Local family's aid to Haiti goes back years

The Double Harvest mission began providing food, water, shelter and medical care to thousands of people a day immediately following Haiti's recent earthquake.

The nonprofit was established in 1981 by the extended VanWingerden family, which owns Metrolina Greenhouses in Huntersville. The late Tom VanWingerden, who died in December 2009, founded the family's greenhouse business in 1972. He took over field operations for Double Harvest after his father, Aart, died in 1996. For about the last five years he visited Haiti monthly for a week at time.

The Double Harvest facility, about eight miles east of Port-au-Prince, includes a 200-acre vegetable, chicken and tilapia farm that employs 200 Haitians and is helping feed about 1,000 people daily. There's also a church, a school for 450 children, a housing project and a medical clinic with two surgical rooms, a pharmacy, a dentist and an ophthalmologist.

Six members of the VanWingerden family are in the country and more are on the way. The Double Harvest team arrived in Port-au-Prince the day after the earthquake.

Dr. Art McCulloch, an anesthesiologist from Cornelius, has been in Haiti volunteering with Double Harvest since the disaster. A longtime friend of the VanWingerden family, he visited the Double Harvest facility last year with Tom. Because of his familiarity with the region and his recent visit, he quickly volunteered to help.

"As a doctor, I want to challenge all doctors to spend time volunteering in a third world country like Haiti," he said, answering questions through e-mail last week. "It is more rewarding than it is work, and the feeling of knowing you helped just a little is the reason I went back this time."

McCulloch and the team are helping thousands of people a day.

"I am administering pain medication to the Haitian patients before their surgeries, setting bones and (performing) amputations, all the way to minor cuts," McCulloch said. "We are doing all we can to just provide comfort."

Nick VanWingerden, Tom's brother and a Double Harvest board member from Illinois, also has been in the country since the earthquake. He has visited Haiti numerous times.

For now, he said, it is mostly about survival.

"It will be months to years before we return to a reasonable level of safety and sanitary conditions, but we have made significant improvements in the basic survival plan in just eight days," he said via e-mail. "The first few months are going to be about survival, then we can begin to talk about safe and sanitary long-term conditions."

Even though there is widespread hardship and tragedy, Nick said the response from relief agencies and other missions has been great.

"The needs are overwhelming. Many Haitians will need amputations or die from infection from week-old wounds," Nick said. "But, people volunteering has been great. Double Harvest even had to turn away doctors because we now have 40 doctors at Double Harvest alone."

The Double Harvest facility's medical clinic is running nonstop, Nick said, and team members converted the facility's school cafeteria into a makeshift hospital and set up a shelter outside the clinic to accommodate more patients.

The chief concern for the team right now is getting enough diesel fuel to run generators, which power the clinic and help pump clean water from wells. Team members recently made a four-hour drive to the Dominican Republic just for diesel fuel.

"We contacted CNN and the U.S. military to let them know as long as we can get fuel, the facility is available at their disposal," Nick said.

Frantz Angus, a field director for Double Harvest and native Haitian who runs the facilities, is overwhelmed but hopeful.

"We have to continue to move forward, but it is very difficult," he said via e-mail.

Adding to the difficulties is the sheer number of lives lost.

"I hear the sounds of people crying, sobbing, moaning as they search for or grieve for loved ones," Nick VanWingerden. "And we are doing all we can to ease this while getting supplies, providing shelter, feeding the people and running prayer and church services."

Another major need right now, and in the weeks and months to come, will be funding, Nick said.

"We need money to continue to provide for both the short-term care and then long-term rebuilding needs of Haiti and the people," Nick said.

Abe VanWingerden, a co-owner of the Huntersville greenhouses, began providing updates and spreading the word via Facebook since the tragedy. Double Harvest now provides updates via its Facebook page, which already has more than a 1,000 fans.

"Any help we can get is great," Abe said. "We heard of a retirement group in Raleigh that collected $70 among the six people in their nursing home for Double Harvest. The Haitian people who work at Double Harvest gave over $300 to the Tom VanWingerden Memorial Fund and these folks earn less than dollar a day. We have also received gifts of $25,000 to $50,000 from individuals who could. Everything helps."