Emergencies in Haiti

Healing trauma after Haiti’s earthquake

Healing trauma after Haiti’s earthquake

Some were trapped in rubble for hours. Other lost loved ones. Thousands saw their homes destroyed. For survivors of Haiti’s 2010 earthquake, grief and pain became constant companions. As Caritas raced to get families water, food, and shelter, its aid workers realized that mental health care was just as great a need. “More than a ...

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Schools reopen in Haiti after 2010 Earthquake

Schools reopen in Haiti after 2010 Earthquake

“When the school collapsed, what was essential was finding the children. The rest was just material,” said Sr. Josette Drouinaud of the Mère Delia Institute for primary and secondary school girls in the bustling Delmas neighbourhood of the Port-au-Prince. When the earthquake of 12 January struck Haiti, the primary school crumbled. The students had finished ...

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Quenching the rice fields’ thirst in Haiti

Quenching the rice fields’ thirst in Haiti

Fednor, a farmer, is preparing what will soon be the main source of food for his family – a rice field. In Joque, in the province of Les Cayes, rice growing is the most common agricultural activity. The rice fields extend along each side of the road and provide a living for the majority of ...

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Long-term solutions in Haiti

Long-term solutions in Haiti

There is a long-term answer to alleviating poverty: helping people build up resilient livelihoods. Secours Catholique, the French national Caritas, worked with local people to improve their food production, supporting the most vulnerable with food rations so they did not fall back on eating seed stocks. Through food-for-work programmes in Les Cayes in southern Haiti, ...

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Cholera in Haiti’s camps

Cholera in Haiti’s camps

Caritas’s humanitarian experience had helped it recognise that crowded camps, with limited clean water and poor sanitation, were the perfect combination for another brewing disaster: a cholera outbreak. Caritas had begun distributing soap and building stand pipes and latrines as soon as possible after the earthquake. “For some people, it is the first time they ...

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