In the wake of the earthquake, the Haiti branch of the Boy Scouts were ready to spring into action. Mr. Adrien Belaston, a man involved with the Scouts for 40 years, visited each of the only three functioning radio stations in Port-au-Prince with a solemn call to action. He called on all Scouts to present themselves for duty. He told them not to be afraid and to promote calm and to inform the population to, “Stay away from tilting walls!”

“One Team 4 Haiti” Campaign Created in Collaboration with the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund

Seattle, Washington, USA – February 5, 2010 – Haitian telecom operator Voilà and its parent company Trilogy International Partners are partnering with The Jack Brewer Foundation (JBF Worldwide) and the NFL Players Association (NFLPA) to bring NFL athletes to Haiti for a service trip to continue to raise awareness and relief funds.

Voilà Technical Update:

Our teams in Haiti, Florida, and Bellevue are doing a commendable job, with little or no sleep, ensuring our telecommunications services are operating in Haiti.

Yesterday’s 7.0 earthquake and subsequent aftershocks near the capital city of Port-au-Prince have caused widespread destruction and human devastation. Senior management of Voilà and its parent company Trilogy ( in addition to that of its Dominican Republic operation (Trilogy Dominicana/Viva) quickly convened to implement their disaster recovery plan, and to formulate a special task force to secure the safety of their local staff and begin to assess the damage caused by the quake. Within hours, and despite extensive road damage by which only passage by foot was possible, the local team was able to ensure that all of Voilà’s buildings in the country remained intact and have initially accounted for staff. This then cleared the way for beginning the in-depth evaluation of structural damage to buildings, anticipated to take days to complete. Voilà’s network continued to operate for several hours through the aftershocks before we were forced to shut down the switch to maintain its integrity until our generators and cooling systems were back online. We have restarted our generators at the main switch and are in the process of bringing our network back up. Once this has occurred, we will be focused on managing traffic and adding capacity as rapidly as possible to aid the humanitarian efforts in Haiti.

To this end, members of the Voilà/Trilogy crisis task force were one of the first aircraft to land this morning at the Port-au-Prince airport to assist on-the-ground efforts. To support this undertaking, Voilà and Trilogy have mobilized on a number of fronts, including outreach to US Government resources, its foundation Yélé Haiti in cooperation with partner Wyclef Jean, in addition to leveraging the expertise and close proximity of its Dominican operation. These immediate actions will help restore our network as quickly as possible as over a million Haitians rely on Voila for wireless communications in a country where traditional landline service is practically non-existent.