U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and former U.S. President Bill Clinton, the U.N. special envoy for Haiti, said Haitian citizens are now being employed in the relief and reconstruction effort, not only adding more personnel to the effort, but also giving them a means to earn money to boost the local economy as it attempts to recover from the January 12 earthquake.

(Photo, right, Haitians work to unload U.S.-provided Meals-Ready-to-Eat from a Navy CH-53E Sea Dragon that has been flying from the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, floating off the Haitian coast as part of “Operation Unified Response.”)

Speaking at the United Nations headquarters in New York January 21, Ban said that through the U.N.’s Cash-for-Work program, “we can employ many young men and women who can really devote themselves to the early phase of recovery: cleaning the streets and cleaning demolished places, and also other economic activities.”

Creating jobs for Haitians will contribute to the revitalization of the Haitian economy, he said.

Last week, an earthquake silenced telephone landlines and mobile services, leaving Haitians in the dark in more ways than one, but it’s getting better now, as tens of thousands of radios are distributed by U.S. Marines. Haitian families can now hear important public service and safety announcements, and learn when and where food and water will be distributed.

The small radios don’t even need batteries: they are powered by the sun or by hand cranking. A U.S. Air Force C-130 has been flying in pallets of the hand-held emergency radios from Homestead Air Force Base in Florida for earthquake survivors — 43,800 radios so far, with another 6,200 due tomorrow.

(Photo credit: U.S. Marine Corps Sergeant Mark Leuis showed Haitians how easy the US radios are to use)

The specially equipped radios have another advantage: they can be used to charge cell phones and as modest flashlights.

Taxpayers will be able to write off charitable donations to Haiti earthquake relief efforts when they file their 2009 taxes this spring under a bill President Obama signed Friday.

The bill would allow donations made by the end of February to be deducted from 2009 returns.

(Continue reading at NPR.org)