Miami, Florida- 14 year-old Ryan Samuels reports from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) gymnasium in North Miami Beach, Florida, about Haitian Relief Efforts taking place there.

Samuels has taken a special interest in this project since he has a lot of Haitian friends, and his father lived in Haiti for two years and speaks fluent Creole.  Samuels father, who is the Vice Mayor of the City of Miramar,  has strong ties to the Haitian community in South Florida.

In the cultural hall, volunteers sort and box water, food, and other supplies that will be put in a shipping container on Sunday, January 24th.  Miami LDS Church leaders are working with a Miami shipping company to get the supplies to Haiti around Feb 3rd at a port north of Port-au-Prince.  40 pints of blood were also given to the South Florida Community Blood Bank for the Red Cross.

So far, over 50,000 pounds of supplies have been collected from this one location.

The LDS Church headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah, have already sent shipments of relief supplies into Haiti.  According to Church reports, there are seven LDS chapels in Haiti being used as shelters for over 4,000 people from the community.

Samuels made this video for his 8th grade "change the world" project
for language arts.