"Learn to Sell or Else…"

You see numbers a lot in sales copy.

The dollars you could make, the amount of pounds you could lose, the number of weeks it could take you to feel half your age… and the list goes on.

This past week, though, I’m guessing you’ve seen a lot of numbers… all tied to one event… that have started to lose their meaning.

I’m talking about Haiti.

You can’t have your head above water, pretty much anywhere on the globe, without hearing about it. And always with the  numbers close behind.

A 7.0 earthquake… as many as 90% of buildings destroyed… tent cities of 50,000 and more… hundreds of bodies piled up outside the city morgue… as many as 200,000 dead… hundreds of thousands more trapped under rubble or horribly maimed in rescue attempts.

Of this one: 20 feet by 100 feet. That’s the size of the mass graves they’re digging, because it’s a race now against the discovery of more dead… with 70,000 victims already buried but more on the way.

Of course, there are numbers on the other side of the story, too. Some 10,000 US troops sent to help… and thousands more from the EU, Asia, and elsewhere. And nearly $900 million in aid pledged by countries at a world — even when a lot of those countries can little afford it.

Plus the thousands saved from collapsed buildings. Or the 14,000 ready-to-eat meals and 15,000 liters of water that were air dropped into the capital today. With up to two million Haitians desperately in need of food aid right now, it’s barely a start… but it’s something.

Yet, have you noticed how trying to take in the vastness of a tragedy like this… as in the tsunami that slammed Asia years back… is just too overwhelming?

Seeing it in statistical panorama, through the wide-angle lens of objective reporting, somehow dehumanizes the most tragically human aspects of the event.

But then someone on the ground pulls you in to a moment, and that changes everything.

For five days, for instance, the parents of 8-month old Jean-Louis Brahams waited while rescuers cleared away the heavy rubble of what used to be their home.

They were sure their baby had been crushed, but then a neighbor heard him cry. He’s dehydrated but alive, and in the care of medics at an Israeli field hospital.

So is the 18-month-old girl who survived under the remains of her home for six days. Miraculously, she had no injuries. Nobody else in her family was as lucky.

And then there’s Marie-France. She got trapped under a double-reinforced steel door when a row of shops collapsed. It took a dozen saws to cut a narrow tunnel. Then they had to dangle a doctor by his feet, so he could perform the amputation that saved her life.

There’s also Rick Santos, the aid worker who was trapped with three others under the rubble of what used to be the Montana Hotel. They survived by passing around the only food they had — a single lollipop.

After three days in pitch darkness, Santos suddenly saw start in the night sky — French firefighters had broken through. Two of his colleagues have since died from their injuries, but Santos and a doctor from New Jersey are alive.

Then there’s the seven-year old girl trapped in a crushed supermarket, who survived four days on a box of dried fruit rolls… and two-year-old Mia, who survived three days in the rubble of what used to be her kindergarten classroom…

Soon, you’re in the numbers again.

But numbers that have names and faces, stories and families, lives and jobs, and things that make sense to you.

Now you’re not thinking statistics, but maybe what it would be like to lose your own child or your own parents…

Or maybe to be under that rubble yourself, hoping the scraping sound you hear is somebody trying to dig you out.

Lose an arm, but get to live. Get to live, but lose a son or a daughter that you stayed up with at night. Outside of the statistics, the real scope of suffering becomes clearer.

Only then can you multiply that by 10… 100… 1,000… even millions of lives that just changed forever… and get even an inkling of why and how much all those individuals, thrown together by one terrible and random event, still need our help.

Right now, I’m betting it’s a little easy to think — you can admit it — that there’s been so much coverage on this so far, that the donations are already rolling in.

It’s easy too to worry that a lot of that money will never make it to the people who need it most anyway. Because scam artists never seem to miss an opportunity, even during something like this.

But they need it, still.

What can you do?

Some of my friends and colleagues have done a brilliant job of picking out the best ways for you to funnel any help you can give to the what’s already an inspiring but overwhelmed global effort.

Maybe I can offer you something to cover both what they’ve mentioned and some they might have missed, in this guide: http://ow.ly/YbAp

It’s a comprehensive list from the unbiased charity watchdog site, charitynavigator.org (see today’s missing link).

They name 51 three-and-four-star rated charities, all with a track record of this kind of disaster relief, work in Haiti, and a long history of putting as much of the donated money as possible directly into giving aid rather than into their own administrative operating costs.

It also shows you how to tell the real pleas from the scams, how to give without writing or mailing a check, and more.

At least consider taking a look at the link. Pick one of the charities that fits the way you think and read thbackground on what they do. And then, if it works for you, think about what you could give. Even if it’s just $50 or $20 or $10.

Not because anybody says you have to, but because there are times when that’s just what you should do.

And because you can hope that, if you’re ever in a similar situation, it’s what someone would do for you, too.

P.S. I just used the same site to make a donation to Doctors Without Borders, because they’ve worked in Haiti for 19 years and operate three emergency hospitals there already.

It took me six minutes, start to finish. I used a credit card, the transaction was 100% secure, and it’s tax-deductible.

But again, there are many other ways to help. You can take a look here if you’re looking to decide: http://ow.ly/YbAp