Arcade Fire Make Plea for Haiti

Posted on Jan 14th 2010 11:30AM by Jonathan Dekel
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Arcade Fire have joined the worldwide relief effort to help the earthquake-shattered country of Haiti.

Posting a message on the Arcade Fire website last night, bandleaders Win Butler and Régine Chassagne encouraged fans to donate money to long-time charity of choice Partners in Health.

"Friends, Haiti needs your help in her darkest hour," began the post, which went on to detail some of the damage and devastation the 7.0 magnitude earthquake inflicted on the island and its capital Port-au-Prince. "Most of the medical infrastructure in Port-au-Prince is down. Since Partners in Health's clinics are in situated the surrounding areas and haven't been damaged, they are mobilizing their resources towards the capital, setting-up field hospitals to treat the injured on the ground."

For Chassagne in particular the crisis has hit very close to home.

As noted in the song 'Haiti' -- from 2004's 'Funeral' -- the singer's family suffered under the country's brutal Jean-Claude Duvalier dictatorship and the band has worked closely with Partners in Health and its founder Dr. Paul Farmer for several years to raise money and awareness for Haiti's disadvantaged.

Arcade Fire's plea joins that of other musical celebrities like Coldplay's Chris Martin and Haitian-born Wyclef Jean, whose Twitter campaign has raised millions of dollars in aid already for www.Yele.org and is planning a further fundraising event on Monday.

Butler and Chassagne concluded their message by asking fans to send funds to www.PiH.org and to "please be generous as time is of the essence."