Follow Justin in Haiti on Facebook

Click Here to help Marie Jo

Saturday, noon to 2 p.m.

Silo Elevated Cuisine & Bar, 434 N. Loop 1604.

Tickets are $50 per person and $40 for students and children under 10 years of age.

For more information, call (210) 854-3222

Haitian President René Préval will unveil this $3.9 billion plan Wednesday to begin radically reshaping his country’s post-earthquake economy and infrastructure.The plan, which Préval will present to donors at a U.N. conference in New York tomorrow, would essentially redirect much of Haiti’s economic development outside Port-au-Prince, creating provisional economic hubs to compete with the capital.

http://haiticonference.org/Haiti_Action_Plan_ENG.pdf

WHYV will be broadcasting live from Haiti.

Their broadcasts can be viewed here: http://wehearyourvoice.com/broadcast.html.

The first broadcast will be aired live during the Piryxtopia SXSW Charity Bash with Green River Ordinance

Follow their progress on FACEBOOK and TWITTER.

Since 2007, Startup Weekend has been orchestrating gatherings of entrepreneurs, application developers, marketers and designers who, over 54 hours in three days, pitch their business ideas, self-select, break into teams and then work to build what they hope will become successful technology start-ups. Each Startup Weekend culminates with a business competition, where participants and invited panelists vote for the best overall start-up to receive a prize. So far, according to Marc Nager and Clint Nelsen, the organization’s directors, Startup Weekend has held 83 events in 62 cities, and those events have begin 290 ventures.

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During the event, you will have the chance to hear from the founders of Piryx and Startup Weekend, as well as local notables. We will have a live video-conference with Justin Yarborough, founder of We Hear Your Voice, who will be in Haiti. The documentary trailer for We Hear Your Voice will be featured, as well. And of course- lots of fun will ensue!

In order to attend this event, guests must pick-up a Piryx 314 card beforehand. These cards will be circulating during the first 2 days of SXSW and can be obtained through any Piryx, or Startup Weekend employee. Cards will be also available through supporters and booths scattered around SXSW. Join our Facebook Event Page to learn about who and where these folks are. The cards must be registered in advance, which will automatically put your name on the list for the party. A $20 donation to We Hear Your Voice is the suggested entry price for the event – there will be a $5 discount if you tweet out a message with the hashtag “Pi4Haiti”, and show it to the person giving out the cards.

Speakeasy | 412D Congress Ave, Austin, TX (Map)

March 13th | 9:00pm – 1:00am

Register here with your 314 club card.

Her world shattered Jan. 12 after she heard that a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti, where her three adopted daughters lived.

Granger, who turns 26 Wednesday, was frantic. She didn’t know whether her daughters were alive and had no way to get to Haiti to search for them.

But the St. Mary’s University community rallied around Granger, a native of Haiti, after learning of her plight. It provided contacts and donations that led to a harrowing, three-day journey to find her girls — Angel, 16, Fafane, 13, and Bianca, 11.

With the aid of fellow law student Justin Yarborough, the duo encountered a cast of unlikely supporters from Florida to the Dominican Republic who helped reunite the grief-stricken mother with her children.

Granger and her daughters returned to San Antonio on Thursday, where they were greeted by her husband, Robert, and their friends.

Granger said the girls’ adoption packages were cleared by the U.S. Embassy and Customs, and that they now are in the United States legally.

On Friday, as her girls lay on couches at St. Mary’s Law School, noticeably tired from their ordeal and several sleepless nights, Granger reflected on her journey.

Although Granger has been in San Antonio for four years, she had been unable to secure all the documents needed to bring her daughters to the U.S. Until the earthquake, they were living with relatives in Haiti.

She said her daughters were lucky, receiving only cuts and bruises when their home crumbled around them.

“They’re smiling, they’re happy to be here,” Granger said.

Rush to Haiti

It began with a text message from a friend: “big earthquake in Haiti, make sure the girls are OK.”

Granger called her daughters all night, with no response.

Her family, worried about her safety, told her not to go to Haiti. But she had to see for herself whether her girls were alive.

Flights to Haiti were grounded, but she was able to book a flight on Spirit Airlines from Florida to the Dominican Republic.

A mutual friend, Alex Salazar, told her to talk to Yarborough, a 29-year-old lieutenant in the Marine Corps Reserve.

Granger and Yarborough first met the day before their Jan. 15 flight to Florida. He said he was taken by the desperation in her eyes. As they devised a game plan, he stopped and asked: “Can I go with you?”

“It was just kind of God’s hand,” Yarborough said. “And he wasn’t going to deny us getting there.”

Granger said things moved fast once Yarborough joined her cause.

Within 12 hours, they had gathered $1,500 in donations from their school and Gateway Church. A few of Yarborough’s friends set up a Web site, and at Lackland AFB, where Granger’s husband works, colleagues offered their prayers.

“It really shocked me and pleasantly surprised me how everybody just got together and did this for us,” Granger said. “We’re not particularly religious people, but this is a miracle. There’s no way this could just be coincidences.”

In Fort Lauderdale, Fla., they were joined on the flight to the Dominican Republic by Granger’s close friend, Yvon “Junior” Desjardins.

And along the way, signs of hope of appeared.

Airport personnel didn’t charge them for the 400 pounds of medical supplies and clothes they’d collected for Haitian orphans.

At the San Isidoro Air Base in the Dominican Republic, Granger and Desjardins curried favor by helping French aid workers with translations. Then, Yarborough contacted a service member who helped them board a U.S. Customs and Border Protection helicopter to the U.S. Embassy in Haiti.

They arrived in Haiti late Sunday. Once there, they contacted a woman named Florence Thybulle, founder of the Renmen Orphanage, who provided a car with a quarter of a tank of gas left in it.

By the time they drove out to search for her girls, it was pitch black, they said. There was no moon, no streetlamps. They used a flashlight to search along streets littered with corpses and debris.

Once in the Nazon neighborhood where her daughters lived, they got out of the car and went looking for their house. There was rubble everywhere. The neighborhood looked like a demolition zone.

When Granger trained the flashlight on her house, she saw nothing but ruins. The only thing left was a black metal gate. Granger’s knees buckled. Junior and Yarborough held her by the arms as she screamed her girls’ names.

Suddenly, they heard cries from the darkness just outside the gate. They quickly grew into screams of, “Mom, we’re here, we’re here, Mom!”

Angel, Bianca and Fafane stumbled from the dark into their mother’s arms.

Family members had tried to persuade the girls to follow them to a nearby soccer field, but Angel refused. They needed to stay near the house, she said, in case their mother sent a friend or came herself to find them.

Granger’s oldest daughter said she never lost hope her mother would come for them.

“I thought I found my savior,” Angel said of the moment when she heard her mother’s screams. “I’m very happy that we’re finally here.”

Now Granger and Yarborough are planning to try to help those left behind in Haiti. They want to go back in March for Spring Break.

“We have this silver lining here,” Yarborough said. “We were lucky; we had a happy ending but we feel very grateful that it’s one of the happy stories coming out of there.”

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/San_Antonio_law_student_travels_to_Haiti_to_find_daughters.html