Caribbean small businesses owners along Flatbush Avenue's busy commercial strip in Brooklyn may know how to balance their books but many couldn't deal with the trauma caused by the devastating earthquake in Haiti.

With as many as 200,000 dead in Port-au-Prince and with the blanket, wall-to-wall television, radio and newspaper coverage bringing graphic scenes of destruction, injury and death right into people's living rooms and business places 24/7, the Caribbean American Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CACCI) and State University of New York (SUNY) Downstate Medical Center saw the need for assistance.

That's why they decided to link arms and provide psychological counseling to the Haitian, Jamaican, Guyanese, Trinidadian, Grenadian and other West Indian vendors at the Flatbush Market and surrounding areas who were left traumatized by the tragic events in the Caribbean country.

Responding to the Chamber's pleas for help, Downstate Medical Center, a leading teaching hospital for physicians and nurses in New York and elsewhere, dispatched its mobile trauma unit to the market to help advise the store owners, employees and vendors in coping with the tragedy.

"Many of the vendors are from Haiti and other Caribbean countries and they were worried about the plight of their families and friends who might have been killed, injured or trapped in fallen buildings in Haiti," Dr. Roy Hastick, the Chamber's President, told the Carib News. "When I went to them, they were in tears, worried about their relatives. So, I contacted SUNY Downstate and they were able to partner with us and bring over a trauma van to start providing counseling for the vendors in the market. But while they were there, we realized that people in the community, passers-by, not only of Haitian descent but from the rest of the Caribbean were in need of help and they too received help for trauma from the doctors and the counselors in the van. We also contacted Kings County Hospital Center and Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center and they are setting up hotlines to do counseling as part of their relief efforts."

Flatbush, East Flatbush and Crown Heights, where the medical institutions and the vendor market are located, have a large Caribbean immigrant community of residents and small businesses. Tens of thousands of Haitians, Jamaicans, Guyanese, Grenadians and Trinidadians for instance, live, work, worship or operate small enterprises in the sprawling area.

"I think this will go well because we want to ensure that the Haitian Americans and others from the Caribbean who own businesses and who are helping in the relief remain focused so they can continue to manage their businesses and earn money, which in turn would enable them to help their families back home," said Hastick. "We thought it was useful to provide the business people with trauma counseling and getting our partners to go along with this initiative."

CACCI, founded in the 1980s to give Caribbean entrepreneurs a voice in the city's business community and led ever since by Dr. Hastick, has become one of the city's leading advocates for minority-owned commercial enterprises.