In the intensely can-do atmosphere of Steve McAndrews relief cell at IFRC base camp in Port-au-Prince, the team led by 20-year-old Nadia Grossaint has inevitably become known as the Haitian sensation. Today the all-Haitian National Red Cross Society (HNRCS) relief crew face their biggest challenge to date: theyre going solo, on a difficult distribution in the eastern Delmas suburb of Port-au-Prince. It will be the first humanitarian aid to get through to Terrain Cohan, on Delmas 63, a family neighbourhood, but a hilly one with narrow streets, difficult for trucks. Therell be four Mexican Red Cross volunteers there, but just to provide extra elbow grease. McAndrew, a veteran American Red Cross delegate whos run IFRC relief in Haiti from the start, has been grooming Grossaint and her team for weeks. Now its her show. Pain Relief distributions are complex – and when done well they can be very complex. But the first priority is security and what in any other context might be called crowd control. You must have security around your trucks, says Grossaint, as the first in the convoy of three starts the agonizing process of trying to back into the driveway of the quake-damaged Notre[...]

[Published in AidNews - Read the original article]