half way to that target.

Bowlplex Dunfermline has kindly allowed us to use their venue for free, and offer you a free game of bowling. All you have to do is gather together 7 friends and raise some sponsorship. They’re also arranging entertainment, a few celebrity bowlers and prizes, including a short break to be awarded to one bowler at random.

The evening kicks off at 10pm on Tuesday 10 August and will run through until about 8:30 Wednesday morning. Each game will last about 80 minutes.

For more information and an application form, please contact Graeme Campbell at Bowlplex Dunfermline on 01383 737300 or email lemonaid@bowlplex.co.uk.

Heart For Haiti

2010-04-26

LemonAid is proud to announce its support of a very special event in Edinburgh on June 11th. Heart For Haiti draws in a superb array of worship leaders, and will raise vital funds for the hospital rebuilding project that LemonAid have been working towards for a number of months.

Heart For Haiti, organised by Compassion UK, LemonAid and Kingsway will feature worship led by Graham Kendrick, Stuart Townend, Brenton Brown and Cathy Burton. The event’s host will be Andy Hawthorne, who, along with promoter Justin Dowds (from LemonAid) – and many of the worship leaders – has made many previous trips to see the work carried out by Compassion in Haiti.

With the venue, backline and production all being donated free of charge, the event stands to raise a considerable amount of money which will add vital support to the essential rebuilding work needed to the Wesleyan Hospital on the island of La Gonâve, just outside Port-au-Prince.

Since the earthquake struck in January, Justin Dowds and LemonAid have made four trips to the country, taking with them tonnes of medical supplies and lending much needed support to the teams on the ground.

Edinburgh’s Highland Hall is no stranger to dynamic worship events and is the venue of choice for the Frenzy one day festival.

Tickets are only £5 and £1 for under 16’s. Buy tickets here.

Packing for the third trip

2010-02-25

Here is another article in The Courier newspaper talking about the third trip to Haiti. Justin Dowds and Ian Cattle took this third consignment of urgent medical supplies to our team on the ground on the island of La Gonave

Collecting at the Pars grounds

2010-02-08

Sunday 7th February saw a team of people hitting the Pars ground in Dunfermline with big collection buckets. Thanks to everyone who donated. We raised a huge sum of £1403.91. Pictured above are some of our collectors along with the Pars team.(photo is copyright to david Wardle photography and used with kind permission)

Big thanks to all the Dunfermline FC for allowing us to collect at the match and also for their support of Lemon Aid.

Haiti Trip Update (25th Jan 2010)

2010-01-20

Jan 25th 2010 : The team have now all arrived home safe and well. Plans are already underway for another trip with more medical supplies going out. For a full repost from the Courier newspaper click here

Jan 24th 2010 : The team has arrived safely back into miami at 7am your time. What a trip. We have all seen things that no man would ever want to see. Its been a terribly emotionally draining trip but we have experienced Gods protection and answers to prayers like never before. Its been like everything we have asked for God has provided. For example we travelled to Lagonave and delivered the emergency meds to the hospital. They were almost completely out of antibiotics as all 4 wholesalers in the capital were destroyed in the earthquake. Without these supplies the hospital would have been without. The hospital continues to treat refugees from the mainland in greater numbers. Whilst at the hospital we met a beautiful small girl. She had been trapped for three days in the earthquake in the capital. Her family managed to dig her out and got her to the Lagonave hospital the next day as they could not find medical care in the capital. She had badly crushed and diseased feet. The doctors worked hard for three days to treat the wound but could not do any more without an orthopaedic team. We decided we would take her to the mainland and drive around all the field hospitals till we found the care she needed. Adrian and Charlie returned to the mainland by boat so that we could fly her to the mainland quickly. We were praying that God would come through as we knew not what we could do for this girl. As we landed justin saw a group of a doctors and joked with Dan that it would be kind of funny if those guys knew any orthopaedic colleagues. Dan went up to this team and in one of the best moments of the trip the doctors confirmed they were a complete orthopaedic surgical unit. They were overjoyed to have another patient. They had two seats on their plane and within an hour had the girl and her mother in the air on way to their orthopaedic unit north of the capital. Wow what an instant answer to prayer and we continue to pray that this team can save some of this girls feet. Just one example. In another our great friend Pastor Thimothee was in a church with 2000 when the quake struck. The church was completely destroyed and flattened and no one can explain in the natural but all 2000 escaped without injury. As a result of this in the last week 860 have given their lives to Christ including voodoo priests and witch doctors who were amazed at Gods power to protect his people. We look forward to sharing more with you. These supplies we have brought out were absolutely essential emergency supplies. What a privelege to be able to help in such a practical way.

Jan 21st 2010 : All the team have arrived safely at Port au Prince airport. Still waiting to get clearance to go through passport control. More news to follow as we get it. Please check out the post from our good friends at Guts Church in USA. Click here

Jan 20th 2010 : We have arrived in Miami with all 36 bags of emergency supplies. Thanks for all your prayers as we are so grateful that all bags made it through customs safely. We have now been awake for 42 hours and looking forward to sleep but an emergency transporter plane just landed and there was a call for emergency volunteers to load the plane.....so were driving three more hours to an airfield to load supplies onto the transporter. We give thanks that all 80 compassion head office staff have now been found alive. It was heartbreaking to hear however that one female staff member has since died from internal injuries, unable to access healthcare quickly enough. She leaves a husband and four young children. It's so much more difficult to handle when stories are personalised to specific families. I am told there are now 1 million orphans in Haiti. If there is any way - I would bring one or two of these gorgeous kids home with me in an instant. I will report back again as soon as I can.

LEMON AID HAITI UPDATE (19th Jan 2010)

2010-01-19

Over 70,000 bodies have now been buried in Port au Prince alone and many thousands remain unaccounted for. Haiti remains a nation in complete turmoil. There remains an incredible shortage of medicines and surgical materials. Many fractures remain untreated and gangrene is taking hold.
Our great friends Dan and Joy remain in the thick of things running the hospital on Lagonave and an emergency facility in Port au Prince. It is hoped to be able to carry out amputations from the Port au Prince site from tomorrow.
The situation is grim beyond words but we continue to trust in God for wisdom in what to do.
Its 1am in the morning on Tuesday as I write this. Lemon aid have been granted emergency access into Port au Prince airport aboard an aid flight on Wednesday. In the last 24hours we have worked around the clock pulling medicines, dressings, needles, vaccines, anaesthetic equipment and essential dry foodstuffs together. Packed it all into 40 large bags, loaded a van and set off for heathrow. We have 1000kg of emergency supplies on with us. The supplies will be delivered to the emergency surgical unit which has been set up in the capital and the Wesleyan hospital on the island of Lagonave.
We received notification that the hospital is almost completely out of supplies and that it was extremely diificult to source any medicines in Haiti at present.
Thanks for all the donations that have come in so far. We have now reached £10,500 in the emergency appeal. We are taking money down to the hospital as there has been a run on the banks and its now impossible to access funds from Haitian banks. Please continue to donate what you can so that we can make further medicine supplies as required.
Once on the ground we can make assessments of further needs so that we can order materials to be delivered to the island by ship. Our friends at Guts church have chartered a ship which will bring hundreds of tons or emergency supplies in about three weeks time. We will be able to order what we need for delivery on this ship.
The Lemon Aid team. Will do what they can to update you as we can. Please pray that we can get all these supplies safely to where they are needed and for protection for the team. On this trip is Pastor Jimmy Dowds, Justin Dowds. Adrian Turk, Justin Dowds, Charles Seaman, Andy Hawthorne, Anthony Delaney.

Article in Sunday Post 17th January 2010

2010-01-18

Click here for a cutting from the Sunday Post article. 17th January 2010.

Haiti Earthquake Update 14th Jan 2010

2010-01-14

Haiti Earthquake Update

On Tuesday evening - 12th January, a devastating earthquake rattled the nation of Haiti causing extensive damage and many thousands of deaths. The presidential palace, UN headquarters and many hotels, schools, churches and hospitals have all been reduced to rubble. Tens of thousands remain trapped and unaccounted for. Lemon aid has been working in Haiti primarily on the island of Lagonave just off the coast from the capital. There has been extensive damage on the island but due to the fact that Lagonave is not nearly as developed as the capital there was very few deaths on Lagonave. On Lagonave, homes tend to be shacks and single story so they are easy to get out of. The Wesleyan hospital that we work with has tended to many injured casualties. As you know they do this for free and provide free medicines and dressings where possible. Dan Irvine who oversees the hospital is putting a medic team together from the Lagonave hospital staff and along with medical supplies is heading to the mainland to see what extra help they can bring there too. They will set up an emergency clinic in a semi destroyed Wesleyan church complex in Port au Prince.

Unfortunately day break yesterday revealed the earthquake had significantly damaged the existing Lagonave hospital building. The building was already in poor condition and Lemon Aid have been heading up the project to rebuild the hospital. The earthquake damage now requires us to speed up the fundraising to allow construction of the new facility and emergency repairs as soon as possible. A construction project manager and architect will visit the site with the medic team in March 2010 to assess priorities and set a new build timeline. We will not go before then as the airport is closed to commercial flights and roads in and out of the airport are cut off. The plans are already drawn for the new facility, its just the funds that are needed to make it happen. In the last few hours some Haitians from the mainland have started to make there way to the hospital on Lagonave for treatment. The Lagonave hospital is the only hospital on the island and with 33 beds struggles to cater for the 110,000 population. It is however the only place on the island where surgery can be carried out and caesarean sections performed. It is imperative that we find a way to protect and rebuild this facility for these precious Haitian people.

If you can make a donation please do so as soon as possible. Lemon aid will direct any donations to areas most needed in the aftermath of the quake. We will look at what needs to go into protecting and rebuilding the Lagonave hospital. We will also rush funds to the emergency medic team to allow purchase of emergency medicines and medical supplies for use in Port au Prince or to treat quake survivors that turn up at the hospital. The price of fuel has rocketed in Haiti already which has led to the power in the hospital being withdrawn at night. When fuel is available we will forward funds to allow purchase of fuel for the hospital and emergency clinic generators.

To make a donation to the Lemon Aid Haiti Earthquake appeal please go to our DONATE . If you have a credit or debit card you will find instructions under the donate tab at the paypal section. Click on the pay pal section and if you have a paypal account you can make a donation online, if you don't then click to say you would prefer to pay by card. We have negotiated extremely low rates for these transactions with PAYPAL. If you would rather pay by cheque you can download a Gift Aid declaration form to send in with your cheque donation made payable to Lemon Aid. If you have any questions then please email justin@lemonaid.org.uk or call Mike on 01383 631005.

Haiti Eathquake Update

2010-01-13

Justin Dowds was in contact with Pastors Dan and Joy at 23:00 GMT on the island of La Gonave. Their orhpanage was shaken during the earthquake and thankfully at present there have been no casualties. However all communications are down at present and our only contact is via a satellite phone so we are unable to give any accurate report from the rest of the island. There has also been no communication from any of the Compassion staff as yet, so please keep praying for them. We will attempt to update you as soon as possible, but as you can appreciate with all communications down making contact is proving to be difficult. Compassion will be starting a disaster fund for Haiti earthquake. You can donate now by clicking HERE

Lemon Aid on FACEBOOK

2009-12-17

Join us on facebook at http://www.facebook.com/lemonaiduk

You'll find all the latest news and updates from Lemon Aid there.

Raise funds for Lemon Aid on Ebay

2009-12-16

Ebay Sell your unwanted goods on eBay and raise funds for Lemon Aid. eBay for Charity allows you to list an item on eBay and donate 10-100% of your final sale price to us – it’s that easy. Visit our Lemon Aid page on Ebay by clicking here. To learn more about how you can support charities on eBay, visit www.ebay.co.uk/charity. To sell an item now, click here

Bikers for Haiti raise over £300

2009-09-21

Alisdair Buchan has arranged a LEMONAID bike run with a group of bikers from across Scotland. There were 17 motorbikes of all types and sizes which left this morning for a tour through Comrie, Killin, and then heading up to Ptilochry with the aim to raise much needed funds for the hospital in Haiti. There will be more updates in the next few days so keep checking back here for more news. This is the first of it's kind and there will no doubt be many more. Should you wish to go on the next bike run please email lemobikers@blueyonder.co.uk

Read the review on this day at GoldWingMisfits site.

Website Launched

2009-09-09

“Its finally here, the new Lemon Aid website launches today. Thanks to Sarah Lyth and all the team at Atomised for designing and programming us to this stage. Please take time to look around at all the projects Lemon Aid are involved in at the moment. We have uploaded photos at each of the projects pages for you and over the next few weeks we have a few videos that we will be uploading to the site. Make sure you subscribe to the rss feed and we can keep you updated with all that’s happening as it happens”

LemonAid in the papers again

2009-05-24

“After a hugely exhausting but incredibly rewarding medic trip to Lagonave, Haiti the Dunfermline Press picked up on the story and ran a great article in this weeks edition. Thanks to everyone for making this trip possible and a massive success. Thanks to the team; Carol Hatten, Lou Davidson, Elain Stark, Dr Alison Dunn, Aaron Dowds, Charlie Seaman, Dr Fiona Seaman for giving your time freely to help these beautiful Haitian people”