Carlos Petit-Homme, president of the Saskatchewan Caribbean-Canadian Association, has been trying to find out about family and friends in Haiti. (CBC)

Many Saskatchewan families with ties to Haiti are anxiously trying to learn the fate of loved ones after the devastating earthquake.

The Haitian community is relatively small, with about 50 people with roots in the country.

Carlos Petit-Homme has spent considerable time in the past two days on the phone, desperately trying to contact three sisters and family friends.

"I'm very worried," Petit-Homme said Thursday. "I have family, friends, people that I work with going back many years. I saw some of the building conditions that I know where they work and I suspect some of them may not make it."

His efforts to reach people by telephone, however, have been unsuccessful and television news coverage has been his only contact with home.

Much of the coverage is focused on relief efforts.

In Saskatchewan, as in the rest of Canada, the Canadian Red Cross is putting its resources to work. The agency is collecting donations for disaster relief.

"Haiti is a poor place to begin with and a disaster like this is awful and I just wanted to help," Bob Shirkie, a Regina resident making a donation Thursday, told CBC News.

Petit-Homme is also trying to organize a local disaster relief fundraiser. He is president of Saskatchewan's Caribbean-Canadian Association.

In Saskatoon, comedy performer Jenny Ryan will be part of a benefit show Jan. 22. The improvisational troupe The No No's will perform at the German Concordia Club. Money raised from the $5 admission will be donated to an orphanage in Haiti called Broken Wings.

"This is a province is that cares," Ryan said. "This province looks after not only each other, but it looks after the world. And that is something that the improv people that I work with, who are mostly from Saskatchewan, this is something that they keep telling me. This is our culture. This is what we do. We work together to help others."