The tragedy that has befallen Haiti has seen an out­pour­ing of sup­port from Americans, but there are still peo­ple need­ing help in our own country.

The U.S. Census esti­mates over 18 per­cent of chil­dren under the age of 18 are grow­ing up in poverty in America. An alarm­ing 12.4 mil­lion chil­dren live in homes where there isn’t always enough food to go around and over three mil­lion Americans are homeless.

We should be in Haiti, pro­vid­ing food, water and med­ical atten­tion. Our efforts to help this strug­gling coun­try prior to the earth­quake were abysmal. A few nights ago a telethon was held on sev­eral tele­vi­sion sta­tions to raise money for Haiti. Celebrities and musi­cians per­formed and spoke, plead­ing with view­ers to give what­ever they could.  The telethon raised $58 million.

How won­der­ful that such a great sum could be raised in such a short time. People giv­ing just a few dol­lars to lit­er­ally help save lives; I hope the same com­pas­sion could be shared with domes­tic causes, as well.

Americans are blessed in their abil­ity to give to Haiti and other coun­tries in times of dire need. Our gen­eros­ity, among other qual­i­ties, makes us the great­est coun­try in the world.  But care­ful atten­tion must be paid to ensure that while we are rebuild­ing the lives of peo­ple out­side of our bor­ders, we don’t allow the lives of our own peo­ple to crumble.