U.S. Muslims Organize Haiti Roundtable on Earthquake Resistant Housing

CHICAGO, March 4 /PRNewswire/ -- The Zakat Foundation of America, a Muslim charity, is hosting a meeting at 2 p.m. today in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, between Haitian community organizers and U.S. experts in earthquake resistant construction. The goal is to help Haitians rebuild their devastated communities with safer housing.

Slated to attend are Port-au-Prince Mayor Jean Yves Jason, Haiti Senator Evalliere Beauplan and Khalil Demir, executive director of the Zakat Foundation of America, headquartered in Worth, Ill. Other participants include:

• Dr. Roger Bilham, professor of geological sciences at the University of Colorado-Boulder;

• Dr. Rebekah Green, associate director of the Resilience Institute at Western Washington University in Bellingham;

• H.H. Haddock, principle, International Haddock Systems Network;

• Dr. Martin Hammer, architect, Berkeley, Calif.;

• Dr. Elizabeth Hausler, Director Build Change, San Francisco, Calif.;

• Andre Soares, Co-founder Ecocentre IPEC, Brazil.

The group will meet from 2 to 4 p.m., then participate in a question and answer session with community organizers.

A 7.0-magnitude earthquake rocked Haiti on Jan 12, killing an estimated 200,000 people, according to the government there. Many of the deaths were due to buildings that collapsed because of substandard construction and building materials. Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere.

The Zakat Foundation of America is an international charity organization dedicated to helping people in need. The foundation's goal is to ensure the self-reliance of the poorest people around the world.

Follow live tweets of the conference: http://zakat.org/haiti/

SOURCE The Zakat Foundation of America