What's happening in Haiti?
Despite an expanding international aid operation, aid is still needed for hundreds of thousands of people who have yet to receive food and shelter weeks after the powerful earthquake destroyed Haiti’s capital. Hundreds of thousands of homeless earthquake victims have yet to receive materials such as plastic sheeting to build shelter. With the possibility of the tropical rainy season beginning within a few weeks and the Caribbean hurricane season beginning June 1, it is critical that homeless Haitians receive adequate shelter.
Food distribution has increased with the launch on January 31 of a massive food distribution effort by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP). The distribution includes paper coupons that can be redeemed for 55 pounds of rice. As of February 12th, the WFP has delivered rations to more than 2.5 million people in Port-au-Prince and nearby areas.
Food distribution partners are currently seeking to improve the coupon distribution mechanism to safeguard the needs of priority beneficiaries – for example, women with several children and families that have lost members in the disaster. The WFP is also planning to help provide long-term food security by partnering with other agencies to deliver seeds and fertilizer so that crops can be planted.
In Pétionville, a neighborhood of Port-au-Prince where thousands of displaced people are camping in public parks, there have been protests as residents wait for food. These protests and the attempted migration of many Haitians to the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos, are evidence of the sense of desperation many Haitians are still experiencing.
The issue of children has come to the forefront after Haitian officials detained 10 Americans attempting to bus 33 children into the Dominican Republic. The Americans insist they had good intentions and were trying to get the children to shelter. This brings the issue of human trafficking into focus, a matter that has become one of the biggest concerns in post-disaster Haiti because thousands of children have been displaced, orphaned, or separated from their families. The issue is affecting the ability of aid workers to provide much-needed medical care to critically injured Haitian children. Private medical evacuations of these injured children to the United States for treatment have mostly stopped because aid workers, doctors and government officials fear being accused of kidnapping. The United States, however, is working with the Haitian government to protect children who might be at risk.
Some schools in unaffected areas have re-opened and the Ministry of Education aims to re-open all schools before the end of March. Other signs of normalcy are surfacing as well, with stores opening and street vendors beginning to set up their goods.
Mercy Corps’ Response
Mercy Corps’ Country Director Bill Holbrook met with top Haitian government officials on Friday to discuss reconstruction and recovery needs. Our assessment regarding lack of aid for the outer areas is consistent with Haitian government information and priorities.
The Mercy Corps team traveled to the towns of Gonaives, St. Marc, and Hinche to assess needs in areas outside of Port-au-Prince. We found that there was almost no assistance in these areas despite the more than 250,000 people that have fled Port-au-Prince to their home provinces.
Cash-for-work programs, which provide cash to workers to complete short-terms jobs, have hired more than 600 Haitians to clear debris and repair basic infrastructure in the most damaged Port-au-Prince neighborhoods. Using hand tools shipped in by Mercy Corps soon after the quake, local people are carrying out essential tasks to earn daily wages. Getting money in their pockets means survivors can purchase the supplies their families need – and, in so doing, help businesses and markets resume the normal flow of trade. Mercy Corps anticipates its cash-for-work program to provide more than 8,000 people with short-term jobs.
Mercy Corps is also working to help provide clean water and sanitation. On February 3, the Mercy Corps team in Haiti installed a water filtration unit at a local hospital. More water filtration units are on their way for installation at other locations. In addition, Mercy Corps’ water and sanitation experts are hiring local staff to expand the organization’s ability to provide clean water and safe latrines to at least 42,000 people in Haiti’s capital. Mercy Corps will also assemble and deliver hygiene kits – with mosquito nets and other critical supplies – to earthquake survivors.
The organization also shipped 4,000 “comfort kits” for distribution to Haitian children. These kits contain age-appropriate toys for toddlers and older children as well as hygiene supplies, blankets and art materials. The kits will be distributed via Mercy Corps’ Comfort for Kids program, a post-trauma counseling methodology that was first developed in New York by Mercy Corps and Bright Horizons, a global workplace childcare provider, to help children recover from the trauma of 9/11.
The Comfort for Kids program also held its first series of training sessions for local psychologists, social workers, and teachers to help Haitian children recover from the trauma, grief and loss of the earthquake. Training for parents and other caregivers has also begun. Through this program, Mercy Corps will train 280,080 caregivers.
Haiti’s first lady, Elisabeth Delacourt Préval is partnering with Mercy Corps and will help support Comfort for Kids. The first lady and UNICEF will organize child-safe spaces in displacement camps offering art, sports and music, while Mercy Corps provides simultaneous sessions, in French and Creole, to educate adults about trauma in children. Mercy Corps is also setting up child-friendly spaces near our cash-for-work projects, so parents have a safe place to leave their children while they work.
In the coming weeks and months, Mercy Corps plans to expand its work to include the provinces of Port-au-Prince, particularly the Central Plateau area, where approximately 500,000 people fled after the earthquake.
