This is a photo of Benjamin Harris
Posted February 1, 2010 // 0 Comments // add yours
Few of you will have heard of him. Mr. Harris passed away in 1952. He was the former President of U.S. Steel’s Tubular Products, Inc.
But thanks to his daughter, who established a fund at The Pittsburgh Foundation in 1982 in memory of her father, Mr. Harris’ philanthropic spirit lives on – currently in reaching out to the men, women and children suffering in the terrible aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti.
From his fund, The Pittsburgh Foundation is today announcing $65,000 in immediate grants to support the relief effort in Haiti. Two of these grants, totaling $50,000, will go to organizations with strong Pittsburgh connections:
- Hôpital Albert Schweitzer, a gem of a clinic outside Port-au-Prince that was founded by Pittsburgher Dr. Larimer Mellon in 1956. The clinic was spared the devastation of the earthquake and is operating with full staff to treat casualties and provide life-saving care.
- Brother’s Brother, located on Pittsburgh’s North Side is amassing urgently-needed medical supplies for shipment to Haiti, including antibiotics, surgical packs, surgical instruments and other requested provisions. Its first shipment was airlifted to Haiti last week.
A third grant of $15,000 will go to Doctors Without Borders, an international humanitarian organization which receives strong support from medical professionals in the Pittsburgh region. The organization’s facilities in Haiti were severely damaged by the earthquake, but workers have established temporary clinics to treat the injured.
As a community foundation, The Pittsburgh Foundation rightly concentrates most of our discretionary grantmaking right here at home. But when disaster strikes somewhere else, we believe that one way our community maintains its own health is by reaching out to others who are in desperate need and hardship.
The Pittsburgh Foundation is able to do that because of donors like Benjamin Harris. During his life, one of the issues he cared about deeply was the provision of emergency medical services in developing places, like Haiti. We are honored and privileged to carry forward his spirit of his philanthropy.
We think he would be proud of these three grants, all of which were made possible by the fund created in his memory so many years ago. His generosity has reached across the years to benefit people he never met in a land few ever consider but whose needs he anticipated through his selfless philanthropy.
When we talk about the “face of giving” at The Pittsburgh Foundation, this is what we mean. Donors like Benjamin Harris.
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